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19 results

  • Geographic and epistemic pluralism in the sources of evidence informing international environmental science–policy platforms: lessons learnt from the IPBES values assessment

  • Louise Guibrunet, David González-Jiménez, Gabriela Arroyo-Robles, Mariana Cantú-Fernández, Victoria Contreras, Daniela Flores Mendez, Arlen Valeria Ocampo Castrejón, Bosco Lliso, Ana Sofía Monroy-Sais, Tuyeni H. Mwampamba, Unai Pascual, Brigitte Baptiste, Mike Christie, Patricia Balvanera
  • Journal:
    Global Sustainability / Volume 7 / 2024
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    25 September 2024, e36
    • Article
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  • Non-technical summary

    This article examines the challenges and opportunities to integrate diverse sources of evidence in assessments produced by international platforms working at the science–policy interface. Diversity (or pluralism) of sources of literature, both in terms of their geographic origin and disciplinary focus, is essential for assessments to inform decision-making across social–ecological contexts. Using the recently completed ‘Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature’ of the Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services as a case, we find that significant effort has been dedicated to reviewing diverse literature. We discuss three strategies to expand pluralism in future assessments.

    Technical summary

    Representing plural views in science–policy platforms is essential to avoid reproducing geographic and epistemic biases that permeate contemporary scientific knowledge production and synthesis. The Intergovernmental Science–Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has strived to produce assessments that incorporate information from diverse regions and knowledge systems. We explore the geographic and epistemic pluralism of the literature included in the ‘Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuation of Nature’ (VA), and the challenges and opportunities to achieve such knowledge pluralism. We applied a bibliometric analysis to the sources of evidence cited in the VA, and reflected on the assessment development process, in which we were directly involved. Our results highlight the success of different strategies developed by VA experts to engage with diverse sources of literature. Still, most evidence was English-language academic literature produced in Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, echoing the prominence of this literature in scientific publication in environmental disciplines. Reflecting on our experiences, we discuss strategies that could further enhance the geographic and epistemic pluralism in the information reviewed for future environmental assessments produced by IPBES and other international science–policy platforms.

    Social media summary

    Epistemic and geographic pluralism was partially achieved in IPBES Values Assessment, and can be further enhanced in future assessments.

  • Cost-effectiveness targeting under multiple conservation goals and equity considerations in the Andes

  • ULF NARLOCH, UNAI PASCUAL, ADAM G. DRUCKER
  • Journal:
    Environmental Conservation / Volume 38 / Issue 4 / December 2011
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    01 August 2011, pp. 417-425

  • Internationally, there is political impetus towards providing incentive mechanisms, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES), that motivate land users to conserve that which benefits wider society by creating an exchange value for conservation services. PES may incorporate a number of conservation goals other than just maximizing the area under a certain land use, so as to optimize multiple benefits from environmental conservation. Environmental additionality (conservation services generated relative to no intervention) and social equity aspects (here an equitable distribution of conservation funds) of PES depend on the conservation goals underlying the cost-effective targeting of conservation payments, which remains to be adequately explored in the PES literature. This paper attempts to evaluate whether multiple conservation goals can be optimized, in addition to social equity, when paying for the on-farm conservation of neglected crop varieties (landraces), so as to generate agrobiodiversity conservation services. Case studies based on a conservation auction in the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes (through which community-based groups identified the conservation area and the number of farmers taking part in conservation, as well as the payment required), identified significant cost-effectiveness tradeoffs between alternative agrobiodiversity conservation goals. There appears to be a non-complementary relationship between maximizing conservation area under specific landraces (a proxy for genetic diversity maintenance) and the number of farmers conserving such landraces (a proxy for agricultural knowledge and cultural traditions maintenance). Neither of the two are closely connected with maximizing the number of targeted farming communities (a proxy for informal seed exchange networks and hence geneflow maintenance). Optimizing cost-effectiveness with regard to conservation area or number of farmers would also be associated with a highly unequal distribution of payments. Multi-criteria targeting approaches can reach compromise solutions, but frameworks for these are still to be established and scientifically informed about the underlying link between alternative conservation goals and conservation service provision.

  • Assessing the potential of labelling schemes for in situ landrace conservation: an example from India

  • VIJESH V. KRISHNA, UNAI PASCUAL, DAVID ZILBERMAN
  • Journal:
    Environment and Development Economics / Volume 15 / Issue 2 / April 2010
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    18 January 2010, pp. 127-151

  • This paper addresses the potential of in situ crop landrace conservation, employing market-based instruments, which pre-requires that (1) consumers hold positive use-value for the landrace attribute and (2) their willingness to pay covers both the transaction cost of implementing these instruments and the opportunity cost of landrace cultivation. The empirical examination is based on two closely related analyses of eggplant production and consumption sectors of India. At present, the vegetable markets of south India provide the landrace cultivators with a price premium adequate enough to cover the opportunity cost of not opting for high-yielding modern varieties. However, we detect an underutilized consumer demand for landrace products. The wide margin that exists between the price premium farmers currently obtain for the landrace attribute and what consumers are willing to pay for it is indicative of the unexploited potential of labelling and certification schemes as an emerging agrobiodiversity conservation strategy.

Biodiversity Economics
  • Principles, Methods and Applications
  • Edited by Andreas Kontoleon, Unai Pascual, Timothy Swanson
  • Published online:
    11 August 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 2007
  • Human induced biodiversity loss is greater now than at any time in human history, with extinctions occurring at rates hundreds of times higher than background extinction levels. The field of biodiversity economics analyses the socio-economic causes of and solutions to biodiversity loss by combining the disciplines of economics, ecology and biology. This field has shown a remarkable degree of transformation over the past four decades and now incorporates the analysis of the entire diversity of biological resources within the living world. Biodiversity Economics presents a series of papers that show how bio-economic analysis can be applied to the examination and evaluation of the problem of various forms of biodiversity loss. Containing insightful bio-economic research by some of prominent practitioners in the field, this volume will be an essential research tool to those working on biodiversity issues in the academic, policy and private sectors.

  • 15 - An evolutionary institutional approach to the economics of bioprospecting

    • By Tom Dedeurwaerdere, Assistant Professor National Foundation for Scientific Research, Belgium and Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, Vijesh Krishna, PhD Candidate Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Hohenheim, Germany, Unai Pascual, University Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge
  • Edited by Andreas Kontoleon, University of Cambridge, Unai Pascual, University of Cambridge, Timothy Swanson, University College London
  • Book:
    Biodiversity Economics
    Published online:
    11 August 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 2007, pp 417-445

  • Summary

    Introduction

    There is a significant strategic interest by ‘Northern’ industries of accessing and using genetic resources (GR) and associated traditional knowledge (TK) from the South. Such repository of bioresources in the South co-evolves through the development of TK and the continuous GR refinement adaptations in natural and managed ecosystems. The North/South debates over ownership, intellectual property rights (IPR) and access to the GR-TK stock were crystallized in the negotiations of the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which came into force in 1993, and now establishes the legal framework for the reciprocal transfer of bioresources between countries (Bhat 1999). In fact, the CBD stands as the only major international negotiated instrument that makes explicit provisions for the special link between TK, biodiversity and local and indigenous communities by granting rights to the latter in order to protect TK (Bodeker 2000). The CBD also regulates bioprospecting activities carried out by industrial (usually Northern) firms and it assigns a formal protocol for sharing the benefits from bioprospecting activities based on the ‘access and benefit sharing’ (ABS) agreement to GR-TK between the parties. In addition, it also calls for a free prior informed consent to be obtained from the holders of GR-TK prior to the bioprospecting activities taking place (Berlin and Berlin 2003). In addition, the CBD effectively asserts the property rights of the bioresources and GR in particular to the source country (c.f. CBD Article 15: Access to Genetic Resources).

  • Preface

    • By Andreas Kontoleon, University Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Unai Pascual, University Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Timothy Swanson, Chair in Law and Economics at the Department of Economics and Faculty of Law University College, London
  • Edited by Andreas Kontoleon, University of Cambridge, Unai Pascual, University of Cambridge, Timothy Swanson, University College London
  • Book:
    Biodiversity Economics
    Published online:
    11 August 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 2007, pp xx-xxi

  • Summary

    The field of biodiversity economics, i.e. the analysis of the problems at the interface between the disciplines of economics and biology, probably has its origins primarily in the work of Colin Clark. Much of this early work looked at the exploitation of fisheries in the context of various institutional assumptions: open access, social planning, etc. Since these early efforts, the field of biodiversity economics has expanded in many different directions. It still concerns the analysis of the causes of resource overexploitation and decline, but also includes within its core the examination of the sorts of externalities involved (values) and the types of policies applied. In addition, and most crucially, the field now encompasses many resources other than simply marine resources: forests, wildlife, and even genetic resources (used in agriculture and pharmaceutical industries). The entire diversity of biological resources within the living world is now brought within the field of biodiversity economics.

    All of these problems share a common aspect – the dynamic nature of biological resources. Biological resources are distinctive in that they live and grow and respond to other living things. This generates a common analysis across the entire discipline that focuses on how human societies interact with other living things and how management should take biological characteristics into consideration.

    In this volume we provide a set of papers that demonstrates the application of this framework across the entire range of issues currently under consideration within this important field.

  • Introduction

    • By Andreas Kontoleon, University Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Unai Pascual, University Lecturer in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Timothy Swanson, Chair in Law and Economics at the Department of Economics and Faculty of Law University College, London
  • Edited by Andreas Kontoleon, University of Cambridge, Unai Pascual, University of Cambridge, Timothy Swanson, University College London
  • Book:
    Biodiversity Economics
    Published online:
    11 August 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 2007, pp 1-21

  • Summary

    An introduction to biodiversity economics

    Biodiversity economics examines the causes, values and policies associated with the problem of biodiversity decline. It usually involves a dynamic analysis of the living resources and hence it must often incorporate the facets of growth and responsiveness that are characteristics of such living things. In addition, it often focuses on the more esoteric forms of non-use values, such as real options and existence values, and the techniques available for quantifying them. Finally, it must also consider the manner in which decisions are taken in the context of such complicated dynamics and values. In sum, the field of biodiversity economics considers some of the interesting and complex dynamics within and between the social and natural worlds.

    In this volume we attempt to categorise the various parts of this field under three headings: causes, values and policies. We then use a set of papers to demonstrate the meanings of these categories in this field and the development and extension of these concepts in this context. The intention is to demonstrate both the entire set of issues encompassed by the field of biodiversity economics and the manner in which frontier-level analysis and research is being undertaken within this realm.

    Biodiversity economics is exciting and important work, as demonstrated by the various chapters within this volume. It encompasses both interesting topics and contexts (such as wildlife, forests and genetic resources) and important and complex problems (such as biological resistance, invasion and valuation).