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Incentives, finance and policy
People’s economic decisions reflect their interests and preferences, which depend in turn on the information available to them and the incentives they face. Attempts to conserve nature without understanding the incentives that drive biodiversity loss are bound to fail. Economic incentives include public policies, market prices and property rights, as well as the underlying socio-economic conditions that influence people’s choices with respect to natural resources.
Recent work by environmental economists has helped to clarify the role of incentives in biodiversity loss and guided efforts to ‘internalize’ environmental values in decision-making. Increasingly, conservationists are looking to develop positive economic incentives that will encourage investments in biodiversity conservation by governments, communities and the private sector.
The Incentives, Finance and Policy section is divided into the following sub-categories:
• Taxes and subsidies – documents in this sub-category cover taxes and credits, royalties, user fees, performance bonds and fines, subsidies and other government payments intended to influence natural resource management.
• Property and use rights – looks into conservation concessions, easements, development rights, tradable permits, offsets and quotas, bio-prospecting and habitat supply auctions, among other approaches...
• Conservation finance – papers in this sub-category cover a range of finance topics and instruments, including public expenditure; debt-for-nature swaps; trust funds; aid flows; charitable contributions; tourism revenues, payments for ecosystem services and other financing mechanisms.
• Regulation and planning – this sub-category looks into the incentive effects of traditional environmental regulations, such as product/technology standards and zoning; as well as direct public provision including infrastructure investment.
• Demographic factors – for documents dealing with population growth, migration, urbanization, aging.
• Growth, poverty, inequality - for papers on environmental discrimination, differential purchasing power and related issues.
• Trade – for papers on the biodiversity impacts of trade; linkages between environmental and trade regimes, and related issues.
A selection of introductory papers on Incentives, Finance and Policy is provided below.
Year published: 1994
Editorial document
Year published: 1999
Region(s): Africa
Editorial document
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