Comparing visible and less visible costs of the Habitats Directive: The case of hamster conservation in Germany

The EU Habitats Directive provides in Annexes II and IV a list of species needing to be conserved. Member States have implemented a variety of conservation measures in response to this obligation. These measures include the rejection, modification or delay of land development plans, payments for landowners to perform conservation measures and management actions such as breeding programmes. The costs of the various conservation measures are not always apparent. There may be an underestimation of the resulting costs when land development plans are altered, because there is no visible flow of financial resources. Such a biased perception may result in selecting conservation measures with high but less visible costs, whereas conservation measures with low but more visible costs are neglected. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to avoiding a biased selection of conservation measures by presenting a framework which captures a broad variety of costs relevant to the conservation of species protected by the Habitats Directive. We also demonstrate the relevance of a biased selection of conservation measures by using the framework to empirically estimate the costs of protecting the common hamster (Cricetus cricetus) in the region of Mannheim, Germany. We find that the less visible costs of changes in development plans are significantly higher than the more visible costs of payments to landowners and management actions. This result suggests that measures with visible costs should be given more attention in the future. --Common hamster,Cost assessment,Cost-effectiveness,EU Habitats Directive,Land use,Spatial planning,Species conservation

GIS-Based Mapping of Ecosystem Services: The Case of Coral Reefs

This chapter illustrates the process of mapping ecosystem service values with an application to coral reef recreational values in Southeast Asia. The case study provides an estimate of the value of reef-related recreation foregone, due to the decline in coral reef area in Southeast Asia, under a baseline scenario for the period 2000 – 2050. This value is estimated by combining a visitor model, meta-analytic value function and spatial data on individual coral reef ecosystems to produce site-specific values. Values are mapped in order to communicate the spatial variability in the value of coral reef degradation. Although the aggregated change in the value of reef-related recreation due to ecosystem degradation is not high, there is substantial spatial variation in welfare losses, which is potentially useful information for targeting conservation efforts

Land management and ecosystem services. How collaborative research programmes can support better policies

Land management, the organisation of the use and development of land, is an important instrument for addressing problems of rising greenhouse gas emissions and loss of natural resources. Yet, natural-social systems in which land management policies are implemented are poorly understood, thus decreasing the effectiveness of these policies. Local studies provide valuable insights, though only for the local conditions prevalent during the investigated period. Synthesising local studies in order to generalise results is impaired by the variety of local conditions. Collaborative research programmes may prevent some of these problems. They support the share of insights across temporal, ecological and spatial-economic contexts. On the basis of existing literature, we identify the challenges which face synthesis and demonstrate how a German research programme attempts to address some of them

The global costs and benefits of expanding Marine Protected Areas

Marine ecosystems and the services they provide contribute greatly to human well-being but are becoming degraded in many areas around the world. The expansion of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) has been advanced as a potential solution to this problem but their economic feasibility has hardly been studied. We conduct an economic assessment of the costs and benefits of six scenarios for the global expansion of MPAs. The analysis is conducted at a high spatial resolution, allowing the estimated costs and benefits to reflect the ecological and economic characteristics and context of each MPA and marine ecosystem. The results show that the global benefits of expanding MPAs exceed their costs by a factor 1.4–2.7 depending on the location and extent of MPA expansion. Targeting protection towards pristine areas with high biodiversity yields higher net returns than focusing on areas with low biodiversity or areas that have experienced high human impact

Protecting 30% of the planet for nature: costs, benefits and economic implications

A. Waldron, K. Nakamura, J. Sze, T. Vilela, A. Escobedo, P. Negret Torres, R. Button, K. Swinnerton, A. Toledo, P. Madgwick, N. Mukherjee were supported by National Geographic and the Resources Legacy Fund. V. Christensen was supported by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2019-04901. M. Coll and J. Steenbeek were supported by EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 817578 (TRIATLAS). D. Leclere was supported by TradeHub UKRI CGRF project. R. Heneghan was supported by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Acciones de Programacion Conjunta Internacional (PCIN-2017-115). M. di Marco was supported by MIUR Rita Levi Montalcini programme. A. Fernandez-Llamazares was supported by Academy of Finland (grant nr. 31176). S. Fujimori and T. Hawegawa were supported by The Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (2-2002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan and the Sumitomo Foundation. V. Heikinheimo was supported by Kone Foundation, Social Media for Conservation project. K. Scherrer was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 682602. U. Rashid Sumaila acknowledges the OceanCanada Partnership, which funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). T. Toivonen was supported by Osk. Huttunen Foundation & Clare Hall college, Cambridge. W. Wu was supported by The Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (2-2002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan. Z. Yuchen was supported by a Ministry of Education of Singapore Research Scholarship Block (RSB) Research Fellowship

Working paper analysing the economic implications of the proposed 30% target for areal protection in the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framewor

58 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables- The World Economic Forum now ranks biodiversity loss as a top-five risk to the global economy, and the draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework proposes an expansion of conservation areas to 30% of the earth’s surface by 2030 (hereafter the “30% target”), using protected areas (PAs) and other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). - Two immediate concerns are how much a 30% target might cost and whether it will cause economic losses to the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors. - Conservation areas also generate economic benefits (e.g. revenue from nature tourism and ecosystem services), making PAs/Nature an economic sector in their own right. - If some economic sectors benefit but others experience a loss, high-level policy makers need to know the net impact on the wider economy, as well as on individual sectors. [...]A. Waldron, K. Nakamura, J. Sze, T. Vilela, A. Escobedo, P. Negret Torres, R. Button, K. Swinnerton, A. Toledo, P. Madgwick, N. Mukherjee were supported by National Geographic and the Resources Legacy Fund. V. Christensen was supported by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2019-04901. M. Coll and J. Steenbeek were supported by EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 817578 (TRIATLAS). D. Leclere was supported by TradeHub UKRI CGRF project. R. Heneghan was supported by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Acciones de Programacion Conjunta Internacional (PCIN-2017-115). M. di Marco was supported by MIUR Rita Levi Montalcini programme. A. Fernandez-Llamazares was supported by Academy of Finland (grant nr. 311176). S. Fujimori and T. Hawegawa were supported by The Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (2-2002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan and the Sumitomo Foundation. V. Heikinheimo was supported by Kone Foundation, Social Media for Conservation project. K. Scherrer was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 682602. U. Rashid Sumaila acknowledges the OceanCanada Partnership, which funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). T. Toivonen was supported by Osk. Huttunen Foundation & Clare Hall college, Cambridge. W. Wu was supported by The Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (2-2002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan. Z. Yuchen was supported by a Ministry of Education of Singapore Research Scholarship Block (RSB) Research FellowshipPeer reviewe

Spatial patterns of biodiversity conservation in a multiregional general equilibrium model

Migration dynamics and local biodiversity are interrelated in a way that is likely to affect patterns of regional specialisation. We assess this relationship with a New Economic Geography model that has been extended with biodiversity. Biodiversity is heterogeneous, and responds to habitat availability. The results indicate that a symmetric pattern of regional specialisation is more likely, and that additional equilibria may emerge as the marginal utility of biodiversity increases. In the policy analysis we focus on the case where the overall social optimum is symmetric and show that it can be supported as a non-cooperative Nash equilibrium. However, multiple Nash equilibria may exist.Biodiversity conservation Extinction risk Monopolistic competition Population dynamics Regional specialisation Reserve sites Spatial economics

How best to present complex ecosystem information in stated preference studies?

This study examines the most effective way to present complex information in the context of ecosystem service-based assessments of landscape-level decision-making, using choice consistency as a way of measuring what is “most effective”. The experiment compares a verbal presentation of information with a variety of visualisations of the same information in a discrete choice experiment about a catchment management plan in New Zealand. The analysis uses a scale heterogeneity model to identify inter-subject differences in choice consistency, measured as the relative weight of the deterministic and random components of utility. The results indicate that choice consistency is reduced when information is presented visually rather than verbally. Radar graphs reduce choice consistency more than histograms or colour maps. The time required to complete the choice tasks also increased when information was not verbal, suggesting that cognitive processing of verbal and visual information occurs quite differently

The Influence of Labour Flows on Wage Drift: an Empirical Analysis for the Netherlands

The wage level in The Netherlands is, by a large part, determined in collective labour agreements. However, the result of the processes of job destruction, job creation and job-to-job mobility is that workers move from less productive to more productive jobs. Our empirical analysis shows that the resulting productivity gains are reflected in the wage drift. i.e. wage increases which are not part of the collective agreements. Yet, the size of the effects appears to be rather modest.Wage formation; Wage drift; Labour flows