Biodiversity loss in Europe is caused to a large extent by agricultural intensification. To halt this loss and to support species and habitat types in agricultural areas, agri-environment schemes have been introduced in Europe to compensate farmers for (costly) conservation measures. Currently,...

Biodiversity is an important environmental public good. However, the literature suggests that it is not clear how its economic value should be estimated; there is no established framework for doing this. This paper summarises concepts of biodiversity value from the ecological and economic...

In this paper we investigate an important obstacle which substantially complicates cooperation between ecologists and economists but which has received little attention so far: differences between the modelling approaches in economics and ecology. To understand these differences, 60 models...

We analyze a dynamic and stochastic ecological-economic model of grazing management in semi-arid rangelands. The non-equilibrium ecosystem is driven by stochastic precipitation. A risk averse farmer chooses a grazing management strategy under uncertainty such as to maximize expected utility from...

Invasive species are one of the main reasons for the loss of biodiversity. Therefore, national strategies are developed to deal with biological invasions. Economic evaluation as a tool of policy advice has to take into account three challenges: (1) reflecting ecological knowledge, which is...

An assessment of the consequences of biological invasions and of the measures taken against must be at the base of each social decision in this field. Three forms of uncertainty can be distinguished that make such a decision difficult to take: (1) factual uncertainty, which encompasses not only...

Recent political developments and academic debate indicate that future political commitment to the protection of natural resources is uncertain. This political uncertainty is particularly problematic when the danger of irreversible damage such as the extinction of species looms. Accordingly,...

In der politischen Diskussion werden für den Erhalt der biologischen Vielfalt in der Regel ökonomische Argumente vorgebracht: Biodiversität sollte als ökonomisches Gut betrachtet werden. Dem Rückgang der Vielfalt sei entgegenzutreten, indem man die Auswirkungen menschlicher Aktivitäten auf...

In this paper a method is developed to derive prices for natural goods from information about material and energy flows within ecosystems. The derivation is based on an analogy between ecological and economic systems: both systems are characterized by flows of material and energy. To derive...