The Process of Loss: Exploring the Interactions Between Economic and Ecological Systems

SYNOPSIS. Though only a few naturalists have read much economictheory, current understandings of how biological diversity isbeing lost are largely framed by the models developed by economistsover the past two centuries. There is more than a touch of ironyhere. While conservation biologists are challenging the courseof economic development, their perception of the process ofbiodiversity loss is driven by historic patterns of economicreasoning that have become a part of popular consciousness.To be sure, the early economic models were designed to addressthe development of agriculture and the use of land. But agricultureis the most dependent on biodiversity. At the same time, thegeographic expansion of agricultural activities and the choiceof agricultural technologies have been the key driving forceof biodiversity loss. Laterm economic models addressed the limitsof markets to provide guiding signals for human interactionwith the complexities of ecosystems. Even the way we frame howwe should respond to the greatest long-term threat to biodiversity,the likelihood of climate change, is rooted in the economicsof more than half a century ago. This article elaborates these economic framings of the interactionof economic systems with the environment and discusses theirpolicy implications. One of the major problems is that evenexisting economic understandings of the processes of biodiversityloss are only accepted within a part of the economics professionbecause these understandings conflict with political ideologiesheld by most American economists. Thus processes of biodiversityloss are maintained, not for a lack of knowledge, but for adesire among people to maintain simple views of biological systems.Even the patterns of reasoning held by economists who do ponderbiological systems, however, are inadequate. The paper concludeswith suggestions of additional ways of modeling the interactionsbetween human activity and biological systems which may providefurther insight into how we might better maintain biologicaldiversity.