Does the economic benefit of biodiversity enhancement exceed the cost of conservation in planted forests?

Abstract

The study evaluates a proposed programme that would sustain and enhance the provision of ecosystem services in planted forests. We focused on the evaluation of the benefits and costs of the conservation of the brown kiwi (an iconic yet threatened New Zealand bird species) that inhabits planted forests. Yao et al. (2014) found that a sample of 209 New Zealand (NZ) households would, on average, financially support a programme for conserving the brown kiwi in NZ planted forests. We extend that study using a proof of concept that integrates economic, ecological and spatial approaches. We undertake this in five steps: 1) supplementing a previous choice experiment survey by interviewing more than 900 additional georeferenced households; 2) estimating household-specific means of marginal willingness-to-pay (WTP) values; 3) using spatial econometrics to explore WTP determinants; 4) identifying 12 ecologically and economically feasible ecosystem-service sites (ranging from 5,000 to 11,500 hectares) and calculate the average annual costs of a conservation programme at each site; and finally 5) aggregating the public benefits of biodiversity at the regional and national levels and calculate the benefit cost ratio. We found that the value of the proposed biodiversity conservation initiative at the national level can be more than 100 times higher than the overall cost of the programme. To prioritise intervention of this initiative, we also identify the New Zealand region with planted forest sites that would produce the highest net economic benefit from the enhanced provision of ecosystem services.

Trade-offs between indigenous forest and exotic production forest in New Zealand

“…Therefore, the average annual biodiversity benefits will be much lower. Recent nonmarket valuation studies indicate that the general public are willing to pay to protect and restore endemic species (for instance, Yao et al (2019) demonstrate values associated with kiwi, giant kokopu, kakabeak, geckos, and bush falcons). However, practical difficulties, like available ecological and cost models for these species, prevent their use in policy analysis-focused benefit transfer.…”

“…Yao et al (2019) use estimates from a past studies in a simplified benefit transfer that compares the benefits and costs of biodiversity. 12 The paper provides a wealth of information on biodiversity values in New Zealand forests, as well as evidence for people’s willingness to pay (WTP) for biodiversity improvements.…”

Forest Investment Framework as a Support Tool for the Sustainable Management of Planted Forests

“…At present, FIF is neither commercialized nor publicly available. It is currently being refined to include new ecosystem services under a five-year (2014 to 2019) research program where the team is developing spatial functions for the provision of recreation [8,110,111], water quality through nutrient modelling [112], and biodiversity conservation attributes relating to the provision of habitat for native flora and fauna [23,113]. The team is also developing a water flow function based on a forest water model.…”

The Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services of Biodiversity Components in Protected Areas: A Review for a Framework of Analysis for the Gargano National Park

“…State preference methods or direct techniques offer a direct way of estimating the changes in the supply of (non-market) goods. Direct methods are the contingent valuation (CV) to evaluate 'ex ante' and 'ex post' changes occurring in the environmental good [61][62][63][64][65] and the choice experiment technique (CE) to estimate the value of the environmental change in a multidimensional way [66][67][68][69][70][71].…”