Economic challenges for lake management

Abstract

Restoring lakes from a degraded state is a costly and risky enterprise. It is costly partly because ‘rewinding’ the cycles of degradation involves great scientific uncertainties. Therefore, the only way forward is by careful, expensive monitoring, and much adaptation of treatment as the evidence unfolds. This process requires much patience and political commitment. Therefore, the economic challenge is to find a relationship between the ecological exploration of restoration techniques and the economic justification of the outcome. Unfortunately, the basis of that justification is an economy that creates environmental degradation. So there is a cruel circularity in the economic appraisal: the process of benefit calculation is predicted on an economy that is, at present, non sustainable. This suggests that there should be another approach to economic valuation, based more on participatory processes of involving interests with a stake in the outcome and in the gains and losses that will inevitably be incurred in reaching the outcome of lake restoration. In that process, ecological science plays a vital role of explaining possible future pathways for restoration, and the dilemma of uncertainty is handled by creating various scenarios rather than models. The real challenge, therefore, is to devise a fair and full process of bargaining over lake futures, within which both ecology and economics play important, but subsidiary roles.