The relevance of economic costs to conservation planning

The relevance of economic costs to conservation planning Robin Naidoo WWF-US robin.naidoo@wwfus.org

Conservation planning • Systematic cons. planning is about maximizing cost-effectiveness • Very sophisticated on biological side • Relatively crude on costs side • But, great gains result from consideration of costs *costs are heterogeneous *plans more efficient when this accounted for

Outline • What are conservation costs? • How are conservation costs assessed? • How are conservation plans improved by including costs?

TREE 21: 681-687 (2006)

I. What are conservation costs? • Acquisition costs • Management costs • Transaction costs • Damage costs • Opportunity costs

Focus on monetary costs $ $ $

WEIGHTED NON-MONETARY COST PROXY Tres Positive Positive Neutral Negative Tres Negative I. What are conservation costs? • Non-monetary proxies: Add map of non-monetary proxies =

How are costs used? • Cost-effective analysis: • Costs in $ terms, benefits in original units; maximize benefits per $ of cost • Cost-benefit analysis: • Map all $ costs and $ benefits of conservation, compare

II. Assessing conservation costs • Examples of spatial distribution of acquisition costs, management costs, opportunity costs • No examples of transaction costs or damage costs

Acquisition costs • United States: county-level data on agricultural land values

Acquisition costs • Denmark: county-level data on agricultural land values Strange et al. Biol. Conserv. 2007

Acquisition costs • South Africa: modelled farm-level sale prices Osano et al. Unpublished data

Acquisition costs • Bahia, Brazil: modelled farm-level sale prices Chomitz et al. Env. Dev. Econ. (2005)

Management costs • Global surveys of protected area managers (terrestrial & marine) • Modelled cost of Pa management based on GNP, PPP, and PA area • Balmford and colleagues, • Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 2003,2005

Management costs • Used in a variety of conservation planning applications, eg. Africa-wide Moore et al. Biol. Cons. (2004)

Opportunity costs • Global: Opp. costs based on returns to agriculture (crops and livestock) Naidoo & Iwamura Biol. Cons. (in press)

Opportunity costs • Mbaracayu, Paraguay: for forests, based on agricultural net rents integrated with conversion probabilities Naidoo & Adamowicz Cons. Biol.(2006)

Opportunity costs • Marine examples: • Foregone sales value of fish and shellfish off Welsh coast (Richardson et al. Cons. Biol. 2006) • Foregone revenue from harvest of rock lobster in South Australia (Stewart and Possingham Env. Model. Ass. 2005)

III. Including costs in planning • General result that including spatial distribution of costs up-front in conservation planning can greatly increase efficiency of resulting plans

Costs in planning • Global: Plans that consider costs represent endemic species at 10 to 33 % of the opportunity cost of plans that do not (ecoregion-level) Naidoo & Iwamura Biol.Cons.(in press)

Costs in planning • Continental: Plans that consider costs represent 2/3rds more vertebrate species for the same opportunity cost compared to plans that do not (ecoregion-level) in Africa Moore et al. Biol.Cons.(2004)

Costs in planning • Sub-national: Plans that consider costs represent the same # of vertebrate species at roughly 10% of the opportunity costs of plans that do not in Oregon, USA Polasky et al. Land Econ.(2001)

Costs in planning • Landscape: Plans that consider costs have provide environmental benefits for 16-67% of total cost compared to plans that focus only on benefits (New York state, USA) Ferraro J. Pol. Analy. Man.(2003)

= remaining forests Naidoo & Ricketts PLoS 2006 $11,384,552 Value (U.S. $) cost benefit

Naidoo & Ricketts PLoS 2006 $11,384,552 Value (U.S. $) $4,670,904 cost benefit = wild meat > land value + timber

Naidoo & Ricketts PLoS 2006 $11,384,552 $8,806,601 Value (U.S. $) cost benefit = wild meat + timber > land value + pharm.

$13,506,473 Naidoo & Ricketts PLoS 2006 $11,384,552 Value (U.S. $) cost benefit = wild meat + timber > land value + pharm. + existence

$207,143,557 Naidoo & Ricketts PLoS 2006 Value (U.S. $) $11,384,552 cost benefit = wild meat + timber + pharm. > land value + existence + carbon (5$/T)

IV. Conclusions • Just as biodiversity is unevenly distributed in space, so are costs • Plans that consider spatial distr. of costs at the outset deliver more biodiversity for less cost

Questions? Email: robin.naidoo@wwfus.org

The relevance of economic costs to conservation planning