Lourdes Gomez at Future Challenges (‘Thinking global, living local: Voices in a globalized world’) asks whether it’s a good idea to add a monetary value to nature.
‘The Global Economic Symposium has proposed the concept of a New Economy of Nature, which explores efficient ways of valuing natural resources for policy-making, law-making and economic purposes… environmental valuation would measure a country’s wealth in terms of natural resources rather than just its capacity to produce and consume goods and services. Not only will a country’s natural resources be valued but so too will its capacity to manage those resources in a sustainable way.’
Is this a good way forward? Is it happening already, whether we like it or not? You could scroll down Ms Gomez’ article to find a range of opinions.
Science on the Land 
I’ll have to work my way through this a couple of times. It seems to me that placing a value of the current value of nature is an interesting concept it and perhaps only if it persuades policy makers to set it aside and not develop whatever land or environment we are looking at. If setting aside a national park for example, groduces more cashflow for a country or subset of one that does developing it into farmland, or logging and mining, then that land stands a better chance of remaining set aside., But I need to take some time running through all of this.