Topic 2: Why is human well-being increasing as ecosystem services degrade?

I think the discussion of negative discount rates in 2.1 approaches an answer to this question.

The formulation in the chapter states (I think...) that, because we expect consumption to drop in the future for a particular resource, its relative value is actually higher in the future than it is now. It critiques the conventional use of discount rates because they fail to account for declining stock (or quantity) of goods - particularly renewable resources, which can be ridden into the ground rather easily.

The example which immediately came to mind was cod fisheries in New England. For centuries, the yield from the fisheries was more or less constant, and the price of cod either stayed constant or slightly declined. However, the stock itself was far from stable: advances in technology made it possible to find fish even when densities were very low.

So, the declining stock didn't affect consumption ("wellbeing") - until a tipping point was reached and the fishery collapsed, making cod prices sky-rocket. I would suggest that some of the increasing "wellbeing" in face of degrading ecosystem services is that we are living on borrowed time.

Proper "discounting" of services (keeping in mind what their future value will be if they become scarce, and the existence of natural "tipping points") offers a tool to address these situations, though it demands that we be very clever to actually correctly manage systems.

I completely agree to your point, Adam, about our living on borrowed time and that we should keep in mind the existing of the tipping points. I just wonder how we could actually manage this interplay of availability/exploitation - prices - technological advancement. It seems to me that it is "human" to exploit our surroundings (natural but also human resources). We seem not to be willing to pay proper prices for goods or services we are using, e.g. buying soccer balls that are made by children or neglecting fair trade products.

So I'm wondering how we could work towards this kind of "behavioral switch" in humans. Is it all about providing proper information and education?

Berit’s question of whether behavioral change can be spurred by simply providing information/education should be answered with an unequivocal “NO”.  While “educating” people about environmental problems, economically efficient pricing, and sustainability is certainly important, education alone will do NOTHING to actually make humans change their individual and collective behaviors on the timescales that we need to ensure sustainable development. The fields of psychology, decision sciences, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior have shown over and over again that human judgment and decision-making is far more influenced by socio-psychological and contextual factors than by the presence of information.  While these disciplines combined have produced thousands of studies proving these points, I highlight just a few examples below:

·         Heuristics and Biases: Max Bazerman’s book “Judgment in Managerial Decision Making” provides a FANTASIC overview of the “heuristics” (or mental shortcuts) that people use to make decisions and guide their behavior.  He reviews the literature about why human beings are NOT rational, even when given correct information.  Some of these heuristics include:

o   Availability: When making a judgment about the outcome and likelihood of an event (or risk), individuals will predict the outcome or likelihood based on their previous experiences.  Therefore, if an individual has a personal experience with the event in question, they are more likely to think that the event is common; if they have no personal experience with the event, they are less likely to think that it will occur.  This perception persists even when “truthful” information is given to the individuals.

o   Affect: If an individual has experienced a very vivid/emotionally-stimulating event, she is more likely to recall that event and base her judgments of future similar events on that vivid memory.  In the same vein, if an individual has a more violent emotional reaction when imagining one risk as opposed to another (even if she has never personally experienced it), she will view the emotionally-provoking hazard as being riskier (more likely to occur) than the less vivid hazard.  This explains why many individuals perceive flying to be riskier than driving in a car, even though far more people die each year in automobile accidents than in plane crashes.

o   Anchoring/Reference Point: When trying to estimate something, individuals are highly affected by the point that they begin their estimations at.  To illustrate, Tversky and Kahneman asked study participants what percentage of African Countries were in the United Nations.  They “primed” one set of participants by first asking them “Is it higher than 10%?” and then asking “What percentage do you think it is?”  When asked this way, most individuals estimated 25%.  However, when they asked other participants “Is it higher than 65%”, most individuals guessed 45%.  Numerous other studies have confirmed this phenomenon—namely that humans use contexts and cues to obtain an “anchoring point” and then make estimates based on that point.

Bazerman’s summary of heuristics and biases shows that even when individuals are given correct information, the context that the individual is in when she receives the information (anchoring/reference point), her own experiences (availability) and the vividness of the topic and information (affect) will affect how she behaves in response to the information.

·         Timing of Warnings and Personal Experiences:  Drawing on the idea of availability, Barron, Leider and Stack (2008) have shown that the impact of a warning will depend on when it is given, not simply on what the warning says.  They find that many individuals continue to engage in risky behaviors even after being adequately warned because they have incurred a good/safe outcome from the same behavior in the past  (for example, the FDA issued a warning about Vioxx only after it was on the market for 3 years; those that had NOT taken Vioxx before the warning were much more likely to avoid it, while those that HAD taken Vioxx before the warning but had not had problems did not mitigate their risky behavior) .

·         Personal Experience, Culture, and Long-Term versus Short-Term Decision-Making: Sustainable behavior is ultimately about shifting human judgment from a short-term to a long-term focus; however, some studies indicate that an individual’s engagement in long-term thinking is dependent upon their own prior experiences.  For example, Liu and Aaker (2007) find that young individuals that experience the death of a family member favor long-term interests over immediate interests.  Other research indicates that culture and age affect individuals’ decisions regarding intertemporal changes.

These are just a few of the factors that affect human behavior and decision making, but all of these operate irrespective of the accuracy of the information that is provided to the individual.  Therefore, correct information and education alone is NOT enough to change human behavior on the timescales that we need for sustainable development.

In my own personal opinion, I think that education may be crucial for long-term cultural change, but such transitions take generations; unfortunately for many of the sustainability problems that we discuss here, we need ways of influencing human behavior on much shorter timescales.

Previously Erin Frey wrote:

Berit’s question of whether behavioral change can be spurred by simply providing information/education should be answered with an unequivocal “NO”.  While “educating” people about environmental problems, economically efficient pricing, and sustainability is certainly important, education alone will do NOTHING to actually make humans change their individual and collective behaviors on the timescales that we need to ensure sustainable development. The fields of psychology, decision sciences, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior have shown over and over again that human judgment and decision-making is far more influenced by socio-psychological and contextual factors than by the presence of information.  While these disciplines combined have produced thousands of studies proving these points, I highlight just a few examples below:

·         Heuristics and Biases: Max Bazerman’s book “Judgment in Managerial Decision Making” provides a FANTASIC overview of the “heuristics” (or mental shortcuts) that people use to make decisions and guide their behavior.  He reviews the literature about why human beings are NOT rational, even when given correct information.  Some of these heuristics include:

o   Availability: When making a judgment about the outcome and likelihood of an event (or risk), individuals will predict the outcome or likelihood based on their previous experiences.  Therefore, if an individual has a personal experience with the event in question, they are more likely to think that the event is common; if they have no personal experience with the event, they are less likely to think that it will occur.  This perception persists even when “truthful” information is given to the individuals.

o   Affect: If an individual has experienced a very vivid/emotionally-stimulating event, she is more likely to recall that event and base her judgments of future similar events on that vivid memory.  In the same vein, if an individual has a more violent emotional reaction when imagining one risk as opposed to another (even if she has never personally experienced it), she will view the emotionally-provoking hazard as being riskier (more likely to occur) than the less vivid hazard.  This explains why many individuals perceive flying to be riskier than driving in a car, even though far more people die each year in automobile accidents than in plane crashes.

o   Anchoring/Reference Point: When trying to estimate something, individuals are highly affected by the point that they begin their estimations at.  To illustrate, Tversky and Kahneman asked study participants what percentage of African Countries were in the United Nations.  They “primed” one set of participants by first asking them “Is it higher than 10%?” and then asking “What percentage do you think it is?”  When asked this way, most individuals estimated 25%.  However, when they asked other participants “Is it higher than 65%”, most individuals guessed 45%.  Numerous other studies have confirmed this phenomenon—namely that humans use contexts and cues to obtain an “anchoring point” and then make estimates based on that point.

Bazerman’s summary of heuristics and biases shows that even when individuals are given correct information, the context that the individual is in when she receives the information (anchoring/reference point), her own experiences (availability) and the vividness of the topic and information (affect) will affect how she behaves in response to the information.

·         Timing of Warnings and Personal Experiences:  Drawing on the idea of availability, Barron, Leider and Stack (2008) have shown that the impact of a warning will depend on when it is given, not simply on what the warning says.  They find that many individuals continue to engage in risky behaviors even after being adequately warned because they have incurred a good/safe outcome from the same behavior in the past  (for example, the FDA issued a warning about Vioxx only after it was on the market for 3 years; those that had NOT taken Vioxx before the warning were much more likely to avoid it, while those that HAD taken Vioxx before the warning but had not had problems did not mitigate their risky behavior) .

·         Personal Experience, Culture, and Long-Term versus Short-Term Decision-Making: Sustainable behavior is ultimately about shifting human judgment from a short-term to a long-term focus; however, some studies indicate that an individual’s engagement in long-term thinking is dependent upon their own prior experiences.  For example, Liu and Aaker (2007) find that young individuals that experience the death of a family member favor long-term interests over immediate interests.  Other research indicates that culture and age affect individuals’ decisions regarding intertemporal changes.

These are just a few of the factors that affect human behavior and decision making, but all of these operate irrespective of the accuracy of the information that is provided to the individual.  Therefore, correct information and education alone is NOT enough to change human behavior on the timescales that we need for sustainable development.

In my own personal opinion, I think that education may be crucial for long-term cultural change, but such transitions take generations; unfortunately for many of the sustainability problems that we discuss here, we need ways of influencing human behavior on much shorter timescales.

 

A policy (sensu Stavins) solution used in fishing is to simply limit technology. Paternalistic, but it by necessity limits yields (or at least keeps yields as a constant proportion of stock) - making sure that current use patterns reflect actual abundance rather than abundance that we can get our hands on.

While the same routes can be used to avoid crossing "tipping points", that of course requires extrapolation and good understanding of the system - which we rarely have. Meep.

Previously Berit Ullrich wrote:

I completely agree to your point, Adam, about our living on borrowed time and that we should keep in mind the existing of the tipping points. I just wonder how we could actually manage this interplay of availability/exploitation - prices - technological advancement. It seems to me that it is "human" to exploit our surroundings (natural but also human resources). We seem not to be willing to pay proper prices for goods or services we are using, e.g. buying soccer balls that are made by children or neglecting fair trade products.

So I'm wondering how we could work towards this kind of "behavioral switch" in humans. Is it all about providing proper information and education?

 

Actually, limiting technology (without other control measures) does NOT lead to sustainable fisheries--and there is some speculation that it could actually lead to faster exploitation.  This is because effort of catch (how many days fishermen go out, how long they fish for) is just as important in determining total catch as technology is.  Therefore any attempt to limit technology will NOT result in more sustainable fisheries due to the resulting increase in effort that will result.

quota system is much more difficult than economists wish to believe.

Fisheries scientists tend to advocate for MPAs (Marine Protected Areas) which are essentially "no take zones", where fishing is entirely banned.  However, these are problematic as well, since fish are mobile and therefore may not remain in the MPA.

Erin does a great job highlighting characteristics of human judgment and decision-making phenomena that drive our inability to make smart long-term decisions. 

Because of these phenomena, I want to address Adam’s suggestion of “paternalistic” policy-making, and suggest that there are some instances where this can help us to overcome our individual self-control (and procrastination, and…) tendencies.  In fact, I wonder if anyone has ideas about how we can re-brand “paternalistic” policy-making to make it more palatable to the broader public (maybe it is just a matter of trusting experts to design policy in our best interest?  Someone call me out or help me on this..).

In any case, there is some empirical literature on “commitment devices” of which I am aware.  The paper I’ve read, "Household Decision Making and Savings Impacts" by Ashraf, Karlan, and Yin (2006), offered a commitment savings device to individuals in the Philippines, and had a 28% take-up rate.  Of those who choose to take up the program, they showed that the individuals had greater individual discounting rates, yet ended up with higher savings rates overall.  Those this example is about individual decision-making, I am interested in ways that we as a society choose to “commit” ourselves to protecting the future through reduced consumption now.  The study above (and dozens of others), suggest that individuals are willing to accept, and sometimes prefer, commit devices to ensure they will have a resource (e.g., money) in the future.  I don’t know much about how this works in a societal setting, where individuals are accepting policies that affect many people, but it is certainly harder – yet perhaps more important for us to do.   My belief is that policy-makers should be ethical but take an active role in planning for our futures, because we cannot do it ourselves

Also, while I agree with you (Erin) that education alone doesn’t do much, providing individuals with information about their peers can – even in an environmental setting.   As one example, a graduate of our program (and, as full disclosure, a good friend of mine) wrote an interesting paper on social norms and energy conservation (see http://web.mit.edu/allcott/www/papers.html and scroll down) which showed that, on average, individuals who were provided with information about their own energy consumption and that of their neighbors reduced energy consumption by 2.3-2.4%.  This paper gives me hope that not all cultural changes take decades..

Previously Adam Clark wrote:

A policy (sensu Stavins) solution used in fishing is to simply limit technology. Paternalistic, but it by necessity limits yields (or at least keeps yields as a constant proportion of stock) - making sure that current use patterns reflect actual abundance rather than abundance that we can get our hands on.

 

While the same routes can be used to avoid crossing "tipping points", that of course requires extrapolation and good understanding of the system - which we rarely have. Meep.

 

Previously Berit Ullrich wrote:

I completely agree to your point, Adam, about our living on borrowed time and that we should keep in mind the existing of the tipping points. I just wonder how we could actually manage this interplay of availability/exploitation - prices - technological advancement. It seems to me that it is "human" to exploit our surroundings (natural but also human resources). We seem not to be willing to pay proper prices for goods or services we are using, e.g. buying soccer balls that are made by children or neglecting fair trade products.

So I'm wondering how we could work towards this kind of "behavioral switch" in humans. Is it all about providing proper information and education?

 

 

To Adam: I'm not sure discounting does answer this question - but it is answered, I think, from Dasgupta's replacement of "GDP" with "wealth". 

It's true that if a resource declines, its relative value could be greater in the future than now, but this won't necessarily mean a negative discount rate. 

For a negative discount rate, we need ALL wealth to be lower in the future. The discount rate comes (in part) from an expectation that people in the future will be richer than we are, so $1 will bring them less extra welfare than it brings us. If actually they turn out to be poorer, not just in one resource but all things considered, then an extra unit of wealth makes more difference to their well-being than ours, and we get a negative discount rate.

i.e. discount rate = p +ng, where p=pure time preference, n=elasticity of marginal utility (how much welfare changes with income), and g=growth, and to get a negative discount rate we need negative g.

But I agree with your basic point about wellbeing increasing only because we are eating the future! In your cod example, if people knew about the imminent collapse then their "inclusive wealth", incorporating the present value of the discounted flow of future cod, would have been falling steadily as they approached the expected point of collapse.

I love how such a simple switch can change the analysis - and agree that "inclusive" is probably not just redundant, but potentially damaging, as it makes economists think we are talking about some hippy tree-hugging new concept, rather than just properly defining a standard variable.

To Elizabeth: this is such a great topic! Sunstein and Thaler released a paper on this in 2003, called "Is Libertarian Paternalism an oxymoron?", and apart from a ripple through thinktanks and academica it didn't break through that much.

http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/conf/conf48/papers/thaler.pdf

Then they relabelled it "nudge", did a populist book, and were written about around the world..

http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0300122233

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jul/12/economy.conservatives

A lesson to us all...

Previously Adam Clark wrote:

I think the discussion of negative discount rates in 2.1 approaches an answer to this question.

 

The formulation in the chapter states (I think...) that, because we expect consumption to drop in the future for a particular resource, its relative value is actually higher in the future than it is now. It critiques the conventional use of discount rates because they fail to account for declining stock (or quantity) of goods - particularly renewable resources, which can be ridden into the ground rather easily.

 

The example which immediately came to mind was cod fisheries in New England. For centuries, the yield from the fisheries was more or less constant, and the price of cod either stayed constant or slightly declined. However, the stock itself was far from stable: advances in technology made it possible to find fish even when densities were very low.

 

So, the declining stock didn't affect consumption ("wellbeing") - until a tipping point was reached and the fishery collapsed, making cod prices sky-rocket. I would suggest that some of the increasing "wellbeing" in face of degrading ecosystem services is that we are living on borrowed time.

 

Proper "discounting" of services (keeping in mind what their future value will be if they become scarce, and the existence of natural "tipping points") offers a tool to address these situations, though it demands that we be very clever to actually correctly manage systems.

In response to Liz:

Thank you very much for the link to the energy efficiency papers--very interesting!--and for your points about providing information.  They really got me thinking about my previous statements, and the role that information can play in behavioral change.

. 

When thinking about the energy efficiency work, I was struck by how similar the behavioral mechanism was to the behavioral mechanisms that influence "happiness" (and well-being?).  Let me explain: in Hunt's energy efficiency study provided individuals with information about their own energy consumption and their neighbors' energy consumption, thereby allowing individuals to compare themselves to their peers.  In a very similar vein, "happiness" studies have found that individuals in OECD countries evaluate their happiness/satisfaction by comparing their consumption/wealth/status to the consumption/wealth/status of their peers.

The energy efficiency work indicates that this type of comparative information actually leads to behavioral change (a reduction in energy consumption).  One could argue that the access to comparative information about consumption/wealth/status also causes behavioral change (a change--usually a decline--in personal satisfaction).

I am incredibly fascinated with human judgment and decision-making and behavioral change, so if anyone has expertise, thoughts or suggestions about this topic, I would love to hear it!

One could argue that any assertion that 'human well-being is increasing while ecosystem services are being degraded' is discounting the equity issue. Human well-being is, as Dasgupta acknowledges, a difficult thing to measure. By many metrics, much of the world is better off than it has been in the past, and even the poorest in most of the world are in a better place - that is, the rising tide has lifted all boats (albeit some boats much higher and more rapidly than others). However, this does not necessarily hold for those at the furthest margins of society, particularly if we use metrics other than the purely economic. 

Indigenous communities in the circumpolar regions that are watching the caribou and reindeer populations they depend upon dwindle in the face of development and climate change are likely to receive compensation. Their lives will go on and they may, in fact, be economically better off with subsidies than they are with a partially-subsistance way of life based on hunting. However, one must ask if their quality of life (their 'human well-being') will increase. Again, this is difficult to quantitatively assess, but many within these communities are certainly arguing that they will not. The same could be said of Tibetan nomads being (re)settled in the face of desertification and the threatened headwaters of China's major rivers. Sure, the government is providing housing, but is the loss of livelihood and cycle of dependency engendered really an improvement in human well-being for them?

I appreciate the application of the concave G to privilege equity in Dasgupta's calculations of social well-being. Aside from the political challenges of bringing these accounting methods into any sort of position of real standing among analysts and decision-makers, I do wonder if they would still fail to capture the most marginalized fraction. That is to ask: Wouldn't the most marginalized classes be lost in the noise of any equation that attempts to understand social well-being across a large population?

One could ask why we would want to focus on these most marginalized groups as evidence that human well-being is not increasing while ecosystem services are being degraded. They are admittedly outliers in humanity's positive progression. Aside from the fact that their states of oppression and related predicaments should not be ignored on moral grounds, regardless of their relative sizes, these groups could be considered 'canaries in the mine shafts' of our broader civilization. As is the case with the two examples above, these are typically communities that are much more directly dependent on ecosystem services for their survival than the rest of us. They do not have the same ability to substitute technology or imports for the loss of their local ecosystems, and are often in already harsh environments. The failure of the ecosystems they depend upon and related impacts on their well-being may be harbingers of what we can all expect in the future. The wealthier the given society (or individual/group), the longer the impacts can be staved off via substitution - but can we keep running as we degrade one resource after another?

To your important discussion around effective communications as a path to behavior change, Elizabeth and Erin: 

I personally think that we could all use a healthy dose of reality-check around the ineffectiveness of most 'education' campaigns. A past job of mine involved evaluating grant proposals from environmental NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe, then monitoring project implementation. I was always unpleasantly surprised to see that the majority of applicants would base their campaigns on preparing nice publications and summary pamphlets, then tabling and going door-to-door and/or meeting-to-meeting in their respective communities to get the word out with the unfounded belief that people would see the information and suddenly change. 

I found the work of an environmental psychologist named Doug McKenzie-Mohr that does 'community based social marketing' (www.cbsm.com) and would share it with grantees. I think he makes a compelling case for some of the ways in which information can be packaged to compel genuine and sustained action. His site is a treasure trove of case studies and articles from different places and fields. I had sort of forgotten about it and wasn't sure how much currency this framework has in academia. I coincidentally ran into a friend the other day that is doing energy efficiency research at MIT and got talking about this and it turns out that the framework her lab is applying is very much based on this, so I guess some people are using it. 

I realize this conversation is digressing slightly from the original topic, but I also have another idea for you, Erin. 

Have you read much of Eleanor Ostrom's work?  Tara sent me this paper the other day which I think starts to get at your question about the salience of some information:

A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action: Presidential Address

(Ostrom, 1997) (it looks like it's the first thing that comes up when you google the title)

Reflecting on this paper, I wonder if trust, reputation, and reciprocity (which Ostrom identifies as core attributes of relationships that sustain cooperation) drive which information we believe.  In other words, I would argue that we accept information from those we trust, who have a reputation of providing trust-worthy information, and who we believe will reciprocate in coordination games. 

I also wonder if it has to do with the homogeneity we believe exists among our neighbors.  Ostrom discusses how we are most likely to coordinate in situations where all the players are homogeneous (e.g., if we are all local fisherman with the same size boat, same technologies, etc.)  When that breaks down (e.g., one man's boat is bigger than everyone elses), it is must harder to sustain cooperation.  Likewise, whether or not it is true, we probably believe that our neighbors have similar energy needs to us, and are thus more likely to react to information we hear about them.

In any case, the paper has some good ideas...

Previously Erin Frey wrote:

 

In response to Liz:

 

Thank you very much for the link to the energy efficiency papers--very interesting!--and for your points about providing information.  They really got me thinking about my previous statements, and the role that information can play in behavioral change.

 

I now agree that information may be influential if its content, audience, and mode of transmission are appropriate to the context it is applied to, and if it is aligned with actual human judgment and decision-making approaches

. 

 

When thinking about the energy efficiency work, I was struck by how similar the behavioral mechanism was to the behavioral mechanisms that influence "happiness" (and well-being?).  Let me explain: in Hunt's energy efficiency study provided individuals with information about their own energy consumption and their neighbors' energy consumption, thereby allowing individuals to compare themselves to their peers.  In a very similar vein, "happiness" studies have found that individuals in OECD countries evaluate their happiness/satisfaction by comparing their consumption/wealth/status to the consumption/wealth/status of their peers.

 

The energy efficiency work indicates that this type of comparative information actually leads to behavioral change (a reduction in energy consumption).  One could argue that the access to comparative information about consumption/wealth/status also causes behavioral change (a change--usually a decline--in personal satisfaction).

 

So the questions that interest (no, greatly excite!) me are these: can we provide individuals with selective comparative information that will actually get them to engage in "more sustainable" (long-term) behaviors?  What type of comparative information would be most effective?  And given that we are constantly inundated with "comparative information" everyday (what we see our peers buying, eating, wearing, listening to, investing in, talking about, earning, getting reprimanded for, etc), what makes some comparative information actually stand out to individuals?  I suspect that 99.99999% of the information (sensory and other) that we encounter every day makes no lasting impact on our memory or conscious analytical process--so what are the factors that give some information more weight than others?

 

 

I am incredibly fascinated with human judgment and decision-making and behavioral change, so if anyone has expertise, thoughts or suggestions about this topic, I would love to hear it!

 

 

 

 

This is a very interesting thread.  I think questions of discounting, equity and quality of life are all very important to the discussion and thanks to the people who brought them up.  I only have a comment on a much more basic issue: that of mis-specification and measurement error.  Sustainability with respect to dwindling resources as well as the idea that we need to incorporate changes in the environment in our daily lives are reasonably new concepts in the history of mankind.  Consequently the indicators that we generally use to measure advancement or well-being (to an approximation) may not accurately reflect changes in natural resources. For example think of economic indicators like per capita income, GDP, infant mortality, female infanticide, household saving.  They are very useful in understanding resource allocation  and access to resources (in terms of capital but NOT natural capital) but they don't tell us the implications of a high GDP or higher birth rates in terms of deforestation  or water pollution, for example.  What goes into GDP are sectoral outputs and sectoral outputs may not reflect market imperfections of intermediate goods. If we were to incorporate the costs of economic development in terms of environmental losses in our measurements of GDP, it is possible that the overall positive effect of development (in terms of high technological progress and growth in manufacturing) might be reduced.

Todd Schenk wrote:

One could argue that any assertion that 'human well-being is increasing while ecosystem services are being degraded' is discounting the equity issue. Human well-being is, as Dasgupta acknowledges, a difficult thing to measure. By many metrics, much of the world is better off than it has been in the past, and even the poorest in most of the world are in a better place - that is, the rising tide has lifted all boats (albeit some boats much higher and more rapidly than others). However, this does not necessarily hold for those at the furthest margins of society, particularly if we use metrics other than the purely economic. 

Indigenous communities in the circumpolar regions that are watching the caribou and reindeer populations they depend upon dwindle in the face of development and climate change are likely to receive compensation. Their lives will go on and they may, in fact, be economically better off with subsidies than they are with a partially-subsistance way of life based on hunting. However, one must ask if their quality of life (their 'human well-being') will increase. Again, this is difficult to quantitatively assess, but many within these communities are certainly arguing that they will not. The same could be said of Tibetan nomads being (re)settled in the face of desertification and the threatened headwaters of China's major rivers. Sure, the government is providing housing, but is the loss of livelihood and cycle of dependency engendered really an improvement in human well-being for them?

I appreciate the application of the concave G to privilege equity in Dasgupta's calculations of social well-being. Aside from the political challenges of bringing these accounting methods into any sort of position of real standing among analysts and decision-makers, I do wonder if they would still fail to capture the most marginalized fraction. That is to ask: Wouldn't the most marginalized classes be lost in the noise of any equation that attempts to understand social well-being across a large population?

One could ask why we would want to focus on these most marginalized groups as evidence that human well-being is not increasing while ecosystem services are being degraded. They are admittedly outliers in humanity's positive progression. Aside from the fact that their states of oppression and related predicaments should not be ignored on moral grounds, regardless of their relative sizes, these groups could be considered 'canaries in the mine shafts' of our broader civilization. As is the case with the two examples above, these are typically communities that are much more directly dependent on ecosystem services for their survival than the rest of us. They do not have the same ability to substitute technology or imports for the loss of their local ecosystems, and are often in already harsh environments. The failure of the ecosystems they depend upon and related impacts on their well-being may be harbingers of what we can all expect in the future. The wealthier the given society (or individual/group), the longer the impacts can be staved off via substitution - but can we keep running as we degrade one resource after another?

Some comments from Univ of Minnesota discussion:

Can we see our growth in population and in well-being in the context of an ecological population growth model where due to time lags there can be an overshoot carrying capacity eventually followed by collapse?  This falls into the fourth of Raudsepp-Hearne et al’s four factors—time lags between depletion of natural capital stocks and decrease in human well-being.  This brings to mind the image of Wily Coyote in Road Runner cartoons, where he runs over the canyon rim but then hangs in midair for a few seconds before his predicament dawns on him and he falls.  Could we be hanging in the air already?  Could the midair hang last for a few generations?

Time lags certainly seem to be a factor, but they could be more prevalent (and longer) in some realms than in others.  For example, climate change has a particularly problematic time lag.  Also, time lags can be buffered by other things, like technological innovation (e.g. water quality treatment plans to preserve drinking water and improved fishing technology to continue to provide resources while the natural capital stock is being depleted).

Another of Randsepp-Heane et al’s factors to explain this was that as long as people have the most important services (i.e., food) then well being can continue to improve even as other services decline.  Perhaps for more closed systems, such as societies that are on islands and that cannot use/exploit services from other parts of the world (e.g., Cuba or Haiti), there are more direct impacts between declining natural capital base/ecosystem services and declining human well-being.  However, in more developed countries, human well-being can be supported by extraction of resources and services from the rest of the world.  Even though Cuba is (currently) not being exploited by the rest of the world, human well-being there is low and declining.

This gives rise to the issue of environmental justice: overall well-being may be increasing but some (particularly subsistence-based) human populations are seeing huge problems from degrading natural capital.  These societies tend to have much less mobility, especially if they seek to maintain their cultural identity.  An example is an indigenous tribe in Alaska that is suffering high cancer rates from PCBs in whales.  While overall well-being may be increasing, there has been a concomitant increase in inequality (the rich getting richer while the poor are getting poorer; increasing GINI coefficient/curvature of the GINI graph).

Taking this a step further, we can see that many populations whose well-being is not increasing across the planet have been “selected out”.  These are the populations that have less access to technology and do not choose (but, is it usually a choice?) to give up their cultural identity by leaving their land and/or assimilating into the dominant culture.  This touches upon Raudsepp-Hearne et al’s third factor: technology and social innovation.  More developed societies have sufficient technology (so far) to put buffers around the most essential contributors to human-well being.  Those of us in a technologically advanced society no longer have to deal with the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  The environmental side effects of technological innovation can often be exported to other places.