A difficult valuation

The Deepwater Horizon is off the headlines, even though it continues to spew huge amounts of oil into the sea every day. Estimates of this amount have only been rising. One such estimate is that Deepwater is leaking the equivalent of the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill every four days. The Exxon Valdez incident occurred off the coast of Alaska in 1989, and Exxon spent over $3 billion to manage and compensate for it.

It’s not surprising that the market valuation of the company that operates Deepwater has plummeted and then risen on the hope of a resolution. That company apparently distributed 10% of all dividend income in the UK last year. The UK government is said to be considering options in case the company goes bust, driven by the Deepwater liabilities.

This brings us to the issue of the “valuation” of this company (or the issue of “valuing” the effects of this accident). In the current situation, I wonder how people must be going about doing this valuation, when we don’t even have an accurate estimate of how much oil is spewing out from the collapsed rig.

To be sure, no fix to the spill has been found yet. But that’s not for want of attention or money — US President Barack Obama himself has been on the job. It’s imprudent to assume that we know how much money it will take to really fix this mess.

Then we get into the really deep waters of trying to estimate what damage the oil will cause, and how that can be mitigated. We also get to the issue of how all those hurt must be compensated. And then to the cost of restoring (if that’s possible at all) the surrounding ecosystem.

There are really smart people working on these issues, and given the stakes involved, I am sure everything is being thrown at them. It is absolutely clear to all stakeholders of that company (and many others) that some reasonable estimate of the financial effect of the incident be understood. However, it seems equally clear to me that valuing the cost and effect of the spill is very difficult, if not impossible, at present.

This difficulty is not unique to the Deepwater spill. It’s present in any exercise that tries to factor unknown (sometimes unknowable) facts, uncertain effects and consequences, and differential understanding of “value”. This is true for normal business situations, and even more so for significantly more complex ecological and social situations or systems. But the fact is that we need to understand these “valuations”.

If we are aware of the perils of such “valuation”, we cannot but admire the efforts of Robert Costanza, Ralph d’Arge and 11 of their colleagues who published a remarkable paper in the journal Nature in May 1997. This paper, titled “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital”, took on the onerous task of doing what it says.

Let me quote verbatim from the paper: “The services of ecological systems and the natural capital stocks that produce them are critical to the functioning of the Earth’s life-support system. They contribute to human welfare, both directly and indirectly, and therefore represent part of the total economic value of the planet… For the entire biosphere, the value (most of which is outside the market) is estimated to be in the range of US$16-54 trillion per year, with an average of US$33 trillion per year. Because of the nature of the uncertainties, this must be considered a minimum estimate. Global gross national product total is around US$18 trillion per year.” This was in 1997.

This dry scientific paper speaks more eloquently than anything else I have read about why we should be deeply bothered about ecology, and why we must act right away. This is simply because the value of the world’s ecology is far greater than the global gross domestic product (GDP). To a world obsessed with economies and GDP growth, the paper makes this point immediately apparent. And it should matter hugely — perhaps more than anything else.

The key issue in my view is that Costanza, d’Arge and the others have tried to “value” what we must but we don’t. Such attempts at proactive assessment of “value” are always signs of “good management” — if I can call it that in the context of managing the ecology and the earth. This approach (and this article deliberately) does not even attempt to consider issues of ethics and equity, which are inextricably a key part of all ecological issues.

That is because even the language of money, which is what we seem to understand best, voices in this paper a key concern: that we must act now, and that we must fundamentally change our approach to ecology. After all (at least), “it’s the economy, stupid”.

(This piece was published as a part of Anurag’s fortnightly column,"Other Sphere", in Mint on July 14, 2010.)

About the Author

Anurag Behar is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Wipro Limited, CEO for Azim Premji Foundation & Vice Chancellor, Azim Premji University. The Foundation and the University established by it are not-for-profit organizations committed to the vision of "contributing towards a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society". They run institutions and programs in India for improving school education and in related fields of human development. The field work of the Foundation is in collaboration with various state governments, to help improve equity and quality of the public education system. The current geographical focus of this work is in 7 states of India, which have over 350,000 schools. The University's teaching and research programs are also focused on the fields of Education and Development.

Anurag has been closely involved with efforts to improve education in India for the past eleven years. He has been a vocal advocate for the critical importance of public systems, in particular the public education system. His years in business have given him an insider's view in to both the possibilities and limits of markets. For the past few years he has also been engaged with environmental and ecological issues. He writes a fortnightly column for the newspaper Mint, on Education and Ecology, available on www.livemint.com.

He has led the social and ecological initiatives of Wipro Ltd for the past eleven years. He continues to provide oversight to this work as the Chief Sustainability Officer of Wipro.

Anurag has earlier played leadership roles in business. As the CEO of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, he led the business from being No. 20 in the world to being the No. 1 in 5 years. The business has operations in Europe, India, Brazil and China. He led Wipro's investments in two strategic diversifications - in the Clean Energy and Water sectors. Earlier he has been responsible for multiple functions of Wipro including Brand, Quality and Innovation. He has also worked with GE Medical Systems, including being part of the team that built the leadership position of Wipro GE Healthcare in South Asia.

Anurag has served on the Board of Wipro GE Healthcare Ltd and of the TERI University. He serves on various government & industry councils, such as the National Mission on Teachers and Teacher Education, the Government of India implementation committee for the Justice Verma Commission, and with the CII's National Climate Change Council. He has been honored by the World Economic Forum, by being recognized as a 'Young Global Leader'.

He has an MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur and a BE in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Trichy. He enjoys long distance running.

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