Factoring economic costs into conservation planning may not improve agreement over priorities for protection

Paul R. Armsworth (), Heather B. Jackson, Seong-Hoon Cho (), Melissa Clark, Joseph E. Fargione, Gwenllian D. Iacona, Taeyoung Kim, Eric R. Larson, Thomas Minney and Nathan A. Sutton
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Paul R. Armsworth: University of Tennessee
Heather B. Jackson: University of Tennessee
Melissa Clark: The Nature Conservancy
Joseph E. Fargione: The Nature Conservancy
Gwenllian D. Iacona: University of Tennessee
Taeyoung Kim: University of Tennessee
Eric R. Larson: University of Tennessee
Thomas Minney: The Nature Conservancy
Nathan A. Sutton: University of Tennessee

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Conservation organizations must redouble efforts to protect habitat given continuing biodiversity declines. Prioritization of future areas for protection is hampered by disagreements over what the ecological targets of conservation should be. Here we test the claim that such disagreements will become less important as conservation moves away from prioritizing areas for protection based only on ecological considerations and accounts for varying costs of protection using return-on-investment (ROI) methods. We combine a simulation approach with a case study of forests in the eastern United States, paying particular attention to how covariation between ecological benefits and economic costs influences agreement levels. For many conservation goals, agreement over spatial priorities improves with ROI methods. However, we also show that a reliance on ROI-based prioritization can sometimes exacerbate disagreements over priorities. As such, accounting for costs in conservation planning does not enable society to sidestep careful consideration of the ecological goals of conservation.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-02399-y

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