Biodiversity Loss: Economic and Ecological Issues

This important book reports the findings of a research program that brought together economists and ecologists to consider the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss. It shows that while the immediate causes of biodiversity loss lie in habitat destruction and harvesting, the underlying causes are incentives that encourage resource users to ignore the effects of their actions. These effects include both loss of genetic material, and the collapse of ecosystem resilience–our insurance against the fundamental uncertain effects of economic and population growth. The solutions are argued to lie in the reform of incentives.