Decision-makers around the world use cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to decide whether or not to build dams, roads and airports; what actions to take over global warming, biodiversity loss and soil erosion; what health care and occupational safety policies to adopt; and so forth. Grassroots opponents of roads and hydroelectric dams, however, have persistently contested the ways CBA values land, forests, streams, fisheries and livelihoods.
This summary of a conference held in 1999 at Yale University, co-organized by The Corner House, is also available above in Bahasa Indonesia in a translation made in 2022 by Hendro Sangkoyo of the School of Democratic Economics. For related work on cost-benefit analysis see http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/toward-different-debate-environmental-accounting and http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/whose-voice-speaking.