Regulating global biodiversity: what is the problem?

Timothy Swanson and Ben Groom

Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2012, vol. 28, issue 1, 114-138

Abstract: We distinguish between local problems of biodiversity loss and global ones, where international cooperation is required. Global biodiversity regulation involves choosing the optimal stopping rule regarding global land conversions, in order to ensure that some areas of unconverted natural reserves remain to support the production sector that exists on converted lands. The basic difficulty with implementing a solution to this global problem lies in the asymmetry in endowments between those states that have previously converted, and those that have not. We demonstrate that the fundamental problem of global biodiversity regulation is similar to the bargaining problem analysed by Nash, Rubinstein, and others. There are benefits from global land conversion, and there must be agreement on their distribution before the conversion process can be halted. Since the institutions addressing global biodiversity problems are either highly ineffectual (benefit-sharing agreements, prior informed-consent clauses) or very extreme (incremental cost contracts), the biodiversity bargaining problem remains unresolved. For this reason we anticipate that suboptimal conversions will continue to occur, as a way of protesting the ineffective and unfair approaches employed in addressing this problem to date. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/oxrep/grs003 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Regulating Global Biodiversity: What is the Problem? (2012)
Working Paper: Regulating Global Biodiversity: What is the Problem? (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxford:v:28:y:2012:i:1:p:114-138

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Review of Economic Policy is currently edited by Christopher Adam

More articles in Oxford Review of Economic Policy from Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().