The economic consequences of conserving or restoring sites for nature

Bradbury, Richard B.; Butchart, Stuart H. M.; Fisher, Brendan; Hughes, Francine M. R.; Ingwall-King, Lisa; MacDonald, Michael A.; Merriman, Jennifer C.; Peh, Kelvin S.‐H.; Pellier, Anne-Sophie; Thomas, D; Trevelyan, Rosie; Balmford, Andrew

doi:10.1038/s41893-021-00692-9

Cited by 41 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Researchers should be mindful about how these values are estimated (or not) because when estimates of these values are included, conservation interventions can often appear more cost-effective (e.g. Bradbury et al 2021;Zeng et al 2021). If the true costs (financial and non-financial) of the losses of ecosystem services are not valued in decision-making, this may contribute to the poor implementation of measures that avoid threatening processes (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…reducing flooding severity, mitigating climate change, preventing soil loss) and can make such conservation interventions/programmes more cost-effective than alternative resource use scenarios (e.g. Bradbury et al 2021). This is analogous to healthcare interventions that are often more costeffective when wider societal benefits are included (Kim et al 2020).…”

Section: *Note That For Each Combination Of Perspective and Reporting Level A User Could Either Include Or Exclude Measures Of Financial mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Determining the financial costs and benefits of conservation actions: a framework to support decision making

White¹,

Petrovan²,

Booth³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The need for conservation action to be cost-effective is widely accepted and this has prompted an increased interest and effort to assess effectiveness. Assessing financial costs of conservation is equally important, yet its measurement and assessment are repeatedly identified as lacking. The healthcare sector however, has made substantial progress in identifying and including costs in decision-making. Here, we consider what conservation can learn from this experience. We present a three-step framework for identifying and recording the relevant financial costs and benefits of conservation interventions where the user 1) describes the costing context, 2) determines which types of cost and benefit to include and 3) obtains values for these costs and benefits alongside metadata necessary for others to interpret the data. This framework is designed to help estimate economic costs, but can also be used flexibly to record direct costs of interventions (i.e. accounting costs), calculate financial benefits, and calculate cost effectiveness. Although recording cost data can be deceptively complex, this framework facilitates the improved recording of financial costs and benefits, and shows how this could enhance the assessment of cost-effectiveness across a broad range of conservation contexts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: *Note That For Each Combination Of Perspective and Reporting Level A User Could Either Include Or Exclude Measures Of Financial mentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining the financial costs and benefits of conservation actions: a framework to support decision making

White¹,

Petrovan²,

Booth³

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They can be substantially greater than implementation costs 113 but can be particularly low when allowing natural regeneration on marginal ll R1334 Current Biology 31, R1326-R1341, October 11, 2021 Review agricultural lands, such as remote pastures in the Colombian Andes ($1.99 t À1 CO 2 ) 32 and the oldest fallow plots in shifting cultivation in North-east India ($0.89 t À1 CO 2 ) 114 . Restoration will often make economic sense to society as a whole, but not necessarily to local communities, making long-term fiscal transfers essential if restoration is to be equitable or sustained 115 .…”

Section: Economic Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Upscaling tropical restoration to deliver environmental benefits and socially equitable outcomes

Edwards

Cerullo

Chomba³

et al. 2021

Current Biology

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The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration offers immense potential to return hundreds of millions of hectares of degraded tropical landscapes to functioning ecosystems. Well-designed restoration can tackle multiple Sustainable Development Goals, driving synergistic benefits for biodiversity, ecosystem services, agricultural and timber production, and local livelihoods at large spatial scales. To deliver on this potential, restoration efforts must recognise and reduce trade-offs among objectives, and minimize competition with food production and conservation of native ecosystems. Restoration initiatives also need to confront core environmental challenges of climate change and inappropriate planting in savanna biomes, be robustly funded over the long term, and address issues of poor governance, inadequate land tenure, and sociocultural disparities in benefits and costs. Tackling these issues using the landscape approach is vital to realising the potential for restoration to break the cycle of land degradation and poverty, and deliver on its core environmental and social promises. ll

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“…Consequently, investment in conservation and restoration efforts have increased worldwide 4,5,6,7 , especially as a strategy to restore ecosystem services 8 . Whilst the cost-benefit ratio of restoration is often justified as ecosystem recovery that yields sufficient benefits to human prosperity 9 , recovery of ecosystems back to a reference state in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services 10 often requires decades 11,12,13 . Where damaged ecosystems provide reduced function or support reduced biodiversity relative to the historical "natural state" (reference/pristine condition), a recovery debt is accumulated 13 (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global success in oyster reef restoration despite ongoing recovery debt

Hemraj

Bishop

Hancock

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Habitat destruction and biodiversity loss from exploitation of ecosystems have led to increased restoration and conservation efforts worldwide. Disturbed ecosystems accumulate a recovery debt - the accumulated loss of ecosystem services - and quantifying this debt presents a valuable tool to develop better ecosystem restoration practices. Here, we quantified the ongoing recovery debt following structural restoration of oyster habitats, one of the most degraded marine ecosystems worldwide. We found that whilst restoration initiates a rapid increase in biodiversity and abundance of 2- to 5-fold relative to unrestored habitat, recovery rate decreases substantially within a few years post-restoration and accumulated global recovery debt persists at >35% per annum. Therefore, while efficient restoration methods will produce enhanced recovery success and minimise recovery debt, potential future coastal development should be weighed up against not just the instantaneous damage to ecosystem functions and services but also the potential for generational loss of services and long-term recovery.

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The economic consequences of conserving or restoring sites for nature

Cited by 41 publications

References 32 publications

Determining the financial costs and benefits of conservation actions: a framework to support decision making

Determining the financial costs and benefits of conservation actions: a framework to support decision making

Upscaling tropical restoration to deliver environmental benefits and socially equitable outcomes

Global success in oyster reef restoration despite ongoing recovery debt

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