INVESTING IN BIODIVERSITY - AN ECONOMIC-PERSPECTIVE ON GLOBAL PRIORITY SETTING

Biodiversity investment priorities are a major concern for funding age ncies and parties to the Convention on Biodiversity. We present a cost -effectiveness index designed to rank global biodiversity investments addressing weaknesses identified in several existing procedures. First , we explicitly address the issue of cost. Biodiversity conservation c an be expensive-ensuring that money is efficiently spent is important if conserving maximum biodiversity is an objective. Second, a high deg ree of threat to biodiversity is commonly accepted as constituting the principal reason for intervention and a basis for prioritization. The possibility that a high degree of threat might constitute a reason fo r non-intervention is rarely considered. The index presented in this s tudy seeks to address these shortcomings by incorporating biodiversity 'cost', as measured by investment, and biodiversity 'benefit', as mea sured by a representative biodiversity indicator, species, richness. T hese elements form the basis of the cost-benefit ratio needed for cost -effectiveness analysis. Investment in biodiversity is affected by iss ues of vulnerability (threat) and viability (success). A successful in vestment intervention will, however, depend on the probability or like lihood of success and the degree of threat prevalent in a particular c ountry. These are integrated into the index as probabilities which wil l influence the amount of biodiversity 'saved' by an intervention. We apply the index using data for the Asia-Pacific region, to provide a c ost-effective priority investment index (CEPII) ranking by country. Ac ute data limitations at the global level particularly in applying comp lementarity, necessitate caution in the interpretation of the index wh ich, like other methods, requires some subjective choice of success an d threat surrogates. The index continues the task of combining scienti fic and socioeconomic criteria relevant to global priorities.