Because of how I understood anticapitalism, I was always against trying to calculate the economic cost of destroying nature.

Nature should not be destroyed because it's sacred. Period.

And, on a less spiritual way: as we don't have a clue* how complex ecosystems work, we should be less confident when pretending to put a price tag on ecosystem services.

But lately I am seeing economics less as a scam by greedy powerful to justify and optimize their exploitation of humans and nature (though I am still convinced that this brainwashing is the main function), but appreciate that in the strict sense, economics is just a way to make decisions. Even in an anarchist village, people do sorts of economics when taking decisions (just maybe a not based on €$¥, but more on "how much effort will it be for our community to build a new building with strawbales or with clay?"). And if we accept this role of economics, we see that it is necessary to integrate the value of biodiversity and nature into the equation, because if we don't, we lack the tools to take well-informed decisions.

Still, it feels like that we won't be very successful in improving things if we talk about the value of pollinating wild bees for the economy instead of burning down the headquarters of the banks that finance industrial agriculture (and some other offices come to my mind, but maybe lets start with the banks...).
The problem with all this bioeconomics stuff is that it is so deeply flawed. And it's an uphill battle, as we will be always behind the "real" economy's destruction of nature.

"If you are so sure that this tropical forest is of any good, show us the numbers", they said, while destroying the ecosystem forever for a palm oil plantation...

Probably the real solution would be to abandon our tecnocratic extractivist colonizer mindset and to embrace #IndigenousKnowledge.

* we really know little. We are getting better. E.g. in microbiology nowadays with molecular tools we can know *who* is there (mostly). But this leaves us with a large list of names and we don't have any idea about *what* they do. And latest when it comes to biological interactions in the real world, all we have left is to hold our hands and behold the impressive complexity and the miracles of life.

Thanks to
@blogdiva  , one of your posts made me write this down. 

[Edited typos]
#NaturalResourceEconomics #PluralisticEconomy #PluralEconomics #degrowth #Bioeconomy #DecisionMaking #Biidiversity #EcosystemServices #EcosystemService

The World's Richest Little Isle (1982)

Few islands in the South Pacific look less promising from the air. Instead of the usual verdant atoll -all palm trees and beaches - the island is more like a chunk of gray lunar landscape encircled by a thin ribbon of green along the shoreline. In the interior, a few sparse clumps of vegetation stand out amid stark rock pinnacles. Clearly, this is not an ordinary tropical paradise.

Yet this unprepossessing island - 26 miles south of the Equator, about midway between Hawaii and Australia and hundreds of miles from anywhere -is the envy of the South Pacific. For this is the Republic of Nauru - all eight and a half square miles of it. Nauru, with a per capita income surpassing that of any oil-rich Arab nation, is the smallest and wealthiest independent democracy in the world. ...

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/07/magazine/world-s-richest-little-isle.html

#Nauru #limits #NaturalResources #NaturalResourceEconomics #SouthPacific #LimitsToGrowth