Economic evaluation of biological invasions—a survey

Abstract

Invasive species are one of the main reasons for the loss of biodiversity. Therefore, national strategies are developed to deal with biological invasions. Economic evaluation as a tool of policy advice has to take into account three challenges: (1) reflecting ecological knowledge, which is characterised by high uncertainty, (2) taking into account the political framework shaped by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and (3) being methodologically sound, e.g. considering all types of values and avoiding general flaws.In this paper we survey and critically analyse economic studies on biological invasions. We test with an evaluation grid whether the studies meet the challenges. We analysed 23 studies generally and 10 in more detail in order to assess their suitability as a policy advice and their methodical quality.As a result we note three main gaps: (1) current studies mostly have methodological shortcomings compared to their theoretical basis; (2) they do not take into account the politically formulated needs of the CBD; and (3) they hardly reflect the high degree of uncertainty associated with biological invasions.

Impacts of biological invasions: what's what and the way forward

“…Economists require such quantified information for valuing impacts and courses of action in the cost-benefit analyses of individual species that are a pillar of invasion economics [75]. Attempts to mitigate invasion impacts on ecosystems and services that they provide will have to account for the entire range of impacts and complexity of interspecific interactions.…”

“…For instance, most cost-benefit analyses simply attempt to detail costs and benefits of particular invasions post facto. Therefore, they do not encompass prevention, the preferred management strategy [75]; neither do they address the ongoing costs and benefits of different possible policy decisions regarding invasions in general (Courtois P. Mulier C., and Salles, J-M. personal communication). Economists cannot advance in this direction without information from invasion scientists on the gamut of impacts and possible strategies to deal with them.…”

Conceptual Frameworks and Methods for Advancing Invasion Ecology

“…An increasing number of studies already advance in that direction, e.g., by analyzing historic catalogues (Dehnen-Schmutz et al 2007;Blackburn et al 2010), by explaining patterns in alien species richness based on indicators of current and historic socio-economic conditions (Hulme 2009;Essl et al 2010), or by considering factors like economic value of species and invasions (Born et al 2005;Gozlan et al 2010). Another way to bridge the gap between ecology and social sciences is to combine vector science (Carlton and Ruiz 2005) with the study of continually shifting global decentralized networks (Barabási 2002).…”

The Human Release Hypothesis for biological invasions: human activity as a determinant of the abundance of invasive plant species

“…Biological invasions can threaten ecosystems 1 , economies 2 , and human health 3 . The Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) put biological invasions on top of its research agenda in 1983 4 .…”