Proposal for including what is valuable to ecosystems in environmental assessments

Assessment scientists and managers depend on social values to identify the goals that will be used to guide environmental assessments. These goals are commonly identified by examining the vested interests of the various socia l groups that are stakeholders in a region. However, knowledge about what p eople value represents only part of the information needed to identify comp rehensive assessment goals for environmental systems that include both econ omic and ecological components and processes. All parties also need to unde rstand what is valuable to ecosystems because that determines the ecologica l patterns and processes that prevail in the long run. The competition amon g alternate system designs for available energy determines the viability of the choices that people make for their environment. Ecosystems that prevai l in competition use the process of self-organization to create system desi gns that maximize the use of ever-changing sources of available energy. The efficacy of ecosystem designs can be evaluated using the maximum empower p rinciple, which states that ecosystems evolve toward designs that maximize empower (emergy use per unit time). Emergy is an accounting quantity that n ormalizes the different kinds of energy developed in a system so that they may be compared. The counter-intuitive and sometimes controversial results that come from emergy analyses are illustrated by examining three environme ntal problems on the interface between ecology and economics. A process for identifying and using social and ecosystem values to guide environmental a ssessments is proposed using a conceptual energy systems model that shows h ow these processes might interact within a region. The probability of reali zing a given change in system empower production is suggested as a decision criterion that can be used by managers to evaluate the efficacy of alterna tives.