# instrumental serves intrinsic *why financial mechanisms can protect what they cannot measure* By [BASIN Dispatches](https://dispatches.basin.global) · 2026-01-02 --- "How can you buy or sell the sky?" The question has haunted Western economics for centuries. But perhaps it was never the right question. The better question: **How do we fund the protection of what we cannot price?** **the valuation paradox** ------------------------- Traditional economics struggles with nature because it confuses three distinct things: Concept What It Means The Mistake **Valuation** Recognizing worth exists Assuming worth requires measurement **Quantification** Expressing worth in units Assuming measurement captures essence **Pricing** Setting exchange terms Assuming price equals value Nature has value. Some of that value can be quantified. Even less can be priced. But the existence of unmeasurable value does not mean it cannot be protected. **The mistake is thinking that what cannot be measured cannot be funded.** **the ipbes values framework** ------------------------------ The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released its Values Assessment in 2022 — a landmark synthesis of how different worldviews understand nature's worth. It identifies three broad categories: ### **intrinsic value** Value that exists independent of any human use or experience. A species has worth simply because it exists. An ecosystem matters because it _is_. This is the value that indigenous cosmologies, environmental ethics, and spiritual traditions recognize — nature as subject, not object. Intrinsic value cannot be measured because measurement is a relationship, and intrinsic value exists prior to relationship. ### **instrumental value** Value derived from what nature does for us. Clean water, pollination, flood control, timber, fish, carbon storage. These are the "ecosystem services" that flow from natural capital stocks. Instrumental value is what most nature finance attempts to capture. Instrumental value can be quantified, but the quantification is always partial. The 19 ecosystem services we measure are the ones we've learned to see — not the complete inventory of nature's contributions. ### **relational value** Value that emerges through relationships — between people and place, between communities and watersheds, between generations and ancestral lands. Relational value is neither "in" nature nor "in" humans — it exists in the connection. This is what the [tribal water settlement post](https://ensurance.app/guide/tribal-water-settlement-watershed-protection) touched: water as relative, as responsibility, as sacred trust. Not water _for_ something, but water _with_ someone. **the plural values insight** ----------------------------- The IPBES assessment diagnoses a "values crisis" at the root of biodiversity loss. The problem isn't that nature lacks value — it's that decision-making systems recognize only one type. > _"The dominant global valuation paradigm has focused on short-term individual preferences and market-based monetary values... This narrow approach contributes to the ongoing global biodiversity crisis and the inequitable distribution of nature's contributions to people."_ The remedy is not better pricing. It is **plural valuation** — respecting that different worldviews (Western economic framings, indigenous cosmologies, local ecological knowledge) produce different but equally valid articulations of value. Current nature finance fails not because it measures nature, but because it assumes measurement is complete — that what the spreadsheet captures is all there is. **five dimensions, one reality** -------------------------------- Ensurance recognizes **holistic value** — five dimensions working together, not separately: Dimension What It Honors **Ecological** Ecosystem health, biodiversity, natural processes **Cultural** Meaning, heritage, identity, place-based knowledge **Social** Community wellbeing, relationships, collective care **Spiritual** Sacred connection, reverence, ways of being **Economic/Financial** Sustainable livelihoods, regenerative finance These are not separate value types stacked on top of each other. They are different facets of the same integrated reality — like viewing a crystal from different angles. **Economic value serves ecological health. Cultural meaning deepens care. Spiritual connection grounds action.** The dimensions reinforce each other. **the service relationship** ---------------------------- > _"Instrumental value serves intrinsic value — it does not replace it."_ This is the core principle that distinguishes ensurance from commodification. **Commodification** treats nature as exchangeable units. A forest becomes tons of carbon. A wetland becomes acre-feet of water. The whole is reduced to tradeable fragments, and intrinsic value is collapsed into instrumental price. **Ensurance** treats financial mechanisms as tools for what cannot be priced. We build instruments that generate funding flows — and those flows protect places, species, and relationships that exist beyond any measurement we could make. The coin is not the forest. The certificate is not the wetland. They are tools for channeling care into capital and capital into stewardship. The instrumental layer should be quiet and supportive; the intrinsic layer carries the weight. **we are not financializing nature** ------------------------------------ This distinction matters. **Financialization** brings nature into finance's logic: everything must be priced, traded, and optimized. The forest becomes an asset to be maximized. The wetland becomes a liability to be managed. **Naturalization of finance** brings finance into nature's logic: capital should flow like water — circulating, nourishing, returning. Proceeds move through the system like nutrients through an ecosystem. Instruments mature and vest like organisms moving through life cycles. Financialization Naturalization Nature serves finance Finance serves nature Optimize for return Optimize for resilience Extract value Circulate value Assets to exploit Relationships to steward > _Ensurance is not financializing nature. It is naturalizing finance._ - Jeff Stephens **respect for what we do not understand** ----------------------------------------- Perhaps the deepest principle: **understanding is not required for respect.** We do not fully understand wetland hydrology. We cannot predict the decisions of a salmon population. We will never completely model the carbon dynamics of a temperate forest. The beings we seek to protect have their own ways of being that exceed our comprehension. This humility is not weakness — it is the appropriate posture before complexity. Ensurance does not require us to understand everything we protect. It requires only that we fund protection for what matters, whether or not we can explain why it matters in terms economics would recognize. **the temporary scaffolding** ----------------------------- Here is perhaps the most honest acknowledgment: **natural capital accounting is meant to be temporary.** We build instruments, create markets, and quantify ecosystem services not because nature requires our measurement, but because human decision-making systems currently cannot see what is not priced. The spreadsheet is blind to the unpriceable. As we do this work — valuing, funding, protecting — nature's fractal patterns become clearer. We begin to see connections our models missed. We recognize value categories we had not imagined. The scaffolding teaches us to see without it. **The goal is a world where we don't need to price nature because we've stopped treating it as free to destroy.** Ensurance is the bridge to get there. **the braided approach** ------------------------ Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the image of braiding sweetgrass — three strands woven together, each strengthening the whole. She applies it to knowledge: scientific understanding, indigenous wisdom, and spiritual practice braided rather than separated. Ensurance borrows this image: * **Intrinsic and instrumental** — braided, not collapsed * **Signal and source** — design and code woven together * **Ancient and future** — wisdom traditions and emerging technology The strands do not compete. They hold each other. "All flourishing is mutual" — without reciprocal relationships, neither serviceberries nor natural assets can thrive. **what this means practically** ------------------------------- If you hold ensurance instruments, you are not "buying nature." You are funding protection for what cannot be bought. If you trade ensurance coins, your market activity generates proceeds that flow to stewardship — not because the coin equals the ecosystem, but because we've built pipes that route value from trading to tending. If you hold certificates tied to a named place, you have not purchased that place. You have committed capital to its ongoing protection, and you receive verification that it remains healthy. **The instruments are instrumental. What they serve is intrinsic.** **acknowledgment** ------------------ Despite the analytical and categorical structure of ensurance's work — the frameworks, the valuations, the onchain mechanisms — we recognize: > **_The intrinsic value of nature is priceless and unquantifiable, both to humans and non-humans._** Every being has its own way of being. Every ecosystem holds mysteries we have not touched. Every watershed remembers what our records have forgotten. We build instruments that fund protection. We do not claim they capture value. We claim only that they work — that capital flows where it is needed, that places receive stewardship, that the gap between recognition and funding closes. The rest — the sacred, the ineffable, the beyond-price — remains beyond our systems. As it should. * * * **related:** → [the value gap](https://ensurance.app/guide/the-value-gap) — why nature is priceless and fundable simultaneously → [the inheritance that's not in your trust](https://ensurance.app/guide/what-your-grandchildren-will-actually-inherit) — what we actually leave behind → [ensurance fundamentals](https://ensurance.app/manual/tldr) — how the instruments work → [contact us](https://ensurance.app/contact) — if you want to think together about these questions sources ------- [IPBES Values Assessment (2022)](https://www.ipbes.net/the-values-assessment) — methodological framework for plural values (intrinsic, instrumental, relational) and their integration into decision-making [Braiding Sweetgrass — Robin Wall Kimmerer](https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass) — indigenous wisdom on reciprocity, gift economies, and braiding ways of knowing [The Serviceberry — Robin Wall Kimmerer](https://milkweed.org/book/the-serviceberry) — economy of abundance and belonging, "all flourishing is mutual" Jeff Stephens — "we are not financializing nature, we are naturalizing finance" --- *Originally published on [BASIN Dispatches](https://dispatches.basin.global/instrumental-serves-intrinsic)*