Countdown To CAOmageddon: Flaw #33 - No Survey

When properly conducted, the "value" part of "functions and values" is inseparable from an effort to quantify them via economic valuation methods. As suggested by the National Research Council and the published literature, "values" can refer to use and nonuse values. Use values can consist of consumptive uses and non-consumptive uses. A list of "values" might look something like the following:

Use Values
Consumptive Uses
1. Harvesting
2. Fishing
3. Water Supply
4. Logging
5. Genetic Resource
Non-Consumptive Uses
Direct
1. Recreation - boating/swimming/hiking/birdwatching
2. Transportation
Indirect
1. Habitat support
2. Flood control
3. Erosion prevention
4. Pollution control

Nonuse Values
1. Existence
2. Species preservation
3. Biodiversity
4. Cultural heritage

Once listed, the values of our community can be quantified using a valuation method. When markets exist for goods and services, valuation is a relatively simple matter. However, when there are no markets, an alternative benchmark is needed, and the leading valuation method for those situations is called "Contingent Valuation" (CV).

Contingent Valuation is a method of estimating the value that a person places on a good. The approach asks people to directly report their willingness to pay (WTP) to obtain a specified good, or willingness to accept (WTA) to give up a good, rather than inferring them from observed behaviors in regular market places.

Because CV creates a hypothetical marketplace in which no actual transactions are made, contingent valuation has been successfully used for commodities that are not exchanged in regular markets, or when it is difficult to observe market transactions under the desired conditions.

Many applications of CV deal with public goods such as improvements in water or air quality, amenities such as national parks, and private non-market commodities such as reductions in the risk of death, days of illness avoided or days spent hunting or fishing.

Before your eyes glaze over too much, the main point to recognize is that CV is survey based. "They" were supposed to ask us to quantify our values, using sample sizes of stakeholders ranging between 200 and 2500 people.

Were you part of a survey of community values? ... Didn't think so. Then how do "they" know the proposed CAOs are protective of them?

Our proposed CAOs seem to be placing an awful lot of emphasis on values related to indirect non-consumptive use and nonuse. Where is that coming from? Who is telling us what our community values are? Is it the Department of Ecology? Is it Dr. Adamus? Shireene? The Friends?

There is no supporting evidence that the proposed CAOs are actually reflective of broad-based values within our community, and there has been no quantification (or even a list) of community values implicit in our CAO protection scheme.