Integrating global and local values. A review of biodiversity assessment

Biodiversity is a good example of a resource that is managed locally, but is also subject to much wider claims as a public good – often a public good valued for the diffuse actual or potential value to all humanity around the world. As public concerns about biodiversity management grow, so there is increasing demand for communication between local and global approaches to valuing, and hence managing, biodiversity.
Intrinsic to managing a resource is tracking what’s there: evaluating, or assessing, the resource. In the case of biodiversity though, there are no obvious means of assessing all the ways in which it is or might be valuable, because biological systems are more complex than we fully understand. Actual (and proposed) approaches to biodiversity assessment depend ultimately on underlying social values. Sometimes there are stark differences between the values that local people see to accrue locally, and what is valued for the public good. These differences are reflected in the ways that biological variety is described and evaluated.