ABSTRACT
National Ecosystem Assessments attempt to “monetize” the impact of human actions on the environment. This chapter reviews the research practice of identifying shared values as a substitution for monetization which is hardly optimal for the assessment of social and cultural aspects. Instead of attempting to monetize values, I suggest assessing them qualitatively and balancing between them. When considering this balance, a “meta value” emerges – well-being. In the context of social values, it is translated into social happiness. Social happiness is not the sum of subjectively happy people. It is not like money where the more you have the richer you are. Social happiness is not an accumulation of all (or the majority of) personal happiness-es, or a statistical threshold. Social happiness can be regarded as the result of a combination of factors such as good social relations, a rich cultural environment and fair institutions. This is an additional dimension of happiness that resides in the inter-subjective level. Decision makers should take into consideration social happiness when assessing human impact on the environment.
