Why does conservation minimize opportunity costs?

Abstract

Effective management of depleted natural resources can be achieved only through changes in human actions. Opportunity costs represent the forgone benefits that would have flowed in the absence of conservation interventions. To the extent that opportunity costs reflect lost opportunities for extractive uses (e.g., fishing or logging), and to the extent that those extractive uses present threats to nature, opportunity costs therefore reflect the positive differences for natural values that can be made through conservation management. Thus, logic dictates that, if conservationists make choices to minimize opportunity costs, they are also necessarily limiting their impact. Unfortunately, empirical evidence from many conservation contexts implies that conservationists indeed make choices consistent with an aim to minimize opportunitycosts, and hence impact. A better understanding of the relationship between opportunity costs and conservation impact will make the language used to communicate conservation progress, targets, and planning more honest and accountable and more explicitly focused on the differences our actions make.

An assessment of the state of conservation planning in Europe

“…For example, current rates of changes in climate and land use fundamentally affect the efficiency and role of protected areas, and new advances in SCP have enabled the better accounting of dynamics such as species distribution shifts in future protected area designations [38][39][40]. Other methodological developments have enabled a better integration of uncertainties [41], costs [42], connectivity [43,44], responses to management scenarios [45] and multi-objective optimizations [27,31,46,47], all of which add more nuance and realism to the resulting plan, potentially contributing to successful adoption of results. Ultimately, any implementation is dependent on the involvement of stakeholders and efforts have been taken to incorporate their visions, feedback and concerns at various stages of SCP exercises [33,35].…”

An assessment of the state of conservation planning in Europe

“…For example, current rates of changes in climate and land use fundamentally affect the efficiency and role of protected areas, and new advances in SCP have enabled the better accounting of dynamics such as species distribution shifts in future protected area designations [38][39][40]. Other methodological developments have enabled a better integration of uncertainties [41], costs [42], connectivity [43,44] and multi-objective optimizations [27,31,45,46], all of which add more nuance and realism to the resulting plan, potentially contributing to successful adoption of results. Ultimately, any implementation is dependent on the involvement of stakeholders and efforts have been taken to incorporate their visions, feedback and concerns at various stages of SCP exercises [33,35].…”