The Economic Value of Biodiversity

David Pearce, Dominic Moran

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134165292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Biodiversity loss is one of the major resource problems facing the world, and the policy options available are restricted by inappropriate economic tools which fail to capture the value of species and their variety. This study describes in non-technical terms how cost-benefit analysis techniques can be applied to species and species loss, and how they provide a measure of the efficiency of conservation measures. Only when conservation can be shown to pass such a basic economic test, the authors claim, will it be incorporated into policies.;David Pearce has also written Blueprint for a Green Economy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on the authors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• The meaning of biological diversity
• Measurement of biodiversity
• The rate of biodiversity loss
• Structure of the book
• 2 Saving biodiversity: an overview of causal factors
• The proximate causes of biodiversity loss
• The economic valuation of environmental goods
• Is total economic value really total?
• 3 Conservation versus development
• The costs and benefits of land use conversion
• Measuring benefits and costs
• 4 The causes of biodiversity loss
• Economic failure
• Illustrating economic failure: intervention failure
• Illustrating economic failure: global appropriation failure
• The distribution of conservation costs and benefits
• 5 Methodologies for economic valuation
• Introduction: valuation in high and low income contexts
• A classification of valuation procedures
• The direct valuation approach
• The indirect valuation approach
• Conventional market approaches when output is measurable
• Choice of valuation technique
• 6 Valuing biodiversity: economic estimates
• Introduction
• A review of environmental conservation values
• Issues arising from the empirical estimates
• Benefits transfer
• The economic value of medicinal plants
• The economic value of plant-based drugs
• Modelling the economic value of medicinal plants
• The value of plant genetic resources for agriculture
• Global values: debt-for-nature swaps
• 7 The development alternative
• The meaning of development alternatives
• Agricultural values
• Forestry values
• Illegal land use
• Summary and conclusions on opportunity cost
• 8 Capturing global environmental value
• The global environment facility
• Creating global environmental markets
• Regulation-induced markets
• Global good citizenship
• 9 Summary and conclusions
• Use and non-use economic values
• Comparing development and conservation
• Conclusions
• References
• Index