How healthy is the human-ocean system

Datos Bibliográficos

ID15548870
AutoresWilfried Rickels (0000-0002-5407-6364, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, autor de correspondencia), Martin F Quaas (0000-0003-0812-8829, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel), Martin Visbeck (0000-0002-0844-834X, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)
Año2014
Volumen9
Número4
Páginas044013-044013
Fecha de publicación2014-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEnvironmental Research Letters (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1748-9326 • E-ISSN: 1748-9326
EditorialIOP Publishing (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1088/1748-9326/9/4/044013
OpenAlexW2101234407
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas21

Halpern et al (2012 An index to assess the health and benefits of the global ocean Nature 488 11397)propose a detailed measure of the state of the human-ocean system against ten societal goals. They devote less attention to the normative foundation of the index, which is crucial for assessing the overall health of the human-ocean system, notably when it comes to aggregation of potentially conflicting goals. Social choice theory provides several possible functional forms for assessing the compound change in various goals. The one chosen by Halpern et al, the arithmetical mean, is not \nonly a specific but also an extreme case. It implicitly allows for unlimited substitution. A one-unit reduction in one goal can be fully offset by a one-unit increase in another with the same weighting factor. For that reason, the current index satisfies an extremely weak sustainability concept. We show that the results in Halpern et al are not robust when one adopts a strong sustainability concept. The \noverall health score of the ocean decreases, the ranking of the various coastal states changes substantially, and the assessment of sustainable development needs to be partially reversed

Biology · Data mining · Econometrics · Economics · Environmental economics · Epistemology · Human health · Index (typography · Measure (data warehouse · Normative · Ranking (information retrieval · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Unit (ring theory · Weighting · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Computer Science · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Mathematics · Medicine · Sustainable Development and Environmental Policy · Artificial Intelligence · Ecology · Philosophy