Environmental service payments: evaluating biodiversity conservation trade-offs and cost-efficiency in the Osa Conservation Area, Costa Rica.
The cost-efficiency of payments for environmental services (PES) to private landowners in the Osa Conservation Area, Costa Rica, is evaluated in terms of the trade-off between biodiversity representation and opportunity costs of conservation to agricultural and forestry land-use. Using available GIS data and an 'off-the-shelf' software application called TARGET, we find that the PES allocation criteria applied by authorities in 2002-2003 were more than twice as cost-efficient as criteria applied during 1999-2001. Results show that a policy relevant assessment of the cost-effectiveness of PES relative to other conservation policies can be carried out at regional level using available studies and GIS data. However, there are a number of data and conceptual limitations to using heuristic optimisation algorithms in the analysis of the cost-efficiency of PES. Site specific data on probabilities of land-use change, and a detailed specification of opportunity costs of farm land, labour and capital are required to use algorithms such as TARGET for ranking individual sites based on cost-efficiency. Despite its conceptual soundness for regional conservation analysis, biodiversity complementarity presents a practical challenge as a criterion for PES eligibility at farm level because it varies depending on the set of areas under PES contracts at any one time.
Barton
D N
DN
Norwegian Institute for Water Research, NIVA, Oslo, Norway. david.barton@niva.no
Faith
D P
DP
Rusch
G M
GM
Acevedo
H
H
Paniagua
L
L
Castro
M
M
D000465:Algorithms; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003364:Costa Rica; D013045:Species Specificity