ABSTRACT
Chapters 3 and 4 described the philosophy underlying the procedure for putting money values on preferences for environmental change. This chapter investigates the methodologies for eliciting economic values. A potentially important issue arises in that much of the world’s threatened biological diversity is in the developing world, whereas the theory and practice of economic valuation has been developed and applied mainly in the developed world. Accordingly, it is important to assess whether rich country methodologies can be applied in poor country contexts. Prima facie, it could be argued that a number of the methodologies will not be applicable due to the absence of even moderately freely functioning markets for inputs (eg labour, capital, raw materials) and outputs (eg agricultural produce) in developing countries. In practice, there is a fairly extensive literature on the valuation of environmental change in developing countries and, by and large, the problems of application, while significant, are not insuperable.
