Comparing competing values in landscape and resources
Every parcel, every place, every region has different values based on their ecology. That is often dependent on topography, geography, geology and residential patterns.
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levels | What you must consider: |
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1
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Personal |
Although value is at one level a personal decision for you to make, what do I gain or lose? But there are two other considerations. |
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2
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Value is also a social decision, you need to see your choice of value in relation to other people's choices and they need to understand the criteria you use to assign value to some place, feature, or region. | |
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3
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Third, there is an ecological way of seeing value in different places, despite our personal biases and social pressure to conform to prevailing "commercial" values. |
(personal + social + ecological = real
value)
All landscape
has recognizeable
value because it possesses certain characteristics, which over time can
be transformed into commodities.
Information is not constucted from thin air, but instead, rests on what other people recognize as important ecological, economic and social information to know if you are going to judge something as valuable.
What explains the relation of human labor to natural resources and how both contribute to our wealth?
| levels | Means of obtaining comodities: |
| personal | how I get to work and earn a living. |
| + social | How my neighbors earn a living. |
| + ecological | That which keeps us all earning a living. |
| = real value | Worth that accumuates over time despite market changes. |
http://fox.rollins.edu/~jsiry/value.html
Your first task is to read and take information
from the books that support your belief that certain places, regions or landscapes
have value, indeed are of such worth that they must be preserved.
Take for example Aldo Leopold in my book -- he addresses very succinctly the problems with conservation based solely on economics. So does Rachel Carson. Both of these people are either supportive of the ideas expressed in Sym Van der Ryn, or they are not. You need to decide those principles from the Van der Ryn book that are important based on Carson, Leopold and George P. Marsh.
Van der Ryn explains that all resources that we value as a society come ultimately from ecological systems.
The capacity of ecosystems to provide us with resources that people need by
the term: ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
Hammock and dunes at Sebastian Inlet State Park.
When we got to the live oak tree in the Hammock walk I suggested to you that in 1828 (or so) Santa Rosa Island Florida was reserved because the Navy needed its live oak trees to build better ships, clearly this is a value (economic and defense values) inherent in the tree's timber.
This economic use of the live oak stems from the fact that the entire dune and
sea oats' ecosystem holds the island against the sea for long enough that the
live oak (which is hundreds of years old) can grow to maturity. No dunes, no
sea oats, no sea oats no seagrape trees, no sea grape trees no defense (buffer)
against the sea and no place for the live oak tree to take root, grow, withstand
fires, floods, hurricanes and finally people.
| Economic | Ecological |
| utilitarian | biotic productivity |
| cash value based on supply and demand | essential communities may not have monetary value |
In my book these are well described with respect to wetlands providing flood
control, sanitation and fishing and hunting sites -- these are all ECOSYSTEM
SERVICES.
Words are defined on several pages on my site --but consider these
words and other words I use.
integrity discussed | ecological design principles | living well