Environmental Valuation Study

News today of a new 2-year study by Conservation Services and the UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee designed 'To place a monetary value on prioritised services provided by Bermuda’s natural resources, and use these to improve policy and decision-making.'

I wonder if giving the environment an economic value has proven in other localities to have an impact on the social and political value people actually ascribe to it—particularly those in positions of power to determine policy that is protective, restorative, or alternatively destructive? Does money really talk?

I also wonder the degree to which the cultural resources in Bermuda's environment will receive attention in this study? Or, will it be like the (seemingly catatonic) Sustainable Development Plan and so much other local policy and programming, wherein the natural and the cultural environments tend to be separated in the classroom, with the latter continually relegated to the corner? It's really a shame if that becomes the case with this new study because there's a lot of 'value', economic or otherwise, under that dunce cap.