How Useful Are Environmental Safety Standards in Economics - the Example of Safe Minimum Standards for Protection of Species

The use of environmental safety standards is being increasingly advocated, and economists are being increasingly required to adapt their policy models to take account of such standards, e.g. by the use of transferable environmental damage quotas. The use of these standards may be a consequence of a greater desire to achieve more sustainable development and preserve the natural wealth available to future generations. An important means to this goal is to preserve biodiversity and genetic variability. Safe minimum standards for conservation of wildlife have been suggested as a way to achieve this. Sometimes safe minimum standards for conservation of species are defined in terms of their minimum viable populations and their minimum habitat requirements. However, as a review of recent scientific literature indicates, these safe minimum standards are very uncertain