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The role of cost-effectiveness analysis in conservation decision-making
Biological Conservation 143 (2010) 826–827
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon
Short communication
The role of cost-effectiveness analysis in conservation decision-making Dominic Moran a, Helen Laycock b, Piran C.L. White b,* a b
Scottish Agricultural College, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH9 3JG, United Kingdom Environment Department, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 14 December 2009 Accepted 20 December 2009 Available online 25 January 2010 Keywords: Biodiversity conservation Conservation evaluation Evidence Conservation policy Resource allocation Society
a b s t r a c t Strategies for biodiversity conservation require society to make choices between competing outcomes. However, these choices are complicated by an incomplete understanding of the ecological significance of different species and the lack of robust measures of conservation outcomes in relation to investments. Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) provides an objective assessment process that can help us to evaluate the effectiveness of different conservation programmes and adjust them in an adaptive manner to improve the chances of success. CEA and other objectively-constructed methods should form an important part of the evidence base for conservation decision-making and evaluation. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Biodiversity conservation requires society to make stark choices about resource allocation. These decisions are multi-faceted and complex, and a range of tools is required to contribute to the evidence base underpinning policy decisions. Evaluating biodiversity conservation programmes is especially challenging for two reasons. Firstly, the measurement is problematic because of an incomplete understanding of the ecological significance of different species. Secondly, conservation science has no strong tradition for evaluating outcomes. Despite calls for more conservation spending, there is divergence of opinion about what to conserve, what actually works, and what we are getting from investment. This debate often suggests that desirable outcomes can be defined as much by social consensus as by objective scientific data. Ideally, both strands should combine to define objective criteria for evaluation. Accepting inherent shortcomings in scientific knowledge, our paper applied a rudimentary cost-effectiveness (CEA) measure to focus on the second issue (Laycock et al., 2009). Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is routinely applied in other domains of public policy, most controversially healthcare spending where costs are only too apparent relative to a multitude of competing but incommensurate health state outcomes. Our application attempted to measure returns from the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) species, a flagship conservation programme where evidence on cost and effectiveness could reasonably be expected to be central to any evaluation. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Moran), [email protected] (H. Laycock), [email protected] (P.C.L. White). 0006-3207/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.12.007
Hockley (2009) offers two objections that he considers would invalidate CEA in the BAP context. Firstly, he considers that the status metric used is largely limited in its commensurability between species and thus its meaning, and secondly, he suggests that CEA here does not include ancillary or ‘‘non-focal” benefits. Taking these criticisms in turn, we make our caveats on the first explicit in our paper. Specifically, we recognise the subjectivity in determining a generally applicable metric of conservation status for all species akin to that used in human health assessment. CEA and similar tools are always handicapped by the need to have a common outcome metric. Hockley suggests that the complexity of biodiversity defeats the development of such a metric, and that we cannot invite the conservation community to consider the results, even if some species are demonstrably yielding little return. His criticism suggests recourse to a metric that is more ‘‘socially constructed”, for example a monetary valuation for use in costbenefit appraisal. Even abstracting from the valuation problems we address in our paper, supplanting scientific objectivity with a measure that would be entirely socially constructed would be subject to considerable uncertainty and would not lend itself to an adaptive process of policy development. The second point on the omission of ‘non-focal’ benefits is indeed true, but somewhat beside the point unless we are attempting a wider social cost-benefit analysis of BAP programmes, which was not the purpose. Rather, our objective was to evaluate programmes in terms of their own stated aims, which are typically in terms of species status. If they are under-performing on this basis, then we should legitimately question their efficiency and thus design and execution, irrespective of any other incidental benefits and costs. Importantly, this objective assessment process can allow
D. Moran et al. / Biological Conservation 143 (2010) 826–827
us to evaluate the effectiveness of what we are doing, and adjust it in an adaptive manner to improve the chances of success. The costs of poor conservation choices matter, and effort should be invested in the development of transparent tools to evaluate rigorously the efficiency of conservation. In addressing this question we find the final charge of hubris unwarranted. In his reply, Hockley claims that we proposed that CEA would be a better way of allocating scarce conservation resources than the current system of democratically-elected governments and memberfunded NGOs. In this context, we would point out that funding decisions are in fact made frequently by non-elected government agencies (and therefore cannot be used as a reliable indicator of revealed preference, as Hockley proposes). However, the key point here is that in making this claim, Hockley misrepresents our work.
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We do not doubt that there is a constituency of expertise that may indeed be better positioned (than economists) to make choices about conservation. The message of our paper is to demonstrate that objectively-constructed methods, such as CEA, have an important role to play, alongside other methods, in contributing to the evidence base for conservation decision-making and evaluation. References Hockley, N., 2009. No shortcuts to prioritising conservation funding. Biological Conservation, in press, doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.12.020. Laycock, H., Moran, D., Smart, J., Raffaelli, D., White, P., 2009. Evaluating the costeffectiveness of conservation: the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Biological Conservation 142, 3120–3127.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon
Short communication
The role of cost-effectiveness analysis in conservation decision-making Dominic Moran a, Helen Laycock b, Piran C.L. White b,* a b
Scottish Agricultural College, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH9 3JG, United Kingdom Environment Department, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 14 December 2009 Accepted 20 December 2009 Available online 25 January 2010 Keywords: Biodiversity conservation Conservation evaluation Evidence Conservation policy Resource allocation Society
a b s t r a c t Strategies for biodiversity conservation require society to make choices between competing outcomes. However, these choices are complicated by an incomplete understanding of the ecological significance of different species and the lack of robust measures of conservation outcomes in relation to investments. Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) provides an objective assessment process that can help us to evaluate the effectiveness of different conservation programmes and adjust them in an adaptive manner to improve the chances of success. CEA and other objectively-constructed methods should form an important part of the evidence base for conservation decision-making and evaluation. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Biodiversity conservation requires society to make stark choices about resource allocation. These decisions are multi-faceted and complex, and a range of tools is required to contribute to the evidence base underpinning policy decisions. Evaluating biodiversity conservation programmes is especially challenging for two reasons. Firstly, the measurement is problematic because of an incomplete understanding of the ecological significance of different species. Secondly, conservation science has no strong tradition for evaluating outcomes. Despite calls for more conservation spending, there is divergence of opinion about what to conserve, what actually works, and what we are getting from investment. This debate often suggests that desirable outcomes can be defined as much by social consensus as by objective scientific data. Ideally, both strands should combine to define objective criteria for evaluation. Accepting inherent shortcomings in scientific knowledge, our paper applied a rudimentary cost-effectiveness (CEA) measure to focus on the second issue (Laycock et al., 2009). Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is routinely applied in other domains of public policy, most controversially healthcare spending where costs are only too apparent relative to a multitude of competing but incommensurate health state outcomes. Our application attempted to measure returns from the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) species, a flagship conservation programme where evidence on cost and effectiveness could reasonably be expected to be central to any evaluation. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Moran), [email protected] (H. Laycock), [email protected] (P.C.L. White). 0006-3207/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.12.007
Hockley (2009) offers two objections that he considers would invalidate CEA in the BAP context. Firstly, he considers that the status metric used is largely limited in its commensurability between species and thus its meaning, and secondly, he suggests that CEA here does not include ancillary or ‘‘non-focal” benefits. Taking these criticisms in turn, we make our caveats on the first explicit in our paper. Specifically, we recognise the subjectivity in determining a generally applicable metric of conservation status for all species akin to that used in human health assessment. CEA and similar tools are always handicapped by the need to have a common outcome metric. Hockley suggests that the complexity of biodiversity defeats the development of such a metric, and that we cannot invite the conservation community to consider the results, even if some species are demonstrably yielding little return. His criticism suggests recourse to a metric that is more ‘‘socially constructed”, for example a monetary valuation for use in costbenefit appraisal. Even abstracting from the valuation problems we address in our paper, supplanting scientific objectivity with a measure that would be entirely socially constructed would be subject to considerable uncertainty and would not lend itself to an adaptive process of policy development. The second point on the omission of ‘non-focal’ benefits is indeed true, but somewhat beside the point unless we are attempting a wider social cost-benefit analysis of BAP programmes, which was not the purpose. Rather, our objective was to evaluate programmes in terms of their own stated aims, which are typically in terms of species status. If they are under-performing on this basis, then we should legitimately question their efficiency and thus design and execution, irrespective of any other incidental benefits and costs. Importantly, this objective assessment process can allow
D. Moran et al. / Biological Conservation 143 (2010) 826–827
us to evaluate the effectiveness of what we are doing, and adjust it in an adaptive manner to improve the chances of success. The costs of poor conservation choices matter, and effort should be invested in the development of transparent tools to evaluate rigorously the efficiency of conservation. In addressing this question we find the final charge of hubris unwarranted. In his reply, Hockley claims that we proposed that CEA would be a better way of allocating scarce conservation resources than the current system of democratically-elected governments and memberfunded NGOs. In this context, we would point out that funding decisions are in fact made frequently by non-elected government agencies (and therefore cannot be used as a reliable indicator of revealed preference, as Hockley proposes). However, the key point here is that in making this claim, Hockley misrepresents our work.
827
We do not doubt that there is a constituency of expertise that may indeed be better positioned (than economists) to make choices about conservation. The message of our paper is to demonstrate that objectively-constructed methods, such as CEA, have an important role to play, alongside other methods, in contributing to the evidence base for conservation decision-making and evaluation. References Hockley, N., 2009. No shortcuts to prioritising conservation funding. Biological Conservation, in press, doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2009.12.020. Laycock, H., Moran, D., Smart, J., Raffaelli, D., White, P., 2009. Evaluating the costeffectiveness of conservation: the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Biological Conservation 142, 3120–3127.