A Review of Soil Economic Valuation

The present paper investigates soil valuation and explores the intricacies associated with the development of a standard framework for a sound soil valuation system. Drawing upon a review of studies conducted across the world, we identify the techniques commonly used in estimating the economic value of soil that best suits the conditions in Iran. The ‘ecosystem services’ and ‘total economic value’ (TEV) frameworks are being currently employed for economic valuation of environmental resources and that of soil as the main component of the environment. A variety of methods have been developed for estimating the economic profits of ecosystem services and the costs arising from ecosystem degradation. In most cases, base cost estimation involves replacement cost, opportunity cost, damage cost avoid, and replacement cost methods. Study of the implementation of these methods as well as their associated requirements including soil nutrient content and current land use as well as soil conservation and watershed management practices in use reveal that the above methods can be effectively implemented because not only the required infrastructure but also the necessary data are currently available at the state-level. A salient feature of these methods is that they guarantee more tangible and calculable advantages, basic significance for environmental resources, and non-recurrent concerns about environmental commodities; care must, however, be taken in the measurement system employed for the monetary value of resources during environmental assessment since only investment and labor revenues are taken into account while the revenues due to the exploitation of vital resources and services are ignored and never ever included in the absence of a pricing policy, which obviously causes the values of natural resources to remain unaccounted for in economic estimations.