Conference Agenda

For over 4 decades, the IUCN has assessed the conservation status of thousands of

species, categorising them in order of concern from Least Concern to Critically Endangered and Extinct. We assess the likelihood for a species to change from a given conservation status to another, estimating a yearly Markov switching model. This allows us to calculate the likelihood of extinction for a given time horizon for species in each category. We also investigate how these likelihoods of extinction differ for different subgroups of species (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians plants) and different periods. Next, we assess the relationship between habitat and the likelihood of belonging to an IUCN status. Combining this with our Markov switching model, we express the risk of extinction as a function of current and natural habitat. Third, having established an extinction likelihood function, we can estimate the effect of developing a plot of land on the number of extinctions before 2100 by calculating the change of extinction risk for all species that are (potentially) present on that plot of land. Forth, we develop the concept of the value of a statistical species as the ratio of the cost of protecting land and its effect on the likelihood of a species going extinct. This value allows us to rank plots of lands according to their priority for conservation. Finally, we compare our empirical species extinction function with other approaches in the literature, such as the Species Area Relationship and the STAR biodiversity index.

Environmental challenges require well-informed policy action. While a comprehensive understanding of benefits, costs, and fiscal externalities resulting from a policy is ideal, policymakers often lack resources for primary valuation studies and transfer benefit estimates from existing contexts to policy sites. Widely used benefits transfer techniques often rely on the strong, and empirically questionable, assumption that the income elasticity of willingness to pay (WTP) is one. We extend the transfer function in Baumgartner et al. (2017) to allow flexible income elasticity and derive an adjustment factor that depends on differences income, environmental goods, and prices. Using a CES utility framework and data on eutrophication reduction in Finland and Estonia, we show that transfer factors vary from 0.175 to 0.767 depending on elasticity assumptions. Applying our method to tree cover valuation across seven US cities using FEMA cost-benefit guidance, we find that alternative elasticity assumptions η = 1 (Income only matters for benefits transfer), ¯η ∗ = 0 (environmental good level only matters), and heterogeneous city-level η ∗ produce large shifts in the magnitude and rank order of WTP across cities. Our findings suggest that incorporating additional information into benefits transfer exercises does not always make them more accurate and that accounting for heterogeneous η across space and time can have important implications

for policy siting, implementation, and efficacy.

Natural grasslands constitute one of the planet’s most extensive and ecologically important biomes in the planet. Moreover, they provide essential services for societal well-being, supporting the livelihoods of millions of people. Nevertheless, the public.good nature of many of these services, conspires against the sustainable use of natural grasslands. This is particularly true for those services provided by biodiversity, usually not the most linked to marketed goods. In this paper we inform policy makers about the public preferences for biodiversity conservation in the Río de la Plata grasslands and basic alternative designs of the conservation program. To do it, we conduct a contingent valuation survey among Uruguayan households. We find that Uruguayan households exhibit a positive median willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation under the proposed program and that this is largely insensitive to key design features, including the sample design and the payment horizon. In particular, the estimated willingness to pay is insensitive also to whether conservation areas are contiguous or fragmented. Overall, acceptance behavior is driven mainly by the cost of the program and by socio-demographic and attitudinal factors.

From a policy perspective, this study shows that stated willingness to pay for biodiversity conservation reflects support for conservation policies. The limited sensitivity of stated values to ecological design features underscores the importance of clearly communicating the biodiversity implications of conserving fragmented areas when designing conservation policies. Finally, under standard cost–benefit criteria, the estimated aggregate willingness to pay exceeds prevailing land rental values in the relevant regions, suggesting that a payment for ecosystem services program for natural grassland conservation would be welfare-improving.

We study exploitation and conservation of natural assets, e.g. tropical forests, in a dynamic game between consecutive governments, where each party in power allocates the asset into exploitation and conservation. The model includes area-based conservation i.e. protected areas, and we show that a multiplier affects both the exploitation and conservation of the asset: the multiplier amplifies the effect of a parameter change on current exploitation and affects also the current conservation. All of the initial natural asset is allocated either to exploitation and conservation in the long run and the model can explain the formation of protected areas. We also incorporate pro-exploitation and pro-conservation lobbyists into the framework.