Clive Spash
Clive Spash | |
---|---|
University of Sterling European Society for Ecological Economics | |
Thesis | Intergenerational Transfers and Long-Term Environmental Damages: Compensation of Future Generations for Global Climate Change due to the Greenhouse Effect (1993) |
Website | www |
Clive L. Spash is an
Career
Spash studied
Part of a series on |
Ecological economics |
---|
![]() |
Spash was elected vice-president of the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE) by the delegates at the inaugural meeting of the society held at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France in 1996. He was elected to a second term by ESEE members at the Society General Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in 1998. He then served two terms as ESEE President, 2000–2006, elected by postal ballot of the membership. During this time he helped write new democratic constitutions for both the ESEE and ISEE, established the ESEE Newsletter with Ben Davies as editor, set-up the societies committee structure and organised European conferences.[4]
From 1996 until 2001 he was a lecturer at the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge and director of the research institute Cambridge Research for the Environment (CRE). He then moved to the University of Aberdeen where he held the Research Chair in Environmental and Rural Economics and was Head of the Socio-Economic Research Programme (SERP) at the Macaulay Institute of Land Use Research.
In 2006 Spash was appointed as Chief Executive Officers’ Science Leader at the CSIRO, Australia's federal government agency responsible for scientific research. After finishing a critical paper about emissions trading - which had already passed the peer review process - the agency intervened and pushed for substantial changes.[5] The behaviour of CSIRO led to controversial debates within the scientific community and Nature reported extensively on the conflict.[6][7] In the course of the controversy, Spash left the agency at the end of 2009.[8]
Key Scientific Contributions
Spash was one of the earliest economists to pay attention to human induced climate change, pioneering an alternative economics of the environment. He followed some aspects of the work of his doctoral supervisor, Ralph C. d’Arge, in exploring its economic and ethical implications with respect to intergenerational equity and justice.[9][10] He built from this into issues of compensation for harm across generations and ethical limitations of the economic approach.[11][12] Such topics appeared in his book Greenhouse Economics,[13] which covers the history, science, economics, ethics and public policy relating to climate change. That work was also path-breaking in its highly critical reflections on mainstream economic approaches that use social cost-benefit analysis and of the work of William Nordhaus.[14][15][16][17] In 2018 Nordhaus received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, or the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel for this same work, which has since been strongly criticised by others .[18]
Spash’s work has developed in devoting attention to the social economic consequences of a broad range of environmental problems (e.g. acidic deposition, tropospheric or
Critiques of Mainstream Economics
Spash has developed extensive critiques of mainstream economic approaches to the environment. These cover its limited ethical foundations,[19][20] its failure to address manifest problems with its own methods,[21] problems with preference theory,[22][23][24][25][26] the social problems of advocating economic growth in macroeconomics,[27][28][29] the failings of consumer choice theory,[30][31] and mainstream economists' general lack of realism [32] .[33]
Environmental Values
Spash has worked extensively on
Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis, Contingent and Deliberative Valuation
Spash’s work in the area of environmental cost-benefit analysis (e.g. Hanley and Spash[38]) developed into the exploration of social psychology and motivations for environmental values.[39] He employed contingent valuation to conduct empirical research in innovative ways that included ethical motives as well as attitudes and norms.[40][41][42][43][44] At the same time his work revealed fundamental failures of contingent valuation research [45] and its employment for public policy by environmental economists.[46] He moved into exploring the possibilities for alternative deliberative approaches,[47][48] their combination with monetary valuation,[49][50] and the implications of deliberation for economic value theory.[51] Spash cited the term deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) to summarise a set of approaches being employed to combine individualistic
Climate Economics
His climate economics involves realist and ethical critiques of mainstream economics and has targeted the work of David Pearce (economist), William Nordhaus, Richard Tol and others.[59][60] He has deconstructed the work of Lord David Stern in both his Stern Review[61] [62] and under the New Climate Economy collective.[63] His critiques of the economics of climate change include its intergenerational ethics,[64][65] its approach to uncertain futures involving ignorance and indeterminacy,[66] and social cost-benefit approaches to decision-making [67] .[68][69] He has also criticized the mainstream economic approach to policy encapsulated under carbon emission trading, also known as cap-and-trade.[70] His work in this area was censored by the government in Australia but finally released after a Senate vote defeated the government.[71] Carbon trading is seen by Spash as failing both in theory and practice and in compulsory as well as voluntary forms.[72][73][74] He has argued the Paris Agreement is a failure to address reality and not a great success on which to build.[75][76] Spash has concluded in favour of rights-based approaches and regulation rather than utilitarianism and carbon trading.[77][78]
Biodiversity Economics
Spash also linked issues in valuation to ethical positions and refusals to trade-off species and ecosystem loss, and contrasted rights-based ethics with utilitarianism in conservation.[79][80] He was one of the first economists to work on biodiversity valuation in economics.[81] His work here developed approaches to empirically investigate ethically motivated refusals to trade-off species and ecosystems for money as expressed by the occurrence of lexicographic preferences[82][83][84] .[85] This work on biodiversity economics also led to criticism of preference utilitarianism [86] and the spread of mainstream economics into ecology and conservation biology.[87][88] In the early 1990s Spash designed a survey conducted in Scotland on forestry to explore the valuation of biodiversity and the occurrence of protesting and refusals to make the trade-offs that economists had previously assumed were rational.[89] He developed this further in studies of wetland re-creation in East Anglia[90] and coral reef improvement in Curaçao.[91] Willingness-to-pay responses from contingent valuation were found to be charitable contributions for many respondents, and not trade prices as economists assumed.[92] The work expanded into attitudinal and social norm research using measures from social psychology and questioning various claims made about the results from contingent valuation.[93] Related work questioned prominent environmental attitudinal scales used by social psychologists [94] and aspects of work by Daniel Kahneman on valuation.[95] When "Biodiversity Economics: The Dasgupta Review" appeared in 2021, advocating natural capital, Spash produced critical deconstructions of the report.[96][97]
Social Ecological Economics
Spash’s research in the 2000s became directed towards the development of a paradigm shift to a social ecological economics.[98][99][100] He highlighted the need for ecological economics to have firm foundations in philosophy of science and to link ontology to epistemology rather than follow an eclectic pluralism in economics.[101] His key conclusions here support the need for integration of social, ecological and economic knowledge,[102] and combining heterodox schools of thought in a structured methodological pluralism.[103][104] This is seen as a way forward that emphasises “the structural aspects of economies as emergent from and dependent upon the structure and functioning of both society and ecology“.[105] This conceptualisation rejects reductionist approaches and builds on interdisciplinarity (over mono- or multi-disciplinarity), while incorporating value incommensurability and value pluralism.[106] His research recommends the philosophy of science of critical realism.[107] Spash’s research has highlighted problems arising from the conceptualisation of ecological economics as a simple combination of two disciplines (i.e. ecology and economics) that otherwise remain divorced from each other and unreformed by their interaction.[108] He has developed this critique into an exploration of the divisions within ecological economics, and more generally the environmental movement, by defining three categories: social ecological economists, new environmental pragmatists and new resource economists.[109][110][111][112] His work includes some empirical evidence on these categories.[113] Moving beyond a simple division within the field, the social ecological economics category has become advocated as a new paradigm.[114] Spash sees social ecological economics as the way forward for the field of economics in general.[115][116]
Publications (inter alia)
- Clive L. Spash (ed.) (2017). Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
- Clive L. Spash and Karin Dobernig (2017). Theories of (Un)sustainable Consumption. In Spash, Clive L. (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society (pp. 203–213). Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
- Clive L. Spash and Clemens Gattringer (2017). The Ethical Failures of Climate Economics. In Adrian Walsh, Sade Hormio and Duncan Purves (eds.) The Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics (pp. 162–182). Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
- Clive L. Spash (2016). This changes nothing: The Paris Agreement to ignore reality. Globalizations 13 no.6: 928–933.
- Clive L. Spash (2010). The Brave New World of Carbon Trading. New Political Economy, 15, no. 2: 169–195.
- Clive L. Spash (2010) Censoring science in research officially. Environmental Values 19 no. 2: 141–146.
- Clive L. Spash (2002). Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics. London: Routledge.
- Martin O’Connor and Clive L. Spash (1999). Valuation and the Environment: Theory, Methods and Practice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
- Clive L. Spash (1995). The political economy of nature. Review of Political Economy, 7 no .3: 279–293.
- Clive L. Spash and Ian A. Simpson (1994). Utilitarian and rights-based alternatives for protecting sites of special scientific interest. Journal of Agricultural Economics. 45 no.1: 15-26
References
- ^ "SPASH Clive, PhD". WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business). Retrieved 2018-06-17.
- ^ "Environmental Values".
- ^ "Curriculum Vitae". Clive L. Spash. 2015-04-26. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
- ^ "Curriculum Vitae". Clive L. Spash. 2015-04-26. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
- ^ CORRESPONDENT, Dan Harrison EDUCATION (2009-12-03). "Scientist quits CSIRO amid censorship claims". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2018-06-13.
- ISSN 1744-7933.
- ISSN 1744-7933.
- ISSN 1744-7933.
- .
- JSTOR 1243998
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L. (1993a). Intergenerational Transfers and Long Term Environmental Damages: Compensation of Future Generations for Global Climate Change due to the Greenhouse Effect (PhD). University of Wyoming Department of Economics.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002a). Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics. London: Routledge.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002b), "Loading the dice?: Values, opinions and ethics", Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics, London: Routledge, pp. 184–200
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002b), "Calculating the Costs and Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Control", Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics, London: Routledge, pp. 184–200
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2007d). "Understanding climate change: Need for new economic thought". Economic and Political Weekly (February): 483–490.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2008d). "The economics of avoiding action on climate change". Adbusters. 16 (1).
- S2CID 225300874.
- .
- .
- S2CID 55602400.
- ^ Spash, C. L.; et al. (1998), "Investigating individual motives for environmental action: Lexicographic preferences, beliefs and attitudes", in Lemons, J. (ed.), Ecological Sustainability and Integrity: Concepts and Approaches, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 46–62
- .
- .
- S2CID 154274732.
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Schandl (2009), "Growth, the Environment and Keynes: Reflections on Two Heterodox Schools of Thought", Socio-Economics and Environment in Discussion (SEED) Working Papers, Canberra, Australia: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
- S2CID 225108741.
- S2CID 219514490.
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Dobernig, K. (2017), "Theories of (Un)sustainable Consumption", in Spash, C. L. (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 203–213
- ^ Fellner, W.; Spash, C. L. (2015), "The Role of Consumer Sovereignty in Sustaining the Market Economy", in Reisch, L. A.; Thørgersen, J. (eds.), Handbook of Research on Sustainable Consumption, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 394–409
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Smith, T. (2019). "Of ecosystems and economies: Re-connecting economics with reality" (PDF). Real-World Economics Review. 87 (March): 212–229.
- .
- .
- ^ Hanley, N.; Spash, C. L. (1993). Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment. Aldershot, England: Edward Elgar.
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002a). Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics. London: Routledge.
- ^ Hanley, N.; Spash, C. L. (1993). Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Environment. Aldershot, England: Edward Elgar.
- .
- .
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002c), "Empirical signs of ethical concern in economic valuation of the environment", in Bromley, D. W.; Paavola, J. (eds.), Economics, Ethics, and Environmental Policy: Contested Choices, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., pp. 205–221
- S2CID 143242299.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2008e), "Contingent Valuation as a Research Method: Environmental Values and Human Behaviour", in Lewis, A. (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 429–453
- .
- S2CID 55602400.
- S2CID 59481159.
- S2CID 154405193.
- .
- S2CID 62821872.
- S2CID 59493446.
- .
- S2CID 59493446.
- ^ Lo, A. Y.; Spash, C. L. (2011). Articulation of Plural Values in Deliberative Monetary Valuation: Beyond Preference Economisation and Moralisation.
- ^ Lo, A. Y.; Spash, C. L. (2011). Articulation of Plural Values in Deliberative Monetary Valuation: Beyond Preference Economisation and Moralisation.
- .
- ^ O'Hara, S. U. (2011), "The challenges of valuation: Ecological economics between matter and meaning", in Cleveland, C. J.; Stern, D. I.; R., Costanza (eds.), The Economics of Nature and the Nature of Economics, Cheltenham and Northhampton: Edward Elgar, pp. 89–110
- ^ Lo, A. Y.; Spash, C. L. (2011). Articulation of Plural Values in Deliberative Monetary Valuation: Beyond Preference Economisation and Moralisation.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002a). Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics. London: Routledge.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2008d). "The economics of avoiding action on climate change". Adbusters. 16 (1).
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2007c). "The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review". Environmental Values. 16 (4): 532–535.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2014), "Better Growth, Helping the Paris COP-out?: Fallacies and Omissions of the New Climate Economy Report", Sre-Disc, Vienna: Institute for Environment and Regional Development
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Gattringer, C.; et al. (2017), "The Ethical Failures of Climate Economics", in Walsh, A. (ed.), The Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics, London: Routledge, pp. 162–182
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002a). Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics. London: Routledge.
- S2CID 156897101.
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2007d). "Understanding climate change: Need for new economic thought". Economic and Political Weekly (February): 483–490.
- S2CID 44071002.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2014b), "The Politics of Researching Carbon Trading in Australia", in Stephan, B.; Lane, R. (eds.), The Politics of Carbon Markets, London: Routledge, pp. 191–211
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Theine, H. (2018), "Voluntary Individual Carbon Trading: Friend or Foe?", in Lewis, A. (ed.), Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 595–624
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2011), "Carbon trading: a critique", in Dryzek, J. S. (ed.), The Oxford Handboook of Climate Change and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 550–560
- S2CID 44071002.
- S2CID 155911405.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2016b). "The political economy of the Paris Agreement on human induced climate change: A brief guide" (PDF). Real World Economics Review. 75 (June): 67–75.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2002a). Greenhouse Economics: Value and Ethics. London: Routledge.
- S2CID 44071002.
- S2CID 153645356.
- .
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L.; van der Werff ten Bosch, J.; Westmacott, S.; Ruitenbeek, J.; et al. (2000), "Lexicographic preferences and the contingent valuation of coral reef biodiversity in Curaçao and Jamaica", in Gustavson, K. (ed.), Integrated Coastal Zone Management of Coral Reefs: Decision Support Modeling, Washington, D.C.: World Bank, pp. 97–118
- ^ Spash, C. L.; et al. (1998), "Investigating individual motives for environmental action: Lexicographic preferences, beliefs and attitudes", in Lemons, J. (ed.), Ecological Sustainability and Integrity: Concepts and Approaches, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 46–62
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2000b), "Assessing the benefits of improving coral reef biodiversity: The contingent valuation method", in Cesar, H. S. J. (ed.), Collected Essays on the Economics of Coral Reefs, Kalmar, Sweden, pp. 40–54
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - S2CID 154274732.
- S2CID 3584039.
- S2CID 236360919.
- .
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L.; van der Werff ten Bosch, J.; Westmacott, S.; Ruitenbeek, J.; et al. (2000), "Lexicographic preferences and the contingent valuation of coral reef biodiversity in Curaçao and Jamaica", in Gustavson, K. (ed.), Integrated Coastal Zone Management of Coral Reefs: Decision Support Modeling, Washington, D.C.: World Bank, pp. 97–118
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Urama, K. C.; Burton, R.; Kenyon, W.; Shannon, P.; Hill, G. (2004), Understanding the Value of Biodiversity in Water Ecosystems: Economics, Ethics and Social Psychology, Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen
- .
- .
- S2CID 236360919.
- S2CID 244279314.
- S2CID 213977638.
- .
- .
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2012a), "Towards the Integration of Social, Economic and Ecological Knowledge", in Gerber, J.-F.; Steppacher, R. (eds.), Towards an Integrated Paradigm in Heterodox Economics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 26–46
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2011b), "Social Ecological Economics: Understanding the Past to See the Future", in Lee, F. S. (ed.), Social, Methods, and Microeconomics: Contributions to Doing Economics Better, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 39–74
- .
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Smith, T. (2019). "Of ecosystems and economies: Re-connecting economics with reality" (PDF). Real-World Economics Review. 87 (March): 212–229.
- ^ Spash, C. L.; Smith, T. (2019). "Of ecosystems and economies: Re-connecting economics with reality" (PDF). Real-World Economics Review. 87 (March): 212–229.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2017a), "Soziales, ökologisches und ökonomisches Wissen: Zum Synthetisierungspotenzial des Critical Realism", in Lindner, U.; Mader, D. (eds.), Critical Realism meets kritische Sozialtheorie: Ontologie, Erklärung und Kritik in den Sozialwissenschaften (in German), Bielefeld: Transkript Verlag, pp. 217–242
- .
- S2CID 153618844.
- .
- S2CID 11640828.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2017b), "Social Ecological Economics", in Spash, C. L. (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 3–16
- .
- S2CID 213977638.
- S2CID 225108741.
- ^ Spash, C. L. (2017b), "Social Ecological Economics", in Spash, C. L. (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 3–16
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)