You may recall that when I started this course I said that I was going to try to focus on biological issues rather than political or social issues associated with conservation. As we began to see very clearly in our discussion of ecosystem management in south Florida and as we've seen even more clearly in our discussion of setting global conservation priorities and decision making under uncertainty, the line between the scientific evaluation of possible endpoints and the societal choice among those endpoints is easy to state but difficult to draw. In the remaining lectures we focus almost entirely on some ``non-biological'' aspects of conservation biology. Today and Wednesday we'll focus on understanding more about the role that economics might play. Next Monday we'll take a more philosophical approach, because many types of value are non-economic. Before we start, let me say a few words about why we're going to talk about economics.
First, as a practical matter, implementing conservation plans costs money. That money has to come from somewhere. As with many aspects of personal and social decision-making it is easier to spend money on something when we see some benefit in return, and it's easiest to compare costs with benefits if they're both measured in the same currency. In short, describing the problem as one of financial allocation is a convenient way of measuring everything on the same scale.
Second, the Reagan administration promoted the use of cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the benefits associated with particular governmental regulations exceeded the costs. As a result, environmental economists have been developing sophisticated methods of placing values on things like ecosystem services or the existence of bald eagles. It's important to be aware of the potentials and pitfalls of the methods they employ.
Finally, many conservationists think that if we could actually put a monetary value on the diversity were losing, the cost to continuing degradation of the environment would be so enormous that it would be clear that we're better off putting a stop to that degradation. Similarly, many conservationists think that if we simply explain the enormous cost associated with alleviating certain possible catastrophes, e.g., coastal flooding associated with the 20cm rise in global sea levels that may happen by the year 2100, it would be clear that we're better off adopting policies that avoid those catastrophes1