The values of natural capital at Higher Level: The same statement as SL, with different real cases: the rosy periwinkle, the Whanganui River, Velcro and the kiwi. At HL, values feed into law and economics: a river can be given rights, and a value can be counted in money or not.
Practise this as you read
- Name each value, with the resource that gives it.
- Show instrumental and intrinsic value in the same species.
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Nine ways nature matters: Natural capital is valued for many reasons, not only money. The guide names nine kinds of value; how much a place is worth depends on all of them together.
The points to remember
- Aesthetic: its beauty, which people enjoy and travel to see.
- Cultural: part of a group's traditions, identity, food, art or medicine.
- Economic: it can be sold or earns money, e.g. fish, timber, tourism.
- Environmental (ecological): it supports other life, e.g. habitat, pollination, flood control.
- Health: medicines, clean air and water, and calm green places.
- Intrinsic: worth existing in its own right, whatever its use to people.
- Social, spiritual and technological: recreation and jobs; sacred places; ideas and power for inventions.
Remember it as: Money is only one of nine: beauty, culture, health, nature, rights, people, faith and ideas count too.
| Value | Real example |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | Iceland's waterfalls, such as Gullfoss, draw tourists |
| Cultural | Rooibos tea is part of daily life in South Africa |
| Economic | Timber, fish and tourism earn money |
| Environmental | Mangroves shelter young fish and block storm waves |
| Health | The rosy periwinkle gives medicines for childhood leukaemia |
| Intrinsic | The kiwi has a right to exist, whatever its use |
| Social | City parks bring people together for sport and play |
| Spiritual | The Whanganui River, an ancestor to local Maori |
| Technological | Burdock burrs gave the idea for Velcro (1941) |
Real example: the rosy periwinkle looks ordinary, yet two medicines made from it, vinblastine and vincristine, helped raise survival from childhood leukaemia: health value from a weed.
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Questions also ask you to sort values into two groups: what nature does for us, and what it is worth in itself.
Use value and intrinsic value
- Instrumental (use) value: what nature does for people, e.g. income, food, medicine.
- Intrinsic value: nature matters in itself; it has a right to exist (biorights).
- The two are not exclusive: one species or place can have both at once.
- Other credited words: scientific value (research), existence and future value.
- Different people stress different values, so they value the same place differently.
Instrumental (use) value
- Fish and timber sold
- Tourists pay to visit
- Medicines and clean water
Intrinsic value
- A right to exist
- Native species and wild places
- Valued even if never used
Real example: in 2017 New Zealand's Te Awa Tupua Act gave the Whanganui River the rights of a person. The Whanganui Maori see the river as their ancestor, a spiritual and intrinsic value, while it is also used for canoe tourism, an instrumental value.
Name the value, not just an example: 'It is a carbon sink' or 'it gives habitat' is an example. Write the value: 'environmental value, because it is a carbon sink'. For each value, also name the resource that gives it.
Measure what people value: Values are opinions, so the way to find them is to ask people. A survey of your school shows which ecosystem services people care about most. Below, Hillcrest School surveys its woodland.
Planning a values survey
- Choose the ecosystem services to ask about, e.g. clean air, beauty, habitat, timber.
- Use closed questions with a scale (1-5) so answers can be counted and compared.
- Ask a large, mixed sample: students of every year, teachers, other staff, parents.
- Pilot it first, keep wording neutral, and keep it anonymous.
- Show results as a bar chart of mean scores, then compare groups.
- Limits: a small or one-sided sample, and people giving the answer that sounds right.
Services
- Six services of the woodland next to the school: clean air, beauty, a place to relax, habitat, timber and firewood, outdoor science lessons
Questions
- 'How much do you value the woodland for clean air?' scored 1 (no value) to 5 (very high)
Sample
- 120 people: 20 students from each of five year groups, plus 20 staff
Results
- Clean air scored highest (4.6), timber lowest (1.8): people value it far more for health and beauty than for money
Link each service to a value: Clean air is a health value, beauty an aesthetic value, timber an economic value, lessons a scientific or social value.
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How this comes up: Paper 1, from the resource booklet: a 2-mark discuss question, one instrumental value and one intrinsic value. No conclusion is needed.
The bald eagle is the national bird of the USA and appears on its Great Seal. After it nearly died out in the 1960s, it recovered, and people now travel to Alaska to watch hundreds of eagles gather by salmon rivers in winter.
Discuss how the concepts of instrumental and intrinsic value are not exclusive when applied to the bald eagle.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.