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17 - The effectiveness of centralised and decentralised institutions in managing biodiversity: lessons from economic experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2009

By
Jana Vyrastekova  and
Daan van Soest
Edited by
Andreas Kontoleon ,
Unai Pascual  and
Timothy Swanson
Jana Vyrastekova
Affiliation:
Associate Professor Department of Economics and CentER, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
Daan van Soest
Affiliation:
Associate Professor Department of Economics and CentER, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands
Andreas Kontoleon
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Unai Pascual
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Timothy Swanson
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

Introduction

The world's stock of biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate: species are thought to be going extinct at rates unprecedented in the history of mankind. To the extent that species have an intrinsic value, biodiversity decline constitutes a welfare loss, but also because of the resulting decrease in the world's stock of genetic material. Opinions differ with respect to the actual rate of extinction as well as with respect to how costly it is for society when species disappear. But the fact remains that many governments nowadays implement policies specifically aimed at conserving individual species as well as species diversity in general, which suggests that there is widespread consensus about the urgency of protecting biodiversity.

The main direct threats to biodiversity conservation are excessive harvesting of specific species and habitat destruction (see Reid and Miller 1989). A common feature of these two types of threats is that there is little incentive for individual agents to take into consideration the impact of their (economic) activities on species conservation. In many instances, property rights with respect to the use of natural resources are either simply lacking or not well enforced. Hence, agents who invest in larger future stocks of a particular species or resource – by reducing current extraction – cannot claim an exclusive right to the future benefits of their investment.

Type
Chapter
Information
Biodiversity Economics
Principles, Methods and Applications
 , pp. 479 - 500
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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