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On the value of natural ecosystems: The Catskills parable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Mark Sagoff
Mark Sagoff*
Affiliation:
Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 ms2@umail.umd.edu
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Abstract

Economic considerations typically have led societies to develop rather than to preserve wild and natural places. Accordingly, preservationists traditionally have based arguments for protecting nature on its intrinsic rather than instrumental worth. These traditional arguments rest on aesthetic, moral, and spiritual rather than on economic values. Today, though, many environmentalists point to the preservation of nature's “services” as the reason to protect ecosystems from conscious manipulation or careless degradation. Many cite a decision by New York City to spend over $1 billion to purchase land in the Catskills watershed to secure or restore the capacity of the natural ecosystem to purify the City's water supply. This essay questions the validity of this example and, in turn, the generalizability of the thesis it has widely been thought to support.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 19 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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