2023年经济学人 诺亚方舟经济学(1)（在线收听）

    Finance & economics

    财经版块

    Noah’s Ark, round two

    诺亚方舟，第二回

    What if the boat builder was an economist?

    如果诺亚是经济学家，情况会怎样呢？

    Some biblical lessons for today's conservationists.

    为如今的自然保护人士提供一些《圣经》里的经验。

    “Of fowls after their kind,” the Lord said to Noah, “and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the Earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee.”

    “飞鸟各从其类，”耶和华对诺亚说，“牲畜各从其类，所有走兽各从其类，每样一对，都要到你那里去。”

    Co-operation from the animal kingdom helped make the biblical patriarch history’s greatest conservationist, saving every land-based animal, including humans, from a wave of divine extinction.

    动物王国的互相合作造就了《圣经》族长历史中这位最伟大的自然保护者，他拯救了包括人类在内的每一种陆地动物，使其免于洪水天谴。

    Unlike Noah, contemporary conservationists face constraints: they cannot save everything.

    与诺亚不同，当代自然保护者面临限制：他们不可能拯救一切。

    The patriarch was able to fit a breeding pair of each of the 5.6m or so terrestrial species onto his 300 cubits-long ark.

    诺亚这位族长能够将大约560万种陆生物种中的每一对都放入他那长约300腕尺的方舟中。

    If he was forced instead to ration his space, facing the traditional economic problem of scarce resources and unlimited wants, which animals should Noah have prioritised and kept safe from the flood for future generations?

    如果他必须限定空间，必须面对稀缺资源和无限需求这种传统经济学问题，那么诺亚应该优先考虑哪些动物，并为了后代而保护它们免受洪水侵袭呢？

    This was the dilemma Martin Weitzman, an economist, posed in a paper published in 1998, and it is one that carries enduring lessons.

    这就是经济学家马丁·魏茨曼在1998年发表的一篇论文中提出的两难问题，这一问题蕴含着经久不衰的道理。

    Weitzman’s goal, beyond biblical interpretation, was to create an economic theory of conservation, calculating a strategy that a rational conservationist could follow to maximise both human welfare and natural biodiversity.

    魏茨曼的目标超越了对圣经的解释，是创建一种适用于自然保护的经济学理论，计算出一种理性的自然保护者可以遵循的策略，以最大化人类福利和自然生物多样性。

    He wanted to come up with a way of ranking conservation projects; how to weigh what the Lord called creeping things of the Earth against one another given the limited amount of funding to keep them all alive.

    他希望想出一种对自然保护项目进行排序的方法，在资金有限的情况下，如何将上帝所说的所有走兽中的每一种进行权衡。

    Animals have two sources of value in Weitzman’s model.

    在魏茨曼的模型中，动物有两种价值。

    The first is the utility they provide humanity: economists now call this “ecosystem services”.

    首先是它们为人类提供的效用：经济学家现在将其称为“生态系统服务”。

    They vary from the delight that megafauna provide those visiting a safari park to the more prosaic: pollinators fertilising crops; earthworms keeping the soil healthy.

    包括大型动物为参观野生动物园的游客带来的愉悦，也包括一些更平淡的用处：传粉昆虫给农作物授粉，蚯蚓保持土壤健康。

    A forthcoming paper by Eyal Frank of the University of Chicago and Anant Sudarshan of the University of Warwick looks at the economic benefits of “keystone species”.

    芝加哥大学的埃亚尔·弗兰克和华威大学的阿南特·苏达尚即将发表的一篇论文探讨了“关键物种”的经济效益。

    They find that the accidental poisoning of vultures in India led to a dramatic increase in human mortality, with more than 100,000 additional deaths in an average year, as the birds no longer devoured waterway-poisoning carrion.

    他们发现，印度秃鹫的意外中毒导致了人类死亡率的急剧上升，平均每年的死亡人数增加了10万以上，因为秃鹫不再吃掉污染水道的腐肉。

    Despite their poor reputation, vultures might therefore earn a place on a resource-constrained ark.

    尽管秃鹫名声不佳，但它们可能因此在资源有限的方舟上赢得一席之地。

    The second part of the calculation places a direct value on biodiversity.

    模型的第二部分是生物多样性方面的直接价值。

    Imagine, now, that you are not Noah trying to save the natural world from a flood, but a scholar trying to save texts from the Library of Alexandria.

    现在想象一下，你不是试图从洪水中拯救自然世界的诺亚，而是一个试图救出亚历山大图书馆中的文献的学者。

    All the scrolls might be valuable, but many have information on them that is in other libraries.

    所有卷轴可能都很有价值，但许多卷轴上的信息其他图书馆中也有。

    The aim would be to save those with information not recorded elsewhere.

    那么目标应该是救出那些所含信息在其他地方没有记录的卷轴。

    Weitzman applies the same logic to animals: biodiversity has both an aesthetic value and an informational one, with content embedded in the genetics of animals.

    魏茨曼将同样的逻辑应用于动物：生物多样性既具有美学价值，也具有信息价值，其信息内容深嵌于动物的遗传物质中。

    The selection for the ark should try to preserve as much of this information as possible, even if the animals themselves do not do much for human welfare.

    方舟应该尽可能多地保存这些信息，即使动物本身对人类福利没有太大贡献。