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Prioritising biosecurity investment between agricultural and environmental systems

  • CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS "DECISION MAKING AND SCIENCE"
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Abstract

This paper is motivated by the observation that there is a difference between the time paths of damage valuations for invasions which affect agricultural compared with environmental systems. In particular, unlike agricultural systems, social valuation of an environmental system is likely to be exponentially positively related to the extent of its deterioration. This paper explores the implications of this difference in determining biosecurity investment priorities where criteria for decision-making are relatively narrow. It is concluded that because of this difference an environmental system will often not be prioritised for such protection over an agricultural system even though its ultimate social value exceeds that of the agricultural system. For this reason a broader set of decision criteria are needed that enable decision-makers to learn more about the context of biosecurity investment decisions.

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Notes

  1. The term IAS applies when the abundance and distribution of a non-native (or alien) organism exceeds a defined and accepted environmental standard, resulting in a net negative effect on social welfare (Cook et al. 2010b).

  2. This specification of uniformity is made to simplify the biological component of the model and will be reviewed in section three.

  3. Here the maintenance of rural populations is associated with environmental damage mitigation, so it is difficult to draw conclusions about the willingness of society to pay for the preservation of rural communities per se due to embedded environmental values.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. We would like to acknowledge the support of the Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity, established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program.

Conflict of interest

The author D. C. Cook declares that his contribution to the research was sponsored by the Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity and that he has no conflict of interest. The authors R. W. Fraser, J. K. Waage and M. B. Thomas declare that their contributions to the research were not sponsored and that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    David C. Cook

  2. Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity, LPO Box 5012, Bruce, ACT, 2617, Australia

    David C. Cook

  3. Department of Economics, The University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NZ, UK

    Rob W. Fraser

  4. London International Development Centre, 36 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD, UK

    Jeffrey K. Waage

  5. Department of Entomology and Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Matthew B. Thomas

Authors
  1. David C. Cook
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  2. Rob W. Fraser
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  3. Jeffrey K. Waage
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  4. Matthew B. Thomas
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David C. Cook.

Additional information

Conference Proceedings: “Decision Making and Science—The Balancing of Risk Based Decisions that Influence Sustainability of Agricultural Production”. 7th and 8th October 2010 in Berlin, Germany. Sponsored by the OECD Co-operative Research Programme.

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Cook, D.C., Fraser, R.W., Waage, J.K. et al. Prioritising biosecurity investment between agricultural and environmental systems. J. Verbr. Lebensm. 6 (Suppl 1), 3–13 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00003-011-0689-0

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