Valuing ecological resources through stakeholder participation

Abstract

This paper presents a pilot effort to identify a methodology to more efficiently codify, quantify and illustrate the intrinsic values associated with ecological resources as expressed by sta-keholders. Existing methodologies examine the value of ecological resources, but are often cri-ticized for their monetary focus. These methods generally produce quasi-market values for non-market resources. The natural and cultural re-sources associated with a national park are analyzed in terms of the expressed values of ac-tive stakeholders to quantitatively produce mul-tiple dimensions of value for each resource re-lative to all others. The resulting abstract and graphical value-space quantitatively reflects sta-keholder participation, reflects non-market in-trinsic value, and proactively contributes to en-vironmental management and decision making.