Volume 14

Number 1

February 2007 ISSN: 13504509

Published Bi-monthly

T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L J O U R N A L O F

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT & WORLD ECOLOGY

Editor-in-Chief: Prof. John N. R. Jeffers Editorial Board

Carl Folke, Stockholm, Sweden Bryn Green, Ashford, UK Francis Ng, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Jeffrey Sayer, Bogor, Indonesia Michael Young, Canberra, Australia Walter Leal Filho, Lneburg, Germany John Cairns, Jr, Blacksburg, USA Brian Field, Luxembourg Jingzhu Zhao, Beijing, China

International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 14 (2007) 1426

Living with living systems: The co-evolution of values and valuation

Katharine N. Farrell The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ, KUS Division of Social Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
Key words: Environmental valuation, institutions, niche construction, ecological economics, incommensurability, co-evolution, un-paid work

SUMMARY
This article explores features of the environmental valuation process through a coevolutionary approach. Based on established works concerning complexity, living systems, and social, economic, evolutionary and hierarchy theories, it is argued that a special form of recursive co-evolution takes place between articulated values and methods of value articulation, within the environmental valuation system. It is proposed that this co-evolutionary approach provides new insights into (1) the process of environmental preference formation and (2) the phenomenon of value incommensurability. Finally, it is suggested that this approach also reveals that monetary unit-based environmental valuation methods are counter-productive to their own purpose of taking the economic worth of un-priced environmental goods and service into account. This constitutes a new critique of monetary valuation, which is not addressed by a pragmatic defence of the practice. It is suggested that, in lieu of monetary valuation, taking the economic worth of these phenomena into account may be better served by focusing efforts on the design of new value articulation methods that are capable of expressing their priceless economic worth.

INTRODUCTION
The aim of this article is to explore features of the environmental valuation process through a coevolutionary approach. The focus is the economic value of life-supporting environmental systems and the term environmental valuation is assigned the following narrow meaning for the purposes of this discussion: a complex system of social tools and processes used to articulate values that reflect the economic worth of un-tradable environmental phenomena (goods and services), such as global and local climate regulation (breathable air), the water cycle (water) or forests (timber). Human society is taken to be the subject conducting environmental valuation and un-tradable life-supporting environmental phenomena are taken to be the objects that are being assigned values. However, this distinction between subject and object is blurred at points because humans are, of course, also part of the ecological systems that we value. Environmental value articulating institutions (Berger and Luckmann 1991[1966]; Jacobs 1994; Vatn 2005), including analytical and descriptive domains (Giampietro and Mayumi 2001), are viewed here as evolving sub-systems within environmental valuation systems. It is argued that coevolution takes place between articulated values

Correspondence: Katharine N. Farrell, The Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ, KUS Division of Social Sciences (R. 306), Permoserstr. 15 , D-04318 Leipzig, Germany. Email: katharine.farrell@qub.ac.uk

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and methods of value articulation due to a double positioning of articulated values within environmental valuation systems: (i) the form of articulated values is mediated by the form of the analytical system used to articulate them; (ii) the units of measure used to articulate these values, in turn, help to structure the environmental valuation knowledge system within which analytical systems (valuation methods) evolve; subsequently (iii) the analytical tools used to articulate environmental values (valuation) are co-evolving with our expressions of the economic worth of these environmental phenomena (values). This special issue draws attention to dynamic processes that are researched in both the social and physical (natural) sciences and this article draws from both discourses. Leaving aside which modes of economic development may or may not be sustainable, any discussion of sustainable economic development must include reference to human and non-human systems and to their interactions. Outlining a conceptual frame for theorising humansystem/eco-system co-evolution, Norgaard (1988: 617) was concerned with finding a path towards a positive social and ecological co-evolution. In complement to Norgaards theoretical approach, Svirezhev and Svirejeva-Hopkins (1998:47) focus on the empirical proposition that human misconceptions concerning co-evolution of mankind and the biosphere may have serious negative evolutionary consequences. Norgaard (1988:616) proposes that we may view social/ecological coevolution as a system comprised of five component sub-systems values, knowledge, organisation, resources and technology where each sub-system is linked to all the others. Following Norgaard (1988), we may say that Svirezhev and Svirejeva-Hopkins (1998), along with some systems (Bull et al. 2000; Aoki 2001) and political science (Alford and Hibbing 2004; McDermott 2004) authors, are concerned with co-evolution taking place within the knowledge-resourcestechnology sub-system. They include human/ecological co-evolution as part of their primary focus. By contrast, co-evolution within the values-knowledge-organisation sub-system is the focus here and co-evolutionary dynamics within the human system, taking place between environmental values and methods of environmental value articulation, are the primary focus. The dynamics are more akin to Dawkins (1976) concept of memetic

reproduction, where a range of social practices from mimicry to coercion, facilitate the spread of an adaptation across a population.

VALUING LIVING SYSTEMS

In order to articulate a value it is first necessary to describe the object being valued. The quality of an articulated valuation (poor, adequate, good) is then related to the degree of consistency between (i) the characteristics of the object of valuation and (ii) the valuation method employed: little consistency, poor quality articulated value, etc. Where the objects of valuation are living systems, the quality of the articulated values is dependent upon the ability of the valuation method to describe the dynamics of a complex living system. For the purpose of further considering this problem, we may distinguish between three main phenomena that are particularly important for understanding systems of environmental valuation: (i) objects being valued; (ii) articulated values; and (iii) methods for articulating values. All three of these types of objects are viewed here as interrelated complex living systems. However, the following discussion of co-evolution will focus on the co-dynamic relationship between articulated values and methods for articulating values. Both systems are presumed to be dynamic and they are presumed to change simultaneously and reciprocally with each other. In order to define what is meant here by a complex living system we may begin with Bertalanffys (1950:143) foundation description of a system as a complex of interacting elements. Keeping with the definition proposed by our editors, complexity is understood here to describe the behaviour of complex systems. Complex systems are [understood here to be] characterized by: (1) strong (usually nonlinear) interactions between the parts; (2) complex feedback loops which make it difficult to distinguish cause from effect; (3) significant time and space lags, discontinuities, thresholds and limits; all resulting in (4) the inability to simply add-up or aggregate small scale behavior to arrive at largescale results (Costanza et al. 1993). We may view complex living systems and untradable life-supporting environmental phenomena as special complex systems. These systems also require a constant flow of energy through the system (Maynard-Smith 1986:2), which enables

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a living system to avoid decay (maintain order) by making it possible for the system to free itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive (Schrdinger 1948[1944]:72). Again, following Bertalanffy (1950), we may say that the complex attributes of a living system can only be described through analytical (value articulation) frames that take into account the complexity of these objects. This means that the quality of an environmental valuation method (as defined above) may be judged on the basis of whether or not the method can accommodate the complex data required to describe the dynamics of these objects of valuation (cf. Vatn and Bromley 1994). Next, and here also in keeping with definitions proposed by our editors, co-evolution is employed below as a theoretical frame with the same elements and relationships as evolution but additionally involving the simultaneous development of adaptations in two or more populations, species or other categories that interact so closely that each is a strong selective force on the other (Raven and Johnson 1986). Following Lewontin (2000) and Levin (2000), evolutionary processes are also presumed to be complex systems. Thus, the co-evolutionary processes to be described below may be understood as one aspect of the dynamics of a complex living system (environmental valuation) that is comprised of and related to a range of other complex living systems,

where relationships between some of these systems exhibit a special set of behaviours, determined by but not reducible to those of complex, co-dynamic, living and evolutionary systems. These dynamics may be observed where two or more complex living systems, which are both evolving systems, are related to each other in a co-dynamic way. However, for such relations to qualify as co-evolutionary, the point of co-dynamic interdependence between the systems must directly influence evolutionary components within each system (see Figure 1). It will be argued below that methods of environmental value articulation and systems of articulated values are co-evolutionarily related, according to this definition. Insights arising from this approach will be used to advance current discussions concerning how we can best express the economic worth of priceless un-tradable lifesupporting environmental phenomena. Because we lack value articulation methods that are able to accurately represent the total economic costs and benefits associated with these phenomena (Kapp 1971; Daly 1998), by default, our current strategy is to ignore them. This is somewhat surprising, given that the inadequacy of current money-based methods of environmental valuation is almost universally agreed (Costanza 1998). However, by viewing environmental valuation as a complex evolving system, within which articulated values and methods of value articulation are co-evolving,

Figure 1

Two co-evolving systems

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it is possible to understand our continuing reliance upon inadequate environmental valuation methods as an emergent property; as an outcome latent in the dynamic structure of the systems we have or may adopt[which] will inexorably emerge (Beer 1970:115) unless we take intentional actions to change the structure of these systems.

A TRIADIC REPRESENTATION OF CO-EVOLVING LIVING SYSTEMS

As has been noted above, co-evolution between values and valuation rests entirely within the human social system. So it is necessary to clarify my grounds for describing human social systems as complex, evolving, living systems. I will begin by setting out a basic concept of evolution, which I will refine in order to highlight features specific to evolution in social systems. Finally, in the next section of the paper, in order to isolate and describe the relationships of primary interest to me here (between co-evolving components within the environmental valuation system) I will employ hierarchy theory (Allen and Starr 1982) and a triadic view of hierarchical systems (Salthe 1985). Human beings are social animals and sometimes behave through social practices. Lotka (1945; see also Georgescu-Roegen 1971) used the term exosomatic evolution to describe the process through which these social practices change over time, where: [i]n place of slow adaptation of anatomical structure and physiological function in successive generations by selective survival, increased adaptation [in the human species] has been achieved by the incomparably more rapid development of artificial aids to our native receptor-effector apparatus, in a process that might be termed exosomatic [outside the body] evolution (Lotka 1945:188 emphasis original). Applying Lotkas argument to economics, Georgescu-Roegen argues that [e]xosomatic instruments enable man to obtain the same amount of low entropy with less expenditure of his own free energy than if he used his endosomatic organs (Georgescu-Roegen 1971: 307). The point here is that these instruments, including the methods we use to articulate the economic worth of

environmental phenomena, are part of how humans collect low entropy in order to continue being alive. These systems of practice that we use to order the world around us can be described as institutions. They may begin as individual practices which, in time, become habits. If our habits are adopted by enough other individuals they become common practices or institutions (Berger and Luckmann 1991[1966]:7079). Over time this can lead to near complete loss of original knowledge. Our common perception of money is an example. Money is an empirical reality and a social necessity in most 21st century societies, but it is also a social construct. The practice of using money was reiterated into an institution so long ago that the meaning of the practice is almost completely forgotten (Jevons 1876; Ridgeway 1892; Davies 1994). Money is now part of the human environment but it is also a social system that we built.

Viewing human social systems as evolving systems

The assumption that a human social system such as environmental valuation evolves in the same ways as any other living system is perhaps controversial. In the past, similar assertions were condemned as biologism, which considers man as a curious zoological species, human society as a beehive or a stud farm and which [has] not proved its theoretical merits and has proved fatal in its practical consequences (Bertalanffy 1950:165). Writing as he was in 1950, when Bertalanffy points to fatal consequences, one may presume he is alluding to the Holocaust: a profound critique and not one to be taken lightly. It is a matter of debate whether ethics and international relations have developed since 1950. However theory in biology has developed and experts in evolutionary biology (Gould 1981; Rose et al. 1990) have discredited the biologism of sociobiology, invalidating its earlier claims to scientific status. Significantly, the evolutionary biology critique of sociobiology does not reject the presumption that human social systems are subject to evolutionary pressures. What is rejected is the presumption that evolution is reducible to some kind of competition between individuals with more or less successful (or desirable) genetic mutations and associated physical constitutions. Current evolutionary theory

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(Levin 2000; Lewontin 2000; Odling-Smee et al. 2003) paints a much more holistic picture of the evolutionary process, which includes co-evolution between species and their environments. For example, Laland et al. (2000) have observed a phenomenon they refer to as niche-construction: if a phenotypic (or cultural) adaptation is adopted by a sufficient number of individuals within a population (e.g. through learning, mimicry or mass mutilation) it can impact the structure and composition of the adaptive context (fitness landscape) that exerts selective pressures in favour of, or against, random genotypic mutations occurring in the next generation of this same population. In this respect, evolution occurring within human social environments (i.e. language systems evolving within cultural environments) is no different from the evolution of physical attributes within physical environments (i.e. early human teeth structures) evolving within the frame of available diet (Ungar and Teaford 1998)). The human environment is comprised of a combination of social and physical systems and both types are, to some extent, created by humans. The dynamics of human social systems evolution can be viewed as different in quality but sharing a fundamental set of attributes common to all evolving systems. (1) Evolution occurs at the level of populations or types. Adaptations acquired by an individual can only contribute to evolution through transfer to population level (Faber et al. 1996; Laland et al. 2000; Odling-Smee et al. 2003). (2) Evolution requires hereditary reproduction, which includes the transfer of information about the type from one generation to the next. Replication is not hereditary reproduction. Fire can replicate but all fire is the same, regardless of its origins: fire lacks heredity (Maynard-Smith 1986:710). In social systems heredity is replaced by historicity but the evolutionary function remains unchanged. Hereditary reproduction is an imperfect process and will include individual mutations and, over time, modifications in the type (Levin 2000; Lewontin 2000; Gunderson and Holling 2002; Giampietro 2004). All evolution depends upon population-wide exhibition of adaptations. Errors and innovations occurring during reproduction may produce novel attributes in individuals, which may be better suited to encountered conditions, which may be passed on to the next generation population if this individual reproduces successfully (Maynard-Smith

1986; Gunderson and Holling 2002). However, in social systems novelty may also arise from intentional purposive choice because evolving social systems also have attributes related to consciousness, learning and institutionalisation. In these systems evolutionary change can arise from genotype (type/potentiality) and phenotype (individual/ realisation) adaptations, keeping in mind that only adaptations exhibited throughout a population, at the level of type, can be classed as evolutionary (Faber et al. 1996; Giampietro 2004). Phenotypic adaptations occurring in customs, rituals, laws and systems of knowledge might be learned or accepted by most members of a current generation, giving them a population attribute / institutional status: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), signed at the United Nations in 1948 is an example of a phenotypic social adaptation (originally the idea of one or perhaps a few people) that achieved global population attribute status. Once such adaptations have population attribute status, they are carried on to the next generation (barring major upheavals in the social system) as part of the institutional and cultural practices of a society. In this way adaptations developed by an individual during their lifetime, can contribute directly to social evolution. If and when we exercise intentional conscious choice, we can create new possible futures that break with inherited trends (Norgaard 1988; Dennett 1992; Prigogine 1997; Laland et al. 2000), even to the point of influencing how we may co-evolve with our environments in future. This special feature of co-evolution between human beings and our social institutions is discussed by Berger and Luckmann (1991[1966]:66), through reference to the total dependence of human infants on social systems, not only for survival but also for motor and neurological development: it is possible to say that the foetal period in the human being extends through about the first year after birth and that the direction of [an infants] organismic development is [in part] socially determined. Obviously this situation of teaching or training infants is not exclusive to humans. However, some of the content within our social systems is produced through conscious intentional human choices. When these choices are institutionalised (i.e. achieve population attribute status), the continuation or forgetting of certain infant teaching or training practices (such as breast suckling) or the choice to create new ones

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(such as television watching), carry with them the potential to influence human social and physical evolution. This is because these practices constitute part of the environment within which the next generation of humans are evolving, both socially and physically. This view of the relationship between human development and social systems is also consistent with interpretations found in both developmental (see Gardner 1993[1983]; 1999) and clinical (Caspi et al. 2002) psychology: typical processes of human cognitive and social/behavioural development are dependent upon both nature and nurture. That is to say, human evolution has occurred and continues to occur through a combination of social and physical adaptations. Returning to the evolutionary biology concept of niche construction (Laland et al. 2000; Odling-Smee et al. 2003), it has been argued above that future social practices can be understood to be co-evolving with established social institutions and systems of practice that are themselves complex systems, changing and evolving over time. Niche construction is not an exclusively anthropogenic phenomenon and can be observed in many (if not all) species. However, one of the environmental attributes that humans construct is social and epistemological systems of knowledge, which we then, in turn, use as tools to support further niche construction activities. For example, we build universities and laboratories, in which we then proceed to develop new agricultural methods, which we use to reshape the landscape around us (sic Latour 1983; 1988). The universities within which we

conduct research, much like the UDHR, are globally prevalent attributes of human society: they are a constructed niche that can influence social and (given sufficient time) physical human evolution. Similarly, modified industrial agricultural landscapes (typified by the so called Green Revolution), which were created with the help of research conducted in universities, are also globally prevalent attributes of human society: they are a constructed niche, which can influence social and (given sufficient time) physical human evolution (Ungar and Teaford 1998; Laland et al. 2000) and they have been constructed with the help of a constructed niche. The co-evolution of values and valuation, to which we now turn our direct attention, is also a process that involves this kind of niche construction construction.

SUCCESSIVE AND RECURSIVE COEVOLUTION IN ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION SYSTEMS

Co-evolutionary dynamics within the environmental valuation system may be viewed as interactions between components of a hierarchical system, with the caveat that this is a heuristic rather than an empirical position (Allen and Starr 1982:6). When viewed as a hierarchy, a single system can also be understood as a series of nested systems. Higher order systems of one hierarchy may also be lower order sub-systems of still higher order systems. Lower order systems may be comprised of several still lower systems, and so on, all the way down.

Figure 2 A triadic view of a hierarchical system Adapted from Allen and Star, 1982; Mayumi, 2001; Salthe, 1985

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Following Mayumi (2001:115116) and Salthe (1985) we may take it that the smallest cluster of levels required to represent fundamental interactive relationships within a hierarchical system is a triad of contiguous levels: (1) higher (structuring), (2) focal, and (3) lower (functional) (Salthe 1985:75) (Figure 2). In addition to goings-on at the focal level, the activity of a dynamic hierarchical system is mediated by a structuring level, which determines what it is possible to do at the focal level, and a functional level, which exerts constraints upon how it is possible to do things at the focal level. Operating between the two levels, adaptations arising at the focal level are shaped by structure and constrained by function (Salthe 1985:8286). Viewing environmental valuation systems as triadic hierarchies, we may distinguish a focal level, where the act of environmental value articulation takes place, a functional level comprised of articulated environmental values and a structuring level comprising the entire environmental valuation system (Figure 3). Recalling that evolution has been defined above as a complex process, under a triadic view, we may understand evolution to occur within a complex at the focal level, with the structure of a system constituting a fitness landscape and the functions constituting attributes. We may then look more closely at two specific modalities of co-evolution that can be

seen in environmental valuation processes, call them: successive and recursive co-evolution of hierarchical systems. We may say that two systems are successively coevolving where a function from the first system is an element within the structure of the second system (Figure 4). In successive co-evolution, the first system contributes a function that becomes part of the structure (or fitness landscape) that influences evolution at the focal level of the second system. Because this shared component is part of the structure of the second system and has a functional role within the first system, constraints on the structure of the second system, which are applied by its focal system, are also constraints on the shared component, which is a function in the first system. This function (the shared component), which is constrained by the focal level of the second system, also exerts constraints that limit options for how activities evolve at the focal level within the first system. In Figure 4 a successive co-evolutionary relationship between environmental value articulation and evaluation of decision options is illustrated. Here, the functional product of environmental valuation articulated environmental values contributes toward the structure of a decision-making system. For example, a costbenefit analysis that is being used to evaluate the available options

Figure 3

Environmental valuation as a triadic

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(decision-making triadic: focus) for building a new road through an old-growth forest is likely to draw upon monetary environmental valuation data (environmental valuation triadic: function) to calculate the economic worth of the old-growth forest. The presence of these data in the structure of the decision-making system influences what it is possible to do at the focal level i.e. costbenefit analysis. But this focal level of cost-benefit analysis can also be understood as a function of a larger system (say governance), for which decision-making processes are a focus. Here, the selective pressure may be understood to work in the opposite direction. Cost-benefit analysis, as a function, exerts a constraint on how it is possible to do decisionmaking (as focus), including how it is possible to express the environmental value data that will be used in decision-making. Recursive co-evolution may be understood to occur where a successive co-evolutionary link is

found between the structural and functional components of a single hierarchical system (Figure 5). This means that changes in the functional outputs of the system may influence not only (i) how it is possible to do things at the focal level (as functional constraints), but also (ii) what it is possible to do at the focal level (as part of the structuring frame of the overall system). Articulated values in this case measurements representing the economic worth of environmental phenomena are structured by the value articulation methods we use. This is a familiar situation, we see what our theory allows us to see (Rpke 1999: 46). The relationship between environmental valuation and environmental values has been considered at length by many scholars (see Foster 1997; OConnor and Spash 1999 for an overview). However, the topic of these explorations is usually the influence of valuation methods on values, while the question of how articulated environmental values

Figure 4

Successive co-evolution and environmental valuation

Figure 5

Recursive co-evolution and environmental valuation

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influence the methods we use to articulate values has been left largely unexplored. The concept of recursive co-evolution helps to reveal special attributes that may be significant for further developing this side of the discussion and for choosing among possible value articulation methods. Articulated values are functions of the focal process value articulation but this focal process can also be viewed as a structural system in itself, for which articulated values are the focus. The distinction depends upon the point of reference. At the functional level, environmental values are descriptive data, articulated for use in decision-making processes (Figure 4). However, at a structural level, they constitute part of the semantic reference frame within which value articulation methods are developed and refined (Figure 5): The paradox is that man is capable of producing a world that he can then experience as something other than a human product (Berger and Luckmann 1991 [1966]:78). The point of co-dynamic interdependence between the evolving social systems of articulated values and value articulation (the co-evolutionary link) is the value data. These data are meaningless without a suitable analytical frame and analytical frames are useless without suitable data (cf. Giampietro and Mayumi 2001): there is no such thing as 3; there is only three of some thing. Choices concerning which value articulation method (analytical domain/focus) to use are shaped by our understanding of the task at hand, the tools at our disposal and the nature of the object of valuation. Because articulated value data provide information concerning (1) the nature of the object and (2) the analytical tools that are available for use, they constitute an important part of the environmental valuation knowledge system structure (adaptive context) within which new value articulation methods are developed/can evolve. The history of the electron microscope provides a compelling example of this co-evolution between method and data. Chalmers recounts the experimental processes that led to a working understanding of the instruments data outputs, where [t]he quantum mechanical account of image formation [a theory concerning the relationship between the subject and object of observation molecular structures] led to the prediction of fine detail in the electron microscope images not previously discerned. When this detail was detected [because it

was looked for through further experimentation, because it was predicted by new theory] the Hirsch group [of researchers] rightly took this as evidence both for their theory of the instrument and for the veracity of the newly interpreted data (Chalmers 2003:505). In this example, the focal process observing molecular structures produced the data (functional output) low resolution images of molecular structures. These data (functional output) then in turn became part of a revised semantic reference frame (theoretical structure) through which the focal process observing molecular structures was understood. This change in the structure of the system of observation led to changes in the focal process, which then ultimately led to the production of new output data (function) high resolution images of molecular structures.

SOME NEW INSIGHTS ARISING FROM THIS CO-EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

Viewing the environmental valuation system as a recursively co-evolving system (where articulated values influence future choice of valuation methods and vice versa) makes it possible to extend discussion of three non-evolutionary concepts that are important within the environmental valuation discourse: (i) preferences, (ii) incommensurability and (iii) the use of monetary valuation for expressing the economic worth of living systems phenomena. Preference is a concept that figures in most discussions of environmental valuation and the co-evolutionary perspective employed above offers new insights into how preferences are formed. In mainstream political science and economic analysis preferences for one outcome or object over another are presumed to be endogenous (originating within the individual). However, this presumption is questioned by institutional and ecological economists (Simon 1959; Vatn and Bromley 1995; Trosper 2002; Vatn 2005), who argue that preferences are influenced by institutional contexts, including methods of value articulation. A co-evolutionary view of environmental valuation extends this view of preferences by taking into account the co-evolution of expressed preferences (values) with institutions (methods of value articulation). The surprising tendency to continue representing environmental preferences in terms of

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monetary values, regardless of a scientific consensus that these data are not accurate (Vatn and Bromley 1995; Costanza 1998), may be understood as an adaptive response to an institutional context that encourages monetary valuation. The continuing production of these values, through reliance upon monetary valuation methods of environmental value articulation, can be understood to exert a recursive selective pressure, which reduces the likelihood that preferences will be expressed in non-monetary units in future. Incommensurability of values and the impossibility of ranking, cross-referencing or compiling data across incommensurable frames is a problem central to many discussions of environmental valuation (see ONeill 1993, 1997, 2001; Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994; Martinez-Alier et al. 1998; Smith 2003). Here, new insights arising from the co-evolutionary approach outlined above are related to (i) coping with simultaneous reliance upon multiple frames, (ii) distinguishing between the relative appropriateness of incommensurable frames and (iii) choosing which frames to use in which situations. Viewing each of a given set of several incommensurable environmental valuation frames as a recursively co-evolving triadic, incommensurabilities of value arising between frames can be understood to reflect different units of measure (descriptive domains/functions) associated with different routines and procedures (analytical domains/foci) through which those values are being articulated (see Giampietro and Mayumi 2001; Mayumi 2001; Giampietro 2004). In this respect incommensurability problems can be viewed as conflicts between the environmental valuation triadics employed by a range of different actors who are all concerned with a single environmental valuation issue. Based on the arguments presented above, we may presume that each environmental valuation triadic contains, within it, a set of co-evolving focal and functional systems. In a situation where we are faced with an incommensurability problem, we may say that these various triadics are overlapping at the focal level, because they share common concern with a single object, such as the carbon cycle, a cloud forest or a river system. Each analytical domain (focal value articulation system) within each triadic produces descriptive data (functional environmental values) that are consistent with its conceptualisation of the common object.

The environmental value data produced through each triadic contribute to the semantic structure of that individual triadics environmental valuation system (recursive co-evolution). In addition, the same relationship that makes it possible to observe the incommensurability between triadics makes it possible for the functional output (data) from one triadic, to contribute to the wider semantic referencing frame (structure) of the others (successive co-evolution distinct triadics). This means that each triadic can be understood to be (i) competing with, (ii) adapting to the presence of and (iii) influencing the competitive advantage of all the others. The relative prevalence of a given frame or the presence of two frames with very similar functional outputs (data) can be presumed to have an influence upon which frames are more or less likely to survive into the future. This coevolutionary view of the dynamic relationships between incommensurable environmental valuation systems may help to explain continuing reliance upon monetary unit-based value articulation methods. This may be understood as an emergent property of our current collection of environmental valuation tools, which tend to favour the production of monetary unit-based value data. Instead of viewing incommensurability as an impasse to be overcome, this co-evolutionary perspective casts incommensurability as a healthy form of analytical and epistemological diversity. It allows us to view incommensurability as a form of competition between alternative adaptive responses within the social evolutionary landscape of environmental valuation. This view also makes it possible to distinguish between the relative appropriateness of different incommensurable frames. If we view each triadic frame as being similar to a species or subspecies, we may imagine that the adaptive profile of a given frame is likely to work better in one situation or another, that some frames may work better than others for similar situations and that occasionally several frames may all be successful simultaneously. The problem of distinguishing between frames is no longer one of better or worse, of right or wrong, but of fitness for purpose (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1997). Fitness for purpose leads us to the third and final new insight: a co-evolutionary approach can be helpful for choosing which environmental valuation frames to use in which situations. Here, we may take the example of monetary valuation, which has

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been discussed now several times above. It is generally agreed (Costanza 1998; Kapp 1971) that the numerical system of monetary values cannot fully represent the economic worth of complex, priceless, living systems phenomena: it is not fit for this purpose. Even strong advocates of monetary valuation concede this point (see Costanza et al. 1997; Costanza 1998). Instead, the practice is defended on pragmatic, as opposed to logical grounds: The figure [arrived at by Costanza et al. 1997] of 33 trillion dollars screams at us to save what natural capital is left. There are evident physical consequences of excessive human expansion that scream the same message without need of explicit [monetary] valuation. But for those who only hear dollars, let us scream now and then in dollars! It is a crude and inaccurate measure, but I think it is more than just a bad underestimate of infinity (Daly 1998:2223). However, if articulated values are understood to exert co-evolutionary selective pressure on our future choices of value articulation methods (as has been argued above), then the full consequences of monetary valuations inability to represent living systems values is not addressed by a pragmatic defence of the practice. There are consequences associated with monetary environmental valuation that are a result of the act itself: to undertake the act is to incur these co-evolutionary consequences. If one is to defend the practice of monetary valuation on pragmatic grounds, then these further, coevolutionary implications must also be addressed. They constitute an extension of the generally accepted critique of monetary valuation, in response to the pragmatic defence. The coevolutionary perspective adopted here reveals the pragmatic choice to scream now and then in dollars as not merely incorrect but counter-productive to its own purpose of taking the environment into account, because continuing reliance upon this inappropriate method may be understood to favour the future adoption of environmental value articulation methods that are also incapable of taking living systems data into account.

worst-case scenario would be a vicious cycle of increasingly self-referential adaptations in the evolution of future value articulation methods, producing increasingly meaningless environmental value data. A valuation system that relies upon inappropriate value articulation methods, which produce inappropriate data, which influence future choices of articulation method lacks a corrective semantic relationship with the objects of valuation. Over time such a system may be expected to grow increasingly disconnected from the objects for which it purports to articulate values. This would then lead to further deterioration in the empirical quality of the environmental value knowledge (semantic reference) frame within which further methodological adaptation takes place in future. On balance, the recursive co-evolution that makes this vicious cycle possible also gives rise to the possibility of virtuous cycles. Because the evolution of value articulation methods is a social process, it is subject to the influence of an exceptional evolutionary pressure: human free will! The human capacity to exert free will gives us the ability to choose a different future, to break with path dependency, not through chance, but through choice, with intent (Prigogine 1997). This presents an alternative, more hopeful, best-case scenario. Perhaps problems associated with the zero price status of priceless un-tradable life-supporting environmental phenomena do not arise from their priceless character but from our reliance upon environmental valuation systems incapable of representing their economic worth. By focusing on the design of new methods for articulating the economic worth of priceless living system factors of production we can foster new social practices. These practices would contribute new value data. The environmental valuation system reference frame would begin to include priceless data and the structure of our knowledge about the objects of valuation would change. Intentional choices, made today, to develop and apply priceless environmental value articulation methods could make it easier for us to take the economic worth of priceless living systems into account in the future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CONCLUSIONS
Finally, we may consider a best- and worst-case extrapolation of the arguments presented here. A Ideas presented in this paper reflect a position developed during three years of PhD research at Queens University of Belfast (funded by a UK

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Support Programme for University Research scholarship), including presentations made at Norwegian Agricultural University, University of Pisa, Autonomous University of Barcelona and in the GoSD Network Working Paper No 3. (Farrell, 2004). Thanks are owed to John Barry, Arild Vatn, Joan Martnez-Alier, Tommaso Luzzati and the peer reviewers of this article for their critical comments, to Dick Norgaard and Christian Rammel for suggested readings and to Fred Luks and Jerry

Ravetz, for understanding. Errors, omissions, etc. remain entirely my responsibility. Additional funding supporting the work presented here was also received in the form of a Research Council of Norway visiting scholar grant. I currently hold a Marie Curie Intra-European fellowship at the Helmholtz Centre UFZ (contract EIF-024688) and a Visiting Researcher Fellowship with the Gibson Institute for Land Food & Environment, Queens University, Belfast..

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