From my humble understanding, we can and we must consider physiocrats as the pioners of ecological economics. Of course, their contributions should be updated with today's biological and physics points of view. See Cutler Cleveland's work available here @ researchgate (in particular, his "Biophysical economics: from physiocracy to ecological economics"). The valuation issue is key for economics with market price and the maintained assumptions, but the Competitive Equilibrium (CE) is not the only equilibrium we, economist, know about. But for using alternative equilibria, we would need quite a lot of information, physical and psychological information, under many "states of nature". Personally, I see Nature as the direct source of value and the objective condition for value and happiness. Just think for a minute about what are we doing to our world, to this minuscule "ile bleue" standing with the whole creation, and you have to either avoid thinking too much and continue with our capitalistic-constrained "hominid-centered" life as if nothing bad will happen OR feel sad for a while. On environmental crises of capital reproduction, see Paul Burkett's "The value problem in ecological economics: lessons from the physiocrats". Finally, remmember "there is not such a thing as a free lunch" while we continue being "free riders".

Yes , He/she should be considered as pioners of the ecological economics It is because, this is related to the idea that only in agricultural activities, nature makes it possible for the product obtained to be greater than the inputs used in production, thus resulting in an economic surplus. Physiocrats called sterile activities such as manufacturing or trade where seizure would be enough to replenish the inputs used.

The physiocrats considered that the value originated in the land, in that way they spoke of agriculture and mining (not only of agricultural production). They never contemplated ecological ideas in their proposals.

Another relevant point is that the physiocrats were the first to conceive of equilibrium, but this did not imply that they understood equilibrium as a Walrasian, where the gains were zero. They interpreted equilibrium as the point at which people who work on land to produce the highest net product possible and therefore the greatest benefit.

If you exploit the land in search of the highest net product and the maximum profit (agricultural or mining) you are not an ecologist, are you?