The Ecological Economics of Biodiversity: Methods and Policy Applications

The loss of biodiversity has put increasing pressure on the stability and continuity of ecosystems, and their ability to provide goods and services to mankind. This valuable new book addresses this issue and presents an integrated ecological-economic perspective on the analysis of biodiversity loss and conservation. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach and attempts both to provide a definition of biodiversity benefits as well as investigate alternative perspectives on biodiversity. The book also presents a classification of biodiversity values and effectively illustrates which economic valuation methods can best measure which type of biodiversity value.

The distinguished authors move on to discuss the utility of the application of the economics-ecology interface and integrated modelling for the assessment of biodiversity values. In doing so, they consider the use of multi-criteria evaluation and meta-analytical methods to deal with the aggregation of information from multiple disciplines and past valuation studies, respectively. The book concludes by addressing the role of biodiversity indicators and monetary information for policy design and biodiversity management, devoting special attention to the certification and the ecolabeling of biodiversity benefits.

The integration of economic and ecological theories and methods, and the strong methodological orientation will be of immense benefit to students, academics and researchers of environmental economics, environmental science and ecology. Policymakers involved with nature policy and management will also find this volume to be of great practical value.

Paulo A.L.D. Nunes, Global Manager and Coordinator, Ecosystems Economics Unit, United Nations Environment Programme, Kenya, Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh, ICREA Professor, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain and Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Peter Nijkamp, Professor Emeritus, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Centre for European Studies, Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza din Iasi, Romania and the School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, China