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Conservation
Conservation
Economics, Science, and Policy

Charles Perrings and Ann Kinzig

1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press


198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in


a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form


and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data


Names: Perrings, Charles, author. | Kinzig, Ann P. (Ann Patricia) author.
Title: Conservation : economics, science, and policy / Charles Perrings
and Ann Kinzig, Tempe, Arizona.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020046931 (print) | LCCN 2020046932 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190613600 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190613617 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780190613631 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Conservation of natural resources. |
Conservation of natural resources—Decision making.
Classification: LCC S936.P47 2020 (print) | LCC S936 (ebook) | DDC 333.72—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046931
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020046932

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190613600.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by LSC Communications, United States of America
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
In memory of
Georgina Mace (1953–​2020) and Karl-​Göran Mäler (1939–​2020)
two wonderful people
whose enduring contributions to science have influenced much
of our thinking
Contents

Preface  xi
List of Figures  xv
List of Tables  xix
List of Abbreviations  xxi
1 Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change  1
1.1 Introduction  1
1.2 The biological record  7
1.3 Implications for conservation  10
1.4 Plan of the book  19

PART I TH E E CON OMIC THEOR Y OF CO NSER VATI O N


2 The Decision Problem  27
2.1 Introduction  27
2.2 Elements of the decision problem  29
2.3 A numerical example: the wine storage problem  41
2.4 Summary and conclusions  44

3 Hotelling Conservation  47
3.1 Introduction  47
3.2 The Hotelling arbitrage condition  48
3.3 Hotelling prices and quantities  53
3.4 Renewable natural resources and the Hotelling arbitrage condition  56
3.5 Connecting Hotelling conservation and conservation biology  67
3.6 Summary and conclusions  69

4 The Conservation of Renewable Resources  72


4.1 Introduction  72
4.2 Marine capture fisheries  74
4.3 Forests and forestry  86
4.4 Rangelands  94
4.5 Summary and conclusions  100

PART II VA LUAT ION


5 The Valuation of Environmental Goods and Services  107
5.1 Introduction  107
5.2 The basis of value  108
5.3 Ecosystem services and the value of nonmarketed
environmental resources  114
viii Contents

5.4 The valuation of provisioning and cultural services  117


5.5 Revealed preference methods  119
5.6 Stated preference methods  124
5.7 The valuation of regulating services  130
5.8 Summary and conclusions  134

6 The Valuation of Environmental Assets  140


6.1 Introduction  140
6.2 Sustainability and the value of environmental assets  141
6.3 The value of environmental assets in the national accounts  145
6.4 Inclusive wealth  148
6.5 Environmental assets and total factor productivity  152
6.6 Summary and conclusions  156

7 Substitutability and the Valuation of Natural Capital  159


7.1 Introduction  159
7.2 Substitution in production  160
7.3 Substitution in a generalized model of joint production  168
7.4 Substitution and public goods  170
7.5 Net substitutes and complements  173
7.6 Conditional substitutes and complements  176
7.7 Summary and conclusions  178

PART III A LIG NIN G T HE PR IVAT E AN D SO C I A L VA LUE


OF NATURA L RESOUR CES

8 Environmental Public Goods  185


8.1 Introduction  185
8.2 The optimal provision of public goods  187
8.3 Types of public goods  192
8.4 Strategic behavior and the provision of public goods  198
8.5 Resolving the public goods problem  202
8.6 Summary and conclusions  204

9 Environmental Externalities  207


9.1 Introduction  207
9.2 The nature of environmental externalities  210
9.3 Unidirectional externalities  211
9.4 Positional externalities  216
9.5 Public externalities  219
9.6 Aligning private and social value  223
9.7 Summary and conclusions  230

10 Poverty, Value, and Conservation  234


10.1 Introduction  234
10.2 Income effects and poverty  237
10.3 Poverty-​population-​environment  240
Contents ix

10.4 Per capita income growth and conservation  243


10.5 Wealth, property rights, and conservation  246
10.6 Summary and conclusions  250

11 Conservation in Protected Areas  255


11.1 Introduction  255
11.2 Protected area design: ecological principles  257
11.3 Protected area design: economic principles  261
11.4 Protected areas and the supply of ecosystem services  268
11.5 Protected areas and poverty  271
11.6 Summary and conclusions  274

12 Conservation Beyond Protected Areas  279


12.1 Introduction  279
12.2 Conservation of threatened wild species outside protected areas  280
12.3 Conservation in agriculture  287
12.4 Habitat substitutability  298
12.5 Summary and conclusions  300

13 Conservation at the National Level  305


13.1 Introduction  305
13.2 Property rights  307
13.3 Legal restrictions on land use  309
13.4 Environmental offsets  314
13.5 Economic incentives  318
13.6 Summary and conclusions  326

14 Conservation at the International Level  331


14.1 Introduction  331
14.2 Migratory species  334
14.3 Transboundary and linked ecosystems  338
14.4 Trade, travel, and the movement of species  342
14.5 Strategic behavior and transboundary conservation  346
14.6 Funding conservation as a global public good  353
14.7 Summary and conclusions  357

15 Conservation in the Future  361


15.1 Introduction  361
15.2 Environmental trends  364
15.3 Economic trends  371
15.4 The population affected by conservation decisions  382
15.5 The optimal scale at which to conserve and the governance
of conservation  387

Index  401
Preface

As we finalize this book, the world economy has been rocked by the emer-
gence and spread of yet another novel zoonotic disease—​COVID-​19—​with
origins at the interface between humans, their domesticates, and wildlife. It
reminds us that conservation is as much about the control of invasive pests
and pathogens as it is about the preservation of endangered wild plants and
animals. It also reminds us that every choice we make to promote or de-
grade life forms involves a social cost. In the COVID-​19 case, the costs of our
attempts to control the disease have involved major economic dislocation
worldwide. The book starts from the premise that the conservation of any re-
source involves an opportunity cost—​the benefits that could have been had
by converting that resource to a different use. The conservation of natural re-
sources, like the conservation of works of art, or historic buildings, involves
trade-​offs.
The book is, first, a study of how people decide to conserve or convert re-
sources. Without worrying about the characteristics of particular resources,
we ask when and for how long it may be optimal to conserve resources. In
other words, we consider the general principles involved in making conserva-
tion decisions.
The book is, second, a study of the conservation of resources of the nat-
ural environment. This includes both directly exploited resources such as ag-
ricultural soils, minerals, forests, fish stocks, and the like, and the species and
ecosystems put at risk when people choose to convert natural habitat, or to
discharge waste products to water, land, or air. Conservation is as much about
the problem of how much or how little to extract from the environment as it is
about how much to leave intact.
The book is, third, a study of the context in which people make conserva-
tion decisions. Just as the decisions people make about investment in finan-
cial assets are influenced by the tax rules established in different countries, so
too decisions about the conservation of natural resources are influenced by
property rights, laws, and customs. This includes environmental regulations
within countries, and environmental agreements between countries. We con-
sider how conservation relates to environmental governance, and how gov-
ernance structures have evolved over time.
xii Preface

We have aimed the book at three audiences. The first is graduate students
in any of the disciplines bearing on conservation. While the arguments may
be most familiar to those studying environmental, resource, or ecological
economics, it is intended to be accessible to geographers, ecologists, conser-
vation biologists, political scientists, those studying environmental law, and
to those in the comparatively new field of sustainability science. The second
audience we have in mind is conservation practitioners, and professionals
whose remit includes the management of the natural environment and the
use of natural resources. We hope that the book will help those charged with
the conservation of the natural environment to think about the trade-​offs in-
volved, the better to balance the protection of endangered species and other
societal goals, like economic development or poverty alleviation. The third
audience we have in mind is the substantial environmentally informed and
aware general public who are interested in digging beneath the superficial
treatment of conservation often encountered in the media. For people who
want to understand the balance that should be struck between preservation
and exploitation, between the protection of beneficial species and the control
of harmful species, the book offers a set of principles that can be applied in
most circumstances.
By including a somewhat formal and fully general theory of conservation,
we hope to show what is needed to make rational conservation decisions.
By including applications to a range of environmental resource allocation
problems, we hope to illustrate the many and varied factors that need to be
taken account of in the process. While our discussion of the theory of conser-
vation includes formal mathematical arguments, these are always paralleled
by a nonmathematical development of the same arguments. We hope that
readers will be able to select the approach that best suits them.
The first draft of the book was largely written while we on sabbatical
in Italy and Greece in 2018, and we thank our hosts in Siena and Volos,
Simone Borghese and George Halkos, for the opportunity to work in such
congenial environments. We also thank our home institution, Arizona State
University, for funding and logistical support during the preparation of
the book. Our thinking has been influenced over the years by many won-
derful people, too numerous to mention here. You know who you are, and
we thank you.
Finally, the book is the culmination of many years of work on different
aspects of the conservation problem, undertaken with the support of a
range of funding agencies. Three projects undertaken with colleagues at
a number of institutions have been particularly important: Advancing
Conservation in a Social Context, funded by the Macarthur Foundation;
Preface xiii

Modeling Anthropogenic Effects in the Spread of Infectious Diseases,


funded by the National Institutes of Health (Grant 1R01GM100471); and
Risks of Animal and Plant Infectious Diseases through Trade, funded by the
National Science Foundation’s Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases
program (Grant 1414374).
Charles Perrings and Ann Kinzig, July 2020
Figures

1.1 The proportion of national land under crop and livestock production
in 2013 8
1.2 Terrestrial and marine hotspots 18
2.1 The marginal rate of substitution 33
2.2 The income and substitution effects of a change in the commodity prices 34
2.3 The optimal wine storage period 43
3.1 The Hotelling arbitrage condition and optimal conservation in a
two-​period problem 52
3.2 The Hotelling price path 54
3.3 The Hotelling extraction path 55
3.4 Compensatory and critically depensatory density dependent population growth 59
3.5 Harvest and stock size in the steady state 66
4.1 The high seas or sea areas beyond national jurisdiction (light gray) 74
4.2 Global capture fisheries, production 1950–​2015 75
4.3 Global whale harvest, 1950–​2015 76
4.4 Logistic growth function 77
4.5 Net price and fish stock conservation 80
4.6 Fleet size and fishery profits 82
4.7 Aggregate fleet size and profitability under open access conditions 84
4.8 Tree canopy cover 2000–​2010 87
4.9 The stock benefits of forests and optimal rotation lengths 91
4.10 Effect of amenity value and fire risk on rotation length 93
4.11 Rangelands of the world 94
4.12 The discount rate and conservation in rangelands 99
5.1 Trade-​offs between different goods and services 110
5.2 The value of a change in a marketed good or service 111
5.3 The value of a change in a nonmarketed good or service 112
5.4 Perfect complements and substitutes 113
5.5 Direct and indirect use and nonuse value typology 116
5.6 Willingness to pay to avoid risk 132
5.7 The portfolio effect and the trade-​off between mean and variance in yields 134
xvi Figures

6.1 Adjusted net savings rates in different income groups, 1990–​2015 150
6.2 Natural resource rents and agricultural value added as a percentage
of GDP by income group, 2015 151
6.3 Share of land area accounted for by protected areas (panel A) and forest
(panel B) across income groups 153
7.1 Marginal rates of technical substitution between natural and produced capital 161
7.2 Diminishing marginal rates of technical substitution 162
7.3 Substitution and output effects, and differences in the private and social cost
of natural capital for budget-​constrained output maximizers 166
7.4 Short-​run limitations on the substitutability of natural and produced capital 168
7.5 The production possibility frontier and the rate of product transformation 174
7.6 Functional similarities between dominant and minor species 178
7.7 The impact of environmental conditions on production 179
8.1 The Nash-​Cournot reaction curve for the ith individual’s contribution to
the public good 189
8.2 The demand for public goods 191
8.3 The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park in Southern Africa 194
8.4 Payoffs to conservation in a binary nonrepeated game 198
8.5 Types of two-​by-​two nonrepeated games 199
8.6 Payoff structures in two-​by-​two nonrepeated games 200
8.7 The incremental cost of increasing supply of local conservation effort 203
9.1 Externalities of land-​based output on capture fisheries via the carrying
capacity of marine ecosystems 212
9.2 Pollution externalities affecting fish mortality alter marine stock dynamics 213
9.3 Privately optimal employment of Kx when externalities are ignored 214
9.4 Socially optimal employment of Kx when externalities are internalized 215
9.5 Indifference curves for a public bad, Y 220
9.6 Compensating and equivalent surplus for public bads 221
9.7 The efficiency of property-​rights based solutions to externalities 225
9.8 Taxation of environmentally damaging externalities 226
9.9 Inducing the socially optimal employment of resources with positive
external effects 227
9.10 Penalties for noncompliance with a regulatory restriction 228
10.1 The geographical distribution of species richness (inset) and per capita GDP 235
10.2 Engel curves for normal, luxury, and inferior goods and services 238
10.3 Inferior goods 239
10.4 Total fertility, medium projection, 2020–​2025 241
Figures xvii

10.5 The demographic transition 242


10.6 Relation between the number of threatened species and per capita income
(OLS estimates) 244
10.7 Quantile and ordinary least squares regression estimates for threatened species
(including mean coefficient values and 95% confidence intervals) 245
10.8 Realized and projected average annual rates of change in the size of the
rural population by income group, 1970–​2030 247
11.1 Marine and terrestrial protected areas, 2016 256
11.2 Area spanned by the Kavango-​Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area
(KAZA), showing the location of national parks, wildlife management areas,
and forest reserves in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe 262
11.3 Net benefits of protected areas 264
11.4 Optimal structure of protection in the Rottnest Island Marine Park, Western
Australia 267
12.1 The distribution of protected areas in the United States (panel A), and
species of mammals, birds and amphibians (panel B) 281
12.2 Modeled responses of the richness (b) and abundance (c) of local diversity
to human pressures in selected sites (a) 283
12.3 Willamette Basin: land-​use patterns associated with specific points along
the efficiency frontier (A–​H) and the current landscape (I) 285
12.4 Occurrence (A), habitat suitability (B), and potential biocorridors (C) for
the Eurasian Lynx in the Czech Republic 286
12.5 The number of accession to ex situ collections of plant genetic resources
worldwide, 1920–​2007 290
12.6 (A) Nitrogen fertilizer consumption, tonnes, 1981–​2011; (B) pesticide use
per hectare of cropland, 1991–​2011 293
12.7 Freshwater withdrawals as a percentage of internal resources 294
13.1 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Zones 314
13.2 Volume of biodiversity, wetland, and stream credits transacted in the
United States 315
13.3 US Conservation Reserve Program county average soil rental rates (2012) 320
14.1 Parties and range states of the Convention on Migratory Species 337
14.2 Transboundary river basins 340
14.3 The Colorado River Basin showing the seven US States (California, Arizona,
Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico) and two Mexican
states (Baja California and Sonora) affected by transboundary management 341
14.4 Nash equilibria in two-​by-​two nonrepeated games 349
14.5 An assurance game in which the benefit to one-​sided cooperation equal the
benefit to one-​side defection 350
xviii Figures

14.6 An extensive form of the prisoners’ dilemma without shared pay-​offs 351
14.7 An extensive form of the prisoners’ dilemma with shared pay-​offs 351
14.8 The difference between the noncooperative (Ai) and cooperative
(Ai* ) level of conservation where there are n symmetric countries 352
14.9 Incremental cost 355
15.1 Measures of human impacts on biodiversity, habitat, and soils relative
to pre-​existing conditions 365
15.2 Total sulfur and nitrate deposition 367
15.3 The proportion of assessed species threatened with extinction 368
15.4 Trends in the appearance of alien species in North America and South
America from 1800 to 2000 370
15.5 The KOF globalization index for the world, including the overall index,
the de facto index, and the de jure index 373
15.6 Imports of goods and services as a percentage of gross domestic product,
by income group 374
15.7 Exports of goods and services as a percentage of gross domestic product,
by income group 375
15.8 Export dependence on agriculture and natural resources 376
15.9 The KOF globalization index for world trade flows, including the overall
index, the de facto index, and the de jure index 377
15.10 Tourist arrivals 1995–​2017 377
15.11 Numbers of people internally displaced by conflict and natural
disasters in 2016 379
15.12 Foreign direct investment, net inflows 1970–​2017, as a percentage
of GDP by income group 381
15.13 Foreign direct investment, net inflows 1970–​2017, measured in billions
of current US$ by income group 381
15.14 The simulated spread of an infectious disease originating in Hong Kong
across the air transport network, modeled as the shortest path tree (effective
distance) from the origin 385
15.15 Global trend in the state of world marine fish stocks monitored by FAO
(1974–​2013) 393
Tables

1.1 The growth of biodiversity hotspots 17


5.1 Valuation methods applied to ecosystem services 118
6.1 SEEA Central Framework environmental assets 147
9.1 Watershed payments for ecosystem services programs, 2005–​2015 228
13.1 Domestic species delisted under the Endangered Species Act
due to recovery 312
Abbreviations

AAFC Atlantic Africa Fisheries Conference


ABS Access and benefit-​sharing
AFTA ASEAN Free Trade Area
APFIC Asia-​Pacific Fisheries Commission
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BSE Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
CBD Convention on Biological Diversity
CCAMLR Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living
Resources
CCSBT Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna
CDC United States Centers for Disease Control
CECAF Fishery Committee for the Eastern Central Atlantic
CFC Chlorofluorocarbon
CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
CGRFA Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture
CI Conservation International
CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture
CIMMYT Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo
CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora
CMS Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals
CO2 Carbon Dioxide
COREP Regional Fisheries Committee for the Gulf of Guinea
CRP Conservation Reserve Program
CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization,
CTMFM Joint Technical Commission for the Argentina/​Uruguay
Maritime Front
CWA Clean Water Act
CWP Coordinating Working Party on Fishery Statistics
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
ESA Endangered Species Act
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FFA South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GBA Global Biodiversity Assessment
GCM General Circulation Model
GDP Gross Domestic Product
xxii Abbreviations

GEF Global Environment Facility


GFCM General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean
GMO Genetically modified organisms
GNP Gross National Product
HDI Human Development Index
HIV/​AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus/​Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome
IAASTD International Assessment for Agricultural Science, Technology and
Development
IATTC Inter-​American Tropical Tuna Commission
IBSFC International Baltic Sea Fishery Commission
ICCAT International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna
ICES International Council for the Exploration of the Sea
ICRAF International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (now the World
Agroforestry Centre)
ICRISAT International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-​Arid Tropics
IHR International Health Regulations
IITA International Institute of Tropical Agriculture
ILRI International Livestock Research Institute
IMF International Monetary Fund
IMO International Maritime Organization
INIBAP International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain
IOTC Indian Ocean Tuna Commission
IP Intellectual property
IPBES Intergovernmental Science-​Policy Platform on Biodiversity and
Ecosystem Services
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IPGRI International Plant Genetic Resources Institute
IPHC International Pacific Halibut Commission
IPPC International Plant Protection Convention
IRRI International Rice Research Institute
ITPGRFA International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
Agriculture
ITQ Individual Transferable Quota
IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature
IWC International Whaling Commission
KAZA Kavango-​Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area
LME Large Marine Ecosystem
MA Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
MDG Millennium Development Goal
MEA Multilateral Environmental Agreement
N Nitrogen
NABRAI National Biodiversity Risk Assessment Index
NAFO Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
Abbreviations xxiii

NAMMCO North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission


NASCO North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization
NDP Net Domestic Product
NEAFC North-​East Atlantic Fisheries Commission
NGO Nongovernmental organization
NNI Net National Income
NNP Net National Product
NPAFC North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission
OECD Organization for Economic Co-​operation and Development
OIE World Animal Health Organization
OLDEPESCA Latin American Organization for the Development of Fisheries
PES Payment for environmental services
PGR Plant Genetic Resources
PICES North Pacific Marine Science Organization
PPS South Pacific Permanent Commission
PSC Pacific Salmon Commission
RECOFI Regional Commission for Fisheries
REDD Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
RFMO Regional Fishery Management Organization
SEAFO South East Atlantic Fishery Organization
SNA System of National Accounts
SO2 Sulphur Dioxide
SPC Secretariat of the Pacific Community
SPS Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures Agreement
SRCF Subregional Commission on Fisheries
SWIOFC South West Indian Ocean Fishery Commission
TBT Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade
TEEB The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity
TFCA Trans Frontier Conservation Area
TFP Total Factor Productivity
TNC The Nature Conservancy
TRIPS Trade-​Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
UNCED United Nations Conference on Environment and Development
UNCLOS United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEP United Nations Environment Programme
UNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
UPOV International Convention for Protection on New Plant Varieties
USA United States of America
USDA United States Department of Agriculture
USEPA United States Environmental Protection Agency
USFDA United States Food and Drug Administration
xxiv Abbreviations

USMCA United States-​Mexico-​Canada Agreement


WCMC World Conservation Monitoring Centre
WCPFC Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission
WECAFC Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission
WHO World Health Organization
WIOTO Western Indian Ocean Tuna Organization
WTA Willingness to accept
WTO World Trade Organization
WTP Willingness to pay
WWF World Wildlife Fund
1
Environmental Conservation and
Environmental Change

It must always have been seen, more or less distinctly, by political


economists, that the increase of wealth is not boundless: that at the
end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state,
that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this, and that each
step in advance is an approach to it. . . . The richest and most pros-
perous countries would very soon attain the stationary state, if no
further improvements were made in the productive arts, and if there
were a suspension of the overflow of capital from those countries into
the uncultivated or ill-​cultivated regions of the earth.
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848

1.1 Introduction

In the fifth century bc Heraclitus of Ephesus observed that the only constant
in the universe is change, and yet to manage change people have ever felt the
need to hold some things constant. The list of things that societies have sought
to preserve includes the natural environment and the resources it offers, but
covers much more. A moral compass, religious faith, ties to kith and kin,
personal and community health, and defensive capacity are all candidates
for conservation. The factors that people need to take account of in making
conservation decisions about such things are always the same. Whether the
problem involves ideas, bricks and mortar, or germplasm is immaterial to
how conservation decisions should be made. In all cases, the question to be
asked is whether the decision-​maker does better by keeping an object in some
state, or by allowing its state to change.
This book is first about the generic problem of conservation, and the prin-
ciples that inform rational conservation choices—​whatever the object of
conservation. Second, it is about the application of those principles to the
management of the natural world. Many intractable environmental conflicts
around the world have their origins in the fact that different people make

Conservation. Charles Perrings and Ann Kinzig, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190613600.003.0001
2 Conservation

different conservation choices. The loss of biodiversity that is the stimulus for
all efforts to protect wild living species is the result of historic decisions that
individual land owners and land holders have taken about which species to
promote and which to suppress, which gene stocks to build, and which to run
down. Such decisions may lead to conflict for many reasons. Decision-​makers
are sometime ignorant of the wider and longer-​term effects of their choices,
sometimes neglectful of their effects on others, and sometimes deliberately
perverse.
In some cases, people have simply misunderstood the consequences of their
actions. A pesticide application that solves one problem only to create another
is an example. In other cases, people have understood the consequences of
their behavior all too well, but have deliberately ignored those consequences.
This is often because the consequences are borne by others. The effects of
water diversion from the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya rivers on the Aral
Sea, or from the Colorado River on the Gulf of California, are examples. In
still other cases, people would have made different decisions if they could,
but were forced to make strategic choices that left all society worse off. The
fertilizer applications that lie behind massive marine pollution events, for ex-
ample, have many features of the classic prisoners’ dilemma. Even though all
would benefit from reductions in nutrient runoff, none has an incentive to
lower their own fertilizer applications.
We wish to understand how conservation decisions of this sort were made,
and with what effects at different spatial and temporal scales. We wish to un-
derstand how decisions of one person or one community at one time or place
affect people or communities at other times or places. We also wish to under-
stand why. That is, we wish to understand both the anatomy and pathology of
conservation.
Our touchstone is a paper of seminal importance for both the economics of
natural resources and the economics of conservation. It is Harold Hotelling’s
study of the economics of exhaustible resources (Hotelling 1931). The imme-
diate goal of the paper was to investigate the conditions in which the owner
of a nonrenewable resource, such as a mineral deposit, would be indifferent
between extracting the resource and leaving it in place. In answering that
question, however, Hotelling provided us with a fully general theory of con-
servation. For the mining problem, he found that the owner of a mineral re-
source would be indifferent between extracting it and leaving it in the ground
if the value of the resource in place was expected to grow at the same rate as
the return on mining proceeds when invested in the best alternative use. It
has subsequently been shown that the argument extends naturally to the case
of renewable resources—​where the growth in value of the resource in place
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 3

reflects not just a change in its price but also a change in its physical magni-
tude (Perrings and Halkos 2012). For any asset, it will be optimal to conserve
that asset if and only if the value of the asset in the conserved state is expected
to grow at a rate at least equal to the rate of return on the asset when converted
to an alternative state.
The central insight from Hotelling’s work is that conservation decisions
depend on the value of resources, and how that value is expected to change
over time. For a community to know whether it is worth conserving some
resource, it needs to know both the value of the resource to the community
today, and how that value is likely to change tomorrow. In cases where re-
sources are being depleted, for example, the expected change in their value
can be driven by increasing scarcity. But it can also be driven by changes in
demand triggered by changes in preferences, changes in peoples’ under-
standing of the services yielded by the resource, or changes in environmental
conditions. Climate change is altering the future value of many natural re-
sources. Changes in temperature and precipitation are changing the value of
land for agriculture or other uses. Sea-​level rise and the increasing frequency
of extreme weather events is changing the value of coastal areas for human
habitation.
By putting the expected change in the value of resources front and center,
the Hotelling approach requires us to ask why a community confronted
by a resource that could be either conserved or converted would want to
conserve it. What are the ethical, moral, psychological, and other con-
siderations that determine the value of resources to the community, and
how might those change over time? What are the services (or disservices)
offered by the resources, and how might those change with changes in tech-
nology or environmental conditions? We need to understand what it is that
makes resources valuable to different people, and how and why value is ex-
pected to change.
The Hotelling approach also requires us to ask whether the use being made
of resources by those who have formal or informal rights to them reflects the
value of the same resources to the community. The field of environmental ec-
onomics has grown up around precisely this problem. When resource use
involves positive or negative impacts on others that are not taken into account
by the resource user, there are said to be externalities. We need to understand
the value of those externalities, and whether they are increasing or decreasing
over time. We need to understand whether the neglect of externalities means
that too little or too much of the resource is being conserved. Many resources
and the services they offer are public “goods” (or “bads”) and so involve
incentives to free-​ride on the efforts of others. We need to understand when
4 Conservation

the public good nature of resources leads them to be undervalued, and so


overused.
To approach the anatomy and pathology of conservation the book first
explores the principles behind Hotelling’s key result, as well as all the reasons
why the decisions taken by people in the real world might get things wrong.
It then applies these principles to a systematic review of the many dimensions
of the problem of environmental conservation. It asks what decision-​makers
need to know if they are to make rational conservation choices, and what sci-
ence currently tells us about the opportunity cost of conservation or devel-
opment decisions. A decision to conserve implies that the expected growth
in the value of the conserved resource is above the yield on alternative assets.
A decision to convert implies the opposite. It follows that conservation and
conversion decisions should both be informed by an understanding of what
has to be given up in the process. We consider what is and is not known about
the opportunity cost of large-​scale environmental changes, and how this
knowledge affects assessments about when and what to conserve.
Environmental conservation decisions are not limited to protected areas
or remnant wild lands. There are conservation decisions to be made about
simplified or modified landscapes, just as there are for natural landscapes.
It makes little sense, however, to have the same conservation objectives in
agroecosystems, production forests, wild lands, and exclusive (marine) ec-
onomic zones. This book offers a common way to approach the conserva-
tion problem in different systems, while recognizing that the conservation
problem itself will vary from ecosystem to ecosystem.
The background against which the book is written is complicated. A se-
ries of international assessments of the state of the science over the last three
decades has revealed mounting evidence that all the earth’s biomes are chan-
ging at rates unprecedented in recorded history, and that human agency is
implicated in every case. Successive assessments by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have focused on the role of anthropogenic
emissions to air and water, arguing their role in altering the general circu-
lation system in ways that threatens the remarkable climatic stability of the
Holocene.
Climate change is both a consequence and a cause of many of the issues
addressed in the book. Agriculture and forestry are responsible for around
13% of carbon dioxide emission, 44% of methane emissions, and 82% of ni-
trous oxide emissions, or roughly 12.0 Gt of CO2 equivalent per year. At the
same time, climate change is leading to declining crop yields and lower an-
imal growth rates in lower latitudes, but increasing crop yields and animal
growth rates in higher latitudes. Agricultural pests and pathogens have also
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 5

increased. Climate change exacerbates the degradation of land in coastal and


estuarine areas, in drylands, and in permafrost areas. The area of drylands in
drought, for example, has increased on average by around 1% per year over
the last 50 years—​adversely affecting 380 to 620 million people in South and
East Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Coastal areas are particularly
affected by increased rainfall intensity, flooding, rising sea levels, and stronger
wave action (IPCC 2019).
Climate change is also affecting many dimensions of biodiversity. Species
distributions, phenology, population dynamics, community structure, and
ecosystem function are all affected by changes in temperature and precip-
itation. Moreover, these effects are increasing in marine, terrestrial, and
freshwater ecosystems. The Global Biodiversity Assessment, the Millennium
Ecosystem Assessment, and now the assessments of the Intergovernmental
Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have focused on
the anthropogenic stresses on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning—​
the effect of land-​use change, climate change, and species dispersal. Each is
argued to have profound, negative consequences for the capacity of the planet
to sustain the flow of services people obtain from ecosystems (IPBES 2019).
In much the same period, concern over the sustainability of the use humans
make of the natural world has moved from the wings to center stage. Between
the Brundtland Commission (World Commission on Environment and
Development 1987) and the second of two major international conferences
on Sustainable Development (United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development 1992, United Nations 2012), sustainability has become a
central concern of nearly every segment of every society on the planet. The
17 sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015
still include environmental goals: to combat climate change; to conserve and
sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources; and to sustainably
manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation,
and halt biodiversity loss. However, the vast majority of goals relate to other
aspects of the human condition: poverty, hunger, health, education, gender
inequality, income inequality, and peace and justice among them. They also
include the goal to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
(United Nations 2015).
A papal encyclical in the same year the sustainable development goals were
adopted similarly pointed to the importance of the social dimensions of the
environmental problem. Aside from climate change and pollution, water scar-
city, and biodiversity change, the encyclical identified societal breakdown,
global inequality, and the weakness of international responses as the prin-
cipal challenges to be addressed (Francis 2015). The increasing concentration
6 Conservation

of wealth in the hands of a few in the Global North and the persistence of
widespread poverty in the Global South are seen as much a part of the sus-
tainability problem as the degradation of many ecosystem processes essen-
tial for all life. Most recently, a major review of the economics of biodiversity
commissioned by the UK Treasury, The Dasgupta Review, has underlined the
threat posed by biodiversity change to economic growth (Dasgupta, 2021).
We have come to see the central environmental challenges of our time
as symptoms of a wider malaise of the global social-​ecological system. Paul
Crutzen famously dubbed the late Holocene as the Anthropocene, an epoch
in which the dominance of humans on earth is expected to show in the geo-
logical record (Crutzen 2002, Steffen et al. 2007). While human dominance
has enabled the rapid growth of both the human population and the goods
and services produced, it has also stressed the natural systems on which
humans depend. Increasingly, that stress is being interpreted as threatening
a set of biophysical limits within the system. Echoing the “Limits to Growth”
conclusions of the Club of Rome Report (Meadows et al. 1972), the claim has
been made that humans have already exceeded planetary boundaries for cli-
mate change, biosphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, and land-​system
change (Rockström et al. 2009, Steffen et al. 2015).
In this view, what is to be conserved at the global level is nothing less than
the climatic and other biophysical characteristics of the Holocene. But if such
boundaries are more than just lines in the sand—​if they represent real tipping
points between alternative stable states—​then we may already be in a new
basin of attraction. History is full of examples where people have exceeded tip-
ping points quite blindly. It is also is full of examples where people have under-
stood the consequences of their actions, but have been locked into behaviors
that drive society beyond the point of no return. Jarad Diamond’s catalogue of
societal collapses includes examples of both kinds (Diamond 2005).
Against this background, the book explores both the central problem in
all conservation decisions, and the many reasons why solutions to particular
problems at particular spatial or temporal scales may be inconsistent with
solutions to the same problems at different spatial or temporal scales. To set
the scene for this we first summarize the evidence for large-​scale, system-
atic changes in biodiversity and ecological functioning across biomes and in
different social systems. We do this the better to understand, at a very broad
level, what elements of the biophysical system have and have not been con-
served, how this differs from one society to the next, and what humanity has
gained or lost in the process. We then probe, more deeply, the relation be-
tween changes in the biological record and the way the conservation problem
has been addressed by scientists.
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 7

1.2 The biological record

Successive assessments have established the main anthropogenic drivers of


biodiversity change:

• direct hunting and harvesting


• habitat loss from the growth of agriculture and silviculture
• the dispersal of species between systems
• the diversion of water use for human needs
• emissions to land, water, and air.

Of these, direct hunting and harvesting is by far the longest standing


source of anthropogenic stress on other species. In the 40,000 years before
the Holocene, hunting by humans was implicated in the decline of most of
the large-​bodied vertebrates (megafauna) that went extinct in Europe, Asia,
Oceana, Africa, and the Americas (Pereira et al. 2012). From the beginning of
the Holocene, however, hunting was displaced as the primary anthropogenic
driver of biodiversity change by the loss of habitat due to the growth of agri-
culture and silviculture.
Starting from a number of different locations—​the Vavilov “centers of or-
igin” in Central and South America, the Mediterranean, the Middle East,
Ethiopia, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia (Vavilov
1926)—​agriculture has grown to become the dominant land use across
much of the world. The Millennium Assessment reported that by the end of
the twentieth century, agriculture accounted for between 20% and 75% of
the area of eleven of thirteen terrestrial biomes (tundra; boreal forests; tem-
perate coniferous forests; montane grasslands and shrublands; tropical and
subtropical moist broadleaf forests; deserts; tropical and subtropical conif-
erous forests; temperate broadleaf and mixed forests; Mediterranean forests,
woodlands, and scrub; tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests; tropical
and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands; flooded grasslands and
savannas; and temperate forest, steppe, and woodland). Only biomes rela-
tively unsuited to agriculture, such as boreal forests and tundra, had remained
relatively intact (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005b). Currently the
proportion of national land under crop and livestock production varies be-
tween 0% and 82.5% (Figure 1.1).
Since direct harvesting of wild species has remained an important source
of protein throughout the Holocene, the advent of agriculture added another
layer to the conservation problem confronting most communities. To the
problem of which animal and plant species to promote and which to suppress
8 Conservation

0.50 82.10

Figure 1.1 The proportion of national land under crop and livestock production in 2013.
Agricultural land refers to the share of land area that is arable, under permanent crops, and under
permanent pastures. Arable land includes land defined by the FAO as land under temporary crops
(double-​cropped areas are counted once), temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture, land
under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow. Land abandoned as a result of shifting
cultivation is excluded. Land under permanent crops is land cultivated with crops that occupy the
land for long periods and need not be replanted after each harvest, such as cocoa, coffee, and rubber.
This category includes land under flowering shrubs, fruit trees, nut trees, and vines, but excludes
land under trees grown for wood or timber. Permanent pasture is land used for five or more years for
forage, including natural and cultivated crops.
Source: Constructed from data derived from World Bank (2014).

(the problem facing farming communities) was now added to the problem
of how to regulate current effort so as to protect future harvests of wild spe-
cies (the problem facing hunting communities). The domestication of plants
was a process that occurred more or less simultaneously in many different
environments during the Holocene, and involved quite different species.
Domesticated species originating in the Middle East, for example, included
einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, barley, rye, lentil, pea, bitter vetch, chickpea,
and flax (Lev-​Yadun et al. 2000). Species originating in East Asia included
rice, soybean, and foxtail millet (Jones and Liu 2009). Those originating in
South America included squash, peanut, quinoa, and cotton in South America
(Dillehay et al. 2007).
In all cases, the selection of which species to encourage also implied the
selection of which species to suppress. Promotion of particular plants or ani-
mals implies the suppression of the competitors, predators, and pathogens of
those plants or animals. In other words, the domestication of particular plants
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 9

and animals in different parts of the world saw the decline of other species
not as an incidental byproduct of farming but as a necessary concomitant of
domestication. Effort to boost abundance of some species simultaneously im-
plied effort to reduce the abundance of others.
The dispersal of species, the third anthropogenic driver of biodiversity
change, is a consequence of the decisions people have made to engage with
others—​whether for commerce or conquest. In many cases people have
moved species deliberately from one part of the world to another. A common
feature of the early European voyages of discovery for which we have written
records, for example, is that they involved more or less systematic efforts to
document the characteristics of species encountered along the way, and to
take specimens where feasible.1 The identification of potentially usefully do-
mesticated plants and animals was an important goal of the many voyages
of discovery to the America’s in the wake of Columbus’s first voyage. Indeed,
the Columbian Exchange—​the movement of species between Europe and the
Americas in the sixteenth century—​was built around transfer of domesti-
cated plants and animals in both directions. American species introduced to
Europe included turkey, maize, manioc, potato, rubber, sunflower, tobacco,
and tomato. European species introduced to the Americas included sheep,
cattle, horses, goats, and pigs among animals, and bananas, barley, chickpeas,
flax, hemp, millet, oats, rice, soybeans, tea, and wheat among plants (Crosby
1972, Crosby 1986).
As the people of Central America discovered to their cost, however, do-
mesticated plants and animals were not the only species exchanged. Along
with crops and livestock came pests, pathogens, and harmful commensals,
such as cats and rats. American diseases brought to Europe included bejel,
Chagas disease, pinta, and syphilis. In exchange, the immunologically naïve
populations of the Americas were exposed to bubonic plague, cholera, diph-
theria, influenza, leprosy, malaria, measles, smallpox, typhoid, typhus, and
yellow fever. It has been estimated that in the century after Columbus first
landed in the Caribbean, the population of Central America was reduced by
the effects of these diseases by as much as 90% (McNeill 1977, McNeill 2003).
Any benefits conferred by the introduction of new crops and livestock strains
were dwarfed by the costs of the new diseases.
The net effect of the various stresses on natural ecosystems has been charac-
terized as a mass extinction event—​the sixth such event to appear in the geo-
logical record. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported that current
rates of extinction are up to 1,000 times the rate observed in the fossil record.

1 Perhaps the best-​known example is Darwin’s record of the third voyage of the Beagle (Darwin 1839).
10 Conservation

It ascribed this primarily to the conversion of natural habitat to a range of


productive uses, but noted that the changes recorded in the assessment were
the combined effect of multiple stressors. It found that the number of species
is declining everywhere, and that the population size and/​or the range of the
majority of surviving species continue to be reduced. Indeed, up to 30% of re-
maining mammal, bird, and amphibian species are currently threatened with
extinction, with freshwater aquatic species being most at risk. At the same
time, it found that the distribution of remaining biodiversity is becoming
more homogeneous due to the dispersal of species through trade—​whether
deliberately or accidentally—​while genetic diversity among cultivated spe-
cies has declined precipitately (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005a).
Nor have subsequent attempts to evaluate the state of biodiversity changed
the story (Butchart et al. 2010, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological
Diversity 2010).
The most recent global assessment of biodiversity (IPBES 2019) identified
four main impacts of anthropogenic stress:

• Extinction risks are increasing. Approximately 25% of animals and plants


are threatened, implying that around a million species face extinction,
often within decades.
• Local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals are disap-
pearing. Over 500 of the roughly 6,000 domesticated breeds of mammals
used for food and agriculture have already gone extinct and around 1,000
more are threatened.
• Biological communities are becoming more similar to each other in both
managed and unmanaged systems. Anthropogenic dispersal of species
and the adoption of common management practices has led to the extir-
pation of many locally adapted species.
• The rate of biological evolution is increasing. Anthropogenic evolution
of species, particularly pests and pathogens, is occurring so rapidly its
effects can be seen within months, in some cases.

The sixth mass extinction event continues unabated.

1.3 Implications for conservation

The conservation question raised by the biological record is: When is enough
enough? This is not a trivial question. Many of the changes recorded by the
Millennium Assessment involved conscious decisions by people to promote
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 11

some species and to suppress others. The general aim of habitat conversion
has been to increase the abundance of domesticated plants and animals, along
with the species on which those plants and animals depend, and to reduce the
abundance of competitors and predators—​pests and pathogens. There have
been many unintended consequences to these choices, but it is nonetheless
reasonable to say that some level of habitat conversion is warranted by the
benefits generated through the production of foods, fuels, fibers, freshwater,
and the like. Have we exceeded the optimal level of conversion? To begin to
answer this question, we need to know what the costs and benefits of conver-
sion and conservation are.
The Millennium Assessment approached the problem through the clas-
sification of the benefits offered by different ecological communities and
ecosystems. Termed “ecosystem services,” the benefits were argued to fall
into four main groups: provisioning services, cultural services, supporting
services, and regulating services. The provisioning services include produc-
tion of foods, fuels, fibers, pharmaceuticals, and other consumable items. The
cultural services include benefits such as recreation, amenity, and scientific
understanding. These are benefits that do not necessarily deplete the envi-
ronmental stocks that generate the services. The supporting services include
processes such as photosynthesis and nutrient cycling—​both essential to the
functioning of the underlying ecosystems. The regulating services comprise
the buffering functions offered by the diversity of genes, species, and func-
tional groups within those ecosystems (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
2005b).
The provisioning and cultural services describe environmentally derived
goods and services that enter final demand: that is, that directly satisfy peo-
ples wants. The supporting and regulating services describe the ecosystem
processes and functions that underpin production of the provisioning and
cultural services. The provisioning services can be interpreted as the pro-
cesses that generate plant and animal products—​food and cash crops, live-
stock products, timber, water, genetic material, and the like. Many are
supplied through more or less well-​functioning markets. The cultural services
describe peoples’ nonconsumptive uses of the environment, including recrea-
tion, tourism, education, science, and learning. They include more intangible
benefits such as the spiritual, religious, aesthetic, and inspirational well-​being
that people derive from the world about them, and the moral satisfaction gen-
erated by the preservation of threatened or endangered species. Some cultural
services, like ecotourism, are supplied through well-​functioning markets.
Most are not served by markets, but are regulated by custom, or by traditional
taboos, rights, and obligations.
12 Conservation

The supporting and regulating services describe the ecological processes


that underpin production of the provisioning and cultural services, and
that moderate the impact of environmental variability on production. The
supporting services include ecosystem processes and functions such as soil
formation, photosynthesis, primary production, and nutrient, carbon, and
water cycling. The regulating services depend on the diversity of functional
groups of species, and moderate the effects of environmental perturbations
on air quality, climate, water quality, erosion, pests and diseases, and nat-
ural hazards. They reduce variability in the production of plant and animal
products, or other provisioning services. The timing and magnitude of water
runoff, flooding, and groundwater recharge, for example, is strongly affected
by the composition of plants in watersheds. The value of both supporting and
regulating services derives from the value of the provisioning and cultural
services they support, and depends on the regime of stresses and shocks expe-
rienced. But few are allocated through functioning markets. Many supporting
or regulating services are public goods at scales that span national boundaries.
From a conservation perspective, what is important about changes in the
combination of goods and services consumed by any community is that they
also imply changes in the combination of the assets needed to produce those
goods and services—​the natural capital needed to generate ecosystem serv-
ices and the produced capital needed to generate other goods and services.
Indeed, this point is critical to all that follows. In the same way that demand
for labor stems from demand for the things that labor can produce, so de-
mand for the environmental and nonenvironmental stocks that underpin
consumption choices derives from demand for final goods and services. The
demand for land for the production of food crops, for example, derives from
the demand for food. The demand for land as habitat for wild species derives
from demand for the conservation of wild species. The demand for watershed
protection derives from the demand for water.
It follows that the consumption of goods and services today has poten-
tial implications for the consumption of goods and services in the future.
Specifically, if consumption of goods and services today reduces the pro-
duced or natural capital stocks available in the future, it may force a reduc-
tion in consumption of the same goods and services in the future. A pattern
of consumption is sustainable only if the implied use of capital stocks is sus-
tainable. The classic conservation problem confronting pre-​Holocene hunter-​
gatherer communities, and every community since, is to determine what
can be harvested today without compromising harvests in the future. This is
the problem of determining which natural assets to conserve from one time
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 13

period to the next. In one form or another, it is the problem addressed in


much of this book.
The field of conservation biology was developed in the 1970s as a re-
sponse to the growing anthropogenic pressure on wildlife. One of the
architects of the new field, Michael Soulé, described its focus in the following
terms: “Conservation biology . . . addresses the biology of species, communi-
ties, and ecosystems that are perturbed, either directly or indirectly, by human
activities or other agents. Its goal is to provide principles and tools for pre-
serving biological diversity. . . . ethical norms are a genuine part of conserva-
tion biology, as they are in all mission-​or crisis-​oriented disciplines” (Soulé
1985). Although the field is now changing, this description still stands. So, for
example, one of the most successful texts in conservation biology describes
it as a field developed in response to the challenge of preserving species and
ecosystems that aims (a) to document the full range of biodiversity on the
planet, (b) to uncover human impacts on species, genes, and ecosystems,
and (c) to prevent species extinction, to maintain genetic diversity within
species, and to protect and restore ecological communities and associated
ecosystem functions (Primack 2014). While (a) and (b) describe objective
scientific goals, (c) does not. Conservation biology may have become more
human-​centric in the intervening years but the normative goals remain: the
prevention of extinction, maintenance of genetic diversity, and ecolog-
ical restoration—​the mission of a mission-​oriented discipline (Cardinale,
Primack, & Murdoch, 2020).
The scientific problem identified by Soulé was to apply the principles of
ecology, biogeography, and population genetics to the analysis of the causes
and consequences of biodiversity change. Although biodiversity writ large is
the diversity of genes, species and ecosystems (Wilson 1988), Soulé’s scientific
problem pushes the field toward a particular aspect of diversity. Soulé argued
that species are the result of coevolutionary processes, are interdependent,
and frequently complementary in their functions. Because of this, the extir-
pation or extinction of one species has the potential to ramify through the
system (Soulé 1985). To understand the direct and indirect effects of species
extirpation or extinction, conservation biologists have sought to understand
the role of diversity in the functioning of ecosystems. The relevant measure
of diversity this implies is less a measure of species richness and abundance,
or of the taxonomic distinctness or phylogenetic distance between species,
and more a measure of the functional traits that enable different species to
perform in different ways. It is important to know the effects of a change in
the number of species performing some function, and especially whether
14 Conservation

there exist thresholds of diversity below (or above) which ecosystems lose
functionality.
The scientific problem therefore tends to privilege a classification of
organisms that puts them into functional groups (such as grasses, C3 plants,
C4 plants, and legumes). The number of functional groups in an ecological
community then defines its functional diversity, and the number and rela-
tive abundance of species bearing the traits of a particular functional group
defines the diversity of that group. The consequences of change in the diver-
sity of functional groups can then be measured in terms of the level and sta-
bility and the functions performed by the group.
We return to the evidence on the impact of changes in the diversity of dif-
ferent functional groups in later chapters. Here we note only that the scientific
agenda of conservation biology maps closely into the methods developed by
economists to uncover the value of the biotic and abiotic stocks of ecosystems.
Research on the consequences of changes in functional diversity and the di-
versity of functional groups is effectively research on the production functions
that underpin all provisioning and cultural ecosystem services. In coupled
social ecological systems, the diversity of functional groups includes the va-
riety of cultivated crops, crop pests, wild crop relatives, and weedy species. It
includes the variety of biologically derived fuels and fibers, and the variety of
diseases that affect humans, animals, and plants.
At the same time, however, human well-​being is also affected by change
in the diversity of functional groups that are not directly involved the pro-
duction of highly valued ecosystem services. The microorganisms that move
carbon, nutrients, and water into and out of ecosystems are as important for
ecological functions that support the production of valued ecosystem services
as they are for the functioning of systems without humans. By understanding
the biogeochemical processes involved in ecosystem functioning, and by un-
derstanding the linkages between ecosystem functioning and the production
of valued ecosystem services, we are able to derive the value of the underlying
biotic and abiotic stocks—​the atmospheric, lithospheric, and hydrospheric
pools of carbon, nutrients, and water, together with the plants, animals, and
microorganisms that move carbon, nutrients, and water into and out of the
ecosystem.
But what of the normative goals of conservation biology? How do they map
into the science of conservation? Soulé’s normative statements are clearly
not refutable by reference to evidence. They are statements of what should
be, based on opinion not fact. They are beliefs, not testable hypotheses. They
are also deeply and widely held convictions about the ethical response to the
increasing number of species extinctions with long antecedents in American
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 15

philosophy and ethics, reaching back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau, to John Muir and Aldo Leopold.
To get a sense of what these convictions imply for the science of conser-
vation, consider the statements made by a group of scientists (Mangel et al.
1996) who set out to elucidate the principles of conservation biology origi-
nally suggested by (Holt and Talbot 1978). Their starting point was a simple
assertion that “The consequences of resource utilization and the implementa-
tion of principles of resource conservation are the responsibility of the parties
having jurisdiction over the resource or, in the absence of clear jurisdiction,
with those having jurisdiction over the users of the resource.” The prin-
ciples of resource conservation were then spelled out as a series of norma-
tive statements, the gist of which was that any resource utilization should be
constrained by an obligation to maintain the state of ecosystems so as to pre-
serve future options, to guard against irreversible change, to embed a safety
factor to account for uncertainty and imperfect information, and to avoid un-
necessary waste (Mangel et al. 1996).
The protection of future options mirrored the main criterion for sustaina-
bility asserted in the Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment
and Development 1987). Indeed, this was used as the primary justification for
maintaining biodiversity at genetic, species, population, and ecosystem levels
within “natural boundaries of variation” (Mangel et al. 1996). It was also clear,
however, that the principles privileged naturalness. The goals of conservation
were to avoid fragmentation of natural areas, to maintain natural processes, to
avoid disruption of food webs, and so on. The corresponding scientific agenda
was to understand the behavior of natural systems, and the response of nat-
ural systems to anthropogenic stress. Since many biological processes were
recognized to be nonlinear, involving critical thresholds, it was argued that
the principles implied the need to identify, understand, and accommodate
complex natural ecosystem dynamics (Mangel et al. 1996).
To see what the normative goals of conservation biology imply for the so-
cial dimensions of the problem, consider the value that species conservation
has for people. Mangel et al. recognized that human resource use decisions
are value-​driven, implying the need to understand the basis of value and the
incentive effects of changes in value. Since conservation is a use much like any
other, the goals of conservation biology imply values that favor conservation
over other uses. Within the field of conservation biology this is reflected in a
two-​pronged approach, only one of which has implications for science.
One strategy has been to assert the existence of values that are suppos-
edly independent of the values that drive all other uses of natural resources.
Therefore, Soulé argued that biodiversity has intrinsic value independent of
16 Conservation

any instrumental or utilitarian value it might have: “Species have value in


themselves, a value neither conferred nor revocable, but springing from a spe-
cies’ long evolutionary heritage and potential or even from the mere fact of its
existence” (Soulé 1985).
We consider the question of the intrinsic value of species in more detail
in later chapters. Here we note only that this is a statement of faith rather
than fact.
A second strategy has been to identify the conservation value of species
through the adoption of criteria that include rareness, endangerment, rich-
ness, endemicity, and the like. Examples include the geographical distribution
of taxa, and the number of taxa in some location. The more restricted the geo-
graphical distribution of a taxon, the greater its conservation value. The larger
the number of taxa in some location, the greater the conservation value is of
that location. This strategy engages the scientific agenda in ways that are much
easier to see. Given a set of criteria, it becomes possible to identify the relative
conservation value of both species and geographical areas. Indeed, two of the
most widely used instruments for guiding conservation effort—​biodiversity
hotspots and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s
Red List of endangered species—​are a direct result of efforts to identify the
relative conservation value of species and habitats.
The biodiversity hotspots, originally introduced by Norman Myers (Myers
1988), reflected a broad-​brush attempt to identify the areas of the world of
greatest conservation value by two criteria: the number of endemic species
they contain, and the extent of habitat loss they experience (Table 1.1).
Since that time the effort to extend the classification of habitats using either
the same or different criteria has led to a proliferation of hotspots, and the
identification of more areas of high conservation value due to the presence
of restricted range species. In 1988 Myers identified just 10 hotspots. By the
end of the twentieth century the number had risen to 25 and covered 44% of
all vascular plant species, and 35% of all species in four vertebrate groups on
1.4% of the earth’s land surface (Myers et al. 2000). By 2015, 35 hotspots cov-
ered 17% of the earth’s land surface, and maintained 77% of all endemic plant
species, 43% of vertebrates (60% of threatened mammals and birds, and 80%
of threatened amphibians) (Marchese 2015) (Figure 1.2).
In a parallel development, the IUCN Red List of endangered species
classifies individual taxa on the basis of threat (or a mixture of threat and
rarity) (Robbirt et al. 2006). As is the case with hotspots, there have been
changes in both the criteria by which Red List assessments have been made,
and the way that the Red List is used to generate an index of extinction prob-
abilities, the Red list Index (Butchart et al. 2007). Successive lists report
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 17

Table 1.1 The growth of biodiversity hotspots.

(Myers 1988) (Myers 1990) (Myers 2000) (Mittermeier et al.


2004)

Uplands of Western Uplands of Western Tropical Andes Tropical Andes


Amazonia Amazonia
Western Ecuador Western Ecuador Choco/​Darien/​West
Ecuador
Colombian Choco Colombian Choco Tumbes-​Choco-​
Magdalena
Atlantic Coast Brazil Atlantic Coast Brazil Atlantic Coast Brazil Atlantic Forest
Brazilian Cerrado Cerrado
Central Chile Central Chilea Chilean Winter
Rainfall and
Valdivian Forest
Mesoamerica Mesoamerica
Madrean Pine-​Oak
Woodlands
Caribbean Caribbean Islands
California Floristic California Floristic California Floristic
Province Province Province
Ivory Coast Guinean Forest of Guinean Forest of
West Africa West Africa
Cape Floristic Region Cape Floristic Cape Floristic Region
Province
Succulent Karoo Succulent Karoo
Maputaland‚
Pondoland‚ Albany
Tanzania Eastern Arc and Eastern Afromontane
Coastal Forest Coastal
of Tanzania/​Kenya Forests
Horn of Africa
Eastern Madagascar Eastern Madagascar Madagascar & Indian Madagascar & Indian
Ocean Islands Ocean Islands
Mediterranean Basin Mediterranean Basin
Caucasus Caucasus
Irano-​Anatolian
Mountains of Central
Asia
Western Ghats in Western Ghats and Western Ghats and
India Sri Lanka Sri Lanka
Southwestern Sri Mountains of South-​ Mountains of South-​
Lanka Central China Central China
Eastern Himalayas Eastern Himalayas Indo-​Burmae Indo-​Burma,
Himalaya

Continued
18 Conservation

Table 1.1 Continued

(Myers 1988) (Myers 1990) (Myers 2000) (Mittermeier et al.


2004)
Peninsular Malaysia Peninsular Malaysia
Northern Borneo Northern Borneo Sundaland, Wallacea Sundaland, Wallacea
Philippines Philippines Philippines Philippines
Japan
Southwest Australia Southwest Australia Southwest Australia
East Melanesian
Islands
New Zealand New Zealand
New Caledonia New Caledonia New Caledonia New Caledonia
Polynesia‚ Polynesia‚
Micronesia Micronesia

Source: (Marchese 2015).

Figure 1.2 Terrestrial and marine hotspots.


This often-​seen image, originally due to Conservation International, describes the first 34 of the 36
biodiversity hotspots designated to date. For current hotspots see Critical Ecosystem Partnership
Fund (2020). A shapefile of hotspots is available from Hoffman et al. (2016).

progressively greater numbers of threatened species (IUCN 2004, IUCN


2014), which reflects both change in the level of effort given to the classifica-
tion and change in real conditions. As in the case of hotspots, too, the science
lies in the identification of species satisfying particular criteria.
The focus on anthropogenic threats to species richness, and particularly
the richness of endemic species, is at least partially reflected in two strands of
Environmental Conservation and Environmental Change 19

research in the economics of conservation that will be explored later. One is in


the analysis of the demand for naturalness (Eichner and Tschirhart 2007), and
the other is in the specification of the optimization problem where diversity
is measured in terms of the phylogenetic distance between species (Weitzman
1992). Both take the normative goals of conservation biology as given, and ask
what economic problem they give rise to.

1.4 Plan of the book

We call the approach adopted in this book the Hotelling approach. This
recognizes the fact that the principles were first spelled out in Hotelling’s 1931
analysis of the optimal extraction of mineral resources. We are not the first
to recognize Hotelling’s contribution in this area. In 1981, 50 years after his
paper appeared, an article by Deverajan and Fisher had this to say: “There are
only a few fields in economics whose antecedents can be traced to a single,
seminal article. One such field is natural resource economics . . . its origin is
widely recognized as Harold Hotelling’s 1931 paper . . . it . . . not only presented
the canonical model for modern theorists to build on, but also anticipated
the relevant issues—​such as the effects of uncertainty and the presence of
externalities—​by almost a generation” (Deverajan and Fisher 1981).
The same principles now appear in almost every paper on the optimal
management of dynamical resource systems. They are frequently thought of
as principles governing optimal extraction or harvest, but conservation and
extraction or harvest are but two sides of the same coin. A solution to the
optimal extraction problem is also a solution to the optimal conservation
problem. When resource managers decide how much to extract or harvest in
some period, they also decide how much to leave or conserve in the same pe-
riod. When they decide how much of an ecosystem to convert to human use,
they also decide how much to conserve. All we do is draw attention to the fact
that all conservation problems have a similar structure, and can benefit from
application of the same principles. The challenge is to understand the value of
resources—​to recognize that the same resource may have value to different
people for different reasons, and that values may change at different rates.
The book is divided into four parts. Part I offers an economic theory of
conservation that generalizes Hotelling’s (1931) results. We show that the
Hotelling principle is embodied in all subsequent work on the optimal ex-
ploitation of both nonrenewable and renewable natural resources. In fact,
we show that every time we find the first order necessary conditions for the
optimal management of natural resources, we include a restatement of the
20 Conservation

Hotelling principle that resources should be exploited only up to the point


where the growth in their value to society is equal to the rate of return on al-
ternative assets. The arguments offered in this part are somewhat mathemat-
ical, but for those who are willing to take the formal arguments as read, we
include discursive summaries at the end of each chapter.
Part II focuses on the valuation of goods and services, and of the assets un-
derlying the production of goods and services. Given that conservation in
the Hotelling approach depends on valuation, this step is critical. Since many
natural resources are not bought and sold in the marketplace, however, we
cannot rely on market prices. We often need to estimate resource values using
a range of nonmarket methods. The chapters in this part explore the options
open to us to estimate nonmarket values.
Part III considers the issues involved in aligning the private and social value
of environmental assets. Even where resources are exchanged in the market,
their price may be a poor approximation of their value. We may need to add
in external effects or externalities, particularly where resources are public
goods. We show how interventions that confront resources users with the true
social opportunity cost of their behavior can be thought of as conservation
instruments. Once again, where we make formal arguments, we also include a
discursive summary of those arguments.
Part IV then applies the Hotelling approach to a discussion of the main
issues in environmental conservation. This includes the classic approach to
conservation—​protected areas, but also includes conservation in production
systems beyond protected areas. We consider the problem of scale, and dis-
cuss the impact of changes in both temporal and spatial scale. While we focus
on two spatial scales—​national and international—​we acknowledge that con-
servation policy and practice play out at multiple spatial scales, and we spell
out the principles that apply to conservation that affects people at different
scales.

References

Butchart, S. H., H. Resit Akçakaya, J. Chanson, J. E. Baillie, B. Collen, S. Quader, W. R.


Turner, R. Amin, S. N. Stuart, and C. Hilton-​Taylor. 2007. Improvements to the Red
List index. PLoS One 2:e140.
Butchart, S., M. Walpole, B. Collen, A. van Strien, J. P. W. Scharlemann, R. E. A.
Almond, J. E. M. Baillie, B. Bomhard, C. Brown, J. Bruno, K. E. Carpenter, G. M.
Carr, J. Chanson, A. M. Chenery, J. Csirke, N. C. Davidson, F. Dentener, M. Foster,
A. Galli, J. N. Galloway, P. Genovesi, R. D. Gregory, M. Hockings, V. Kapos, J.-​F.
Lamarque, F. Leverington, J. Loh, M. A. McGeoch, L. McRae, A. Minasyan, M. H.
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Odin, Vili, and When these giants became aware of the existence of
Ve. the god Buri, and of his son Börr (born), whom he had
immediately produced, they began waging war against
them, for as the gods and giants represented the opposite forces of
good and evil, there was no hope of their ever coming to an agreement
and living together in peace. This struggle continued evidently for ages,
neither party gaining a decided advantage, until Börr married the
giantess Bestla, daughter of Bolthorn (the thorn of evil), who bore him
three powerful sons, Odin (spirit), Vili (will), and Ve (holy). These three
sons immediately joined their father in his struggle against the inimical
frost giants, and finally succeeded in slaying their deadliest foe, the
great Ymir. As he sank down lifeless the blood gushed from his wounds
in such floods that it produced a great deluge, in which all his race
perished, with the exception of Bergelmir, who escaped in a boat and
went with his wife to the confines of the world.

“And all the race of Ymer thou didst drown,


Save one, Bergelmer,—he on shipboard fled
Thy deluge, and from him the giants sprang.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).

Here he took up his abode, calling the place Jötun-heim (the home
of the giants), and here he begat a new race of frost giants, who
inherited his dislikes, continued the feud, and were always ready to sally
forth from their desolate country and make a raid into the territory of the
gods.
The gods, who in Northern mythology are called Æsir (pillars and
supporters of the world), having thus triumphed over all their foes, and
being no longer engaged in perpetual warfare, now began to look about
them, wondering how they could improve the desolate aspect of things
and fashion a habitable world. After due consideration Börr’s sons rolled
Ymir’s great corpse into the yawning abyss, and began to make the
world out of its various component parts.
Out of the giant’s flesh they fashioned Midgard (middle garden), as
Creation of the earth was called, which was placed in the exact center
the earth. of the vast space, and hedged all round with Ymir’s
eyebrows which formed its bulwarks or ramparts. The
solid portion of Midgard was surrounded by the giant’s blood or sweat,
which now formed the ocean, while his bones made the hills, his flat
teeth the cliffs, and his curly hair the trees and all vegetation.
Well pleased with the result of these their first efforts at creation, the
gods took the giant’s unwieldy skull and poised it skillfully above earth
and sea as the vaulted heavens; then scattering his brains throughout
the expanse they fashioned from them the fleecy clouds.

“Of Ymir’s flesh


Was earth created,
Of his blood the sea,
Of his bones the hills,
Of his hair trees and plants,
Of his skull the heavens,
And of his brows
The gentle powers
Formed Midgard for the sons of men;
But of his brain
The heavy clouds are
All created.”
Norse Mythology (R. B. Anderson).

To support the heavenly vault in place, the gods stationed the strong
dwarfs, Nordri, Sudri, Austri, Westri, at its four corners, bidding them
uphold it on their shoulders, and from them the four points of the
compass received their present names of North, South, East, and West.
To light up the world thus created, the gods began to stud the heavenly
vault with sparks secured from Muspells-heim, points of light which
shone steadily through the gloom like brilliant stars. The most vivid of all
these sparks, however, were reserved for the manufacture of the sun
and moon, which were placed in beautiful golden chariots.

“And from the flaming world, where Muspel reigns,


Thou sent’st and fetched’st fire, and madest lights:
Sun, moon, and stars, which thou hast hung in Heaven,
Dividing clear the paths of night and day.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).
When all these preparations had been finished, and the steeds
Arvakr (the early waker) and Alsvin (the rapid goer) were harnessed to
the sun chariot, the gods, fearing lest the animals should suffer from
their proximity to this ardent sphere, placed under their withers great
skins filled with air or with some iron refrigerant substance. They also
fashioned the shield Svalin (the cooler), and placed it in front of the car
to shelter them from the sun’s direct rays, which would else have burned
them and the earth to a crisp. The moon car was, moreover, provided
with a fleet steed called Alsvider (the all-swift); but as its rays were very
mild indeed, no shield was required to protect him.
The chariots were all ready, the steeds harnessed and impatient to
Mani and Sol. begin their daily round, but there was no one to guide
them along the right road. The gods, perceiving this,
looked about them and soon beheld Mani (the moon) and Sol (the sun),
children of giant Mundilfari, who was so inordinately proud of his
beautiful offspring that he called them by the names of the newly created
orbs. He gave his daughter Sol in marriage to Glaur (glow), who was
probably one of Surtr’s sons. The brother and sister were transferred to
the sky, where, after receiving minute directions from the gods, they
skillfully guided their fleet steeds along their appointed paths.

“Know that Mundilfær is hight


Father to the moon and sun;
Age on age shall roll away,
While they mark the months and days.”
Hávamál (W. Taylor’s tr.).

Seeing how satisfactory all these arrangements were, the gods now
summoned Nott (night), a daughter of one of the giants, Norvi, and
intrusted to her care a dark chariot, drawn by a sable steed, Hrim-faxi
(frost mane), from whose waving mane the dew and hoar frost dropped
down upon the earth.

“Hrim-faxi is the sable steed,


From the east who brings the night,
Fraught with the showering joys of love:
As he champs the foamy bit,
Drops of dew are scattered round
To adorn the vales of earth.”
Vafthrudni’s-mal (W. Taylor’s tr.).

The goddess of night had already thrice been married: by her first
husband, Naglfari, she had had a son named Aud; by her second,
Annar, a daughter Jörd (earth); and by her third, the god Dellinger
(dawn), she now had a son, radiant with beauty, who was called Dag
(day).
As soon as the gods became aware of this beautiful being’s
existence they provided a chariot for him also, drawn by the resplendent
white steed Skin-faxi (shining mane), from whose mane bright beams of
light shone forth in every direction, illuminating all the world, and bringing
light and gladness to all.

“Forth from the east, up the ascent of Heaven,


Day drove his courser with the shining mane.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).

But as evil always treads close upon the footsteps of good, hoping to
destroy it, the ancient inhabitants of the Northern regions
The wolves
Sköll and Hati. imagined that both Sun and Moon were incessantly
pursued by the fierce wolves Sköll (repulsion) and Hati
(hatred), whose sole aim was to overtake and swallow the brilliant
objects before them, so that the world might again be enveloped in its
primeval darkness.

“Sköll the wolf is named


That the fair-faced goddess
To the ocean chases;
Another Hati hight,
He is Hrodvitnir’s son;
He the bright maid of heaven shall precede.”
Sæmund’s Edda (Thorpe’s tr.).
At times, they said, the wolves overtook and tried to swallow their
prey, thus producing an eclipse of the radiant orbs. Then the terrified
people raised such a deafening clamor that the wolves, frightened by the
noise, hastily dropped them. Thus rescued, Sun and Moon resumed
their course, fleeing more rapidly than before, the hungry monsters
rushing along in their wake, anxious for the time when their efforts would
prevail and the end of the world would come. For the Northern nations
all believed that as their gods had sprung from an alliance between the
divine element (Börr) and the mortal (Bestla), they were finite, and
doomed to perish with the world they had made.

“But even in this early morn


Faintly foreshadowed was the dawn
Of that fierce struggle, deadly shock,
Which yet should end in Ragnarok;
When Good and Evil, Death and Life,
Beginning now, end then their strife.”
Valhalla (J. C. Jones).

Mani was also accompanied by Hiuki, the waxing, and Bil, the
waning moon, two children whom he had snatched from earth where a
cruel father forced them to carry water all night. Our ancestors fancied
they saw these children, the original “Jack and Jill,” with their pail, darkly
outlined upon the moon.
The gods not only appointed Sun, Moon, Day, and Night to count out
the year, but also called Evening, Midnight, Morning, Forenoon, Noon,
and Afternoon to share their duties, making Summer and Winter the
rulers of the seasons. Summer, a direct descendant of Svasud (the mild
and lovely), inherited his gentle disposition, and was loved by all except
Winter, his deadly enemy, the son of Vindsual, himself a son of the
disagreeable god Vasud, the personification of the icy wind.

“Vindsual is the name of him


Who begat the winter’s god;
Summer from Suasuthur sprang:
Both shall walk the way of years,
Till the twilight of the gods.”
Vafthrudni’s-mal (W. Taylor’s tr.).

As the cold winds continually swept down from the north, chilling all
the earth, these nations further imagined that at the extreme northern
verge of the heavens sat the great giant Hræ-svelgr (the corpse
swallower), all clad in eagle plumes, and that whenever he raised his
arms or wings the cold blasts darted forth and swept ruthlessly over the
face of the earth, blighting all things with their icy breath.

“Hræ-svelger is the name of him


Who sits beyond the end of heaven,
And winnows wide his eagle-wings,
Whence the sweeping blasts have birth.”
Vafthrudni’s-mal (W. Taylor’s tr.).

While the gods were occupied in creating the earth and providing for
its illumination, a whole host of maggot-like creatures had
Dwarfs and
Elves. been breeding in Ymir’s flesh. Crawling in and out, they
now attracted divine attention. Summoning these uncouth
beings into their presence, the gods, after giving them forms and
endowing them with superhuman intelligence, divided them into two
large classes. Those which were dark, treacherous, and cunning by
nature were banished to Svart-alfa-heim, the home of the black dwarfs,
situated underground, whence they were never allowed to come forth as
long as it was day, under penalty of being turned into stone. They were
called Dwarfs, Trolls, Gnomes, or Kobolds, and spent all their time and
energy in exploring the secret recesses of the earth. They collected gold,
silver, and precious stones, which they stowed away in secret crevices,
whence they could withdraw them at will. As for the remainder of these
small creatures, including all that were fair, good, and useful, the gods
called them Fairies and Elves, and gave them a dwelling place in the
airy realm of Alf-heim (home of the light-elves), situated between heaven
and earth, whence they could flit downwards whenever they pleased, to
attend to the plants and flowers, sport with the birds and butterflies, or
dance in the silvery moonlight on the green. Odin, who had been the
leading spirit in all these undertakings, now bade the gods, his
descendants, follow him to the broad plain called Idawold, far above the
earth, on the other side of the great stream Ifing, whose waters never
froze.

“Ifing’s deep and murky wave


Parts the ancient sons of earth
From the dwelling of the Goths:
Open flows the mighty flood,
Nor shall ice arrest its course
While the wheel of Ages rolls.”
Vafthrudni’s-mal (W. Taylor’s tr.).

In the very center of the sacred space, which from the beginning of
the world had been reserved for their own abode and called Asgard
(home of the gods), the twelve Æsir (gods) and twenty-four Asynjur
(goddesses) all assembled. They decreed that no blood should ever be
shed within the limits of their realm, or peace stead, but that harmony
must reign there forever. Then after due consultation they established a
forge where they fashioned all their weapons and the tools required to
build magnificent palaces of precious metals, in which they lived for
many long years in a state of such perfect happiness that this period has
been called the Golden Age.
Although the gods had from the beginning designed Midgard, or
Creation of Mana-heim, as the abode of man, there were at first no
man. human beings to inhabit it. One day Odin, Vili, and Ve,
according to some authorities, or Odin, Hoenir (the bright
one), and Lodur, or Loki (fire), started out together and walked along the
seashore, where they found either two trees, the ash, Ask, and the elm,
Embla, or two blocks of wood, hewn into rude semblances of the human
form. The gods gazed at first upon the inanimate wood in silent wonder,
then perceiving the use it could be put to, Odin gave these logs souls,
Hoenir bestowed motion and senses, and Lodur contributed blood and
blooming complexions.

“There were twain and they went upon earth, and were speechless,
unmighty, and wan;
They were hopeless, deathless, lifeless, and the Mighty named them
Man.
Then they gave them speech and power, and they gave them color and
breath;
And deeds and the hope they gave them, and they gave them Life and
Death.”
Sigurd the Volsung (William Mor

This newly created man and woman were then left to rule Midgard at
will. They gradually peopled it with their descendants, while the gods,
remembering they had called them into life, took a special interest in all
they did, watched over them, and often vouchsafed their aid and
protection.
Allfather in the mean while had not been idle, but had created a
The Yggdrasil huge ash called Yggdrasil, the tree of the universe, of
tree. time, or of life, which filled all the world, taking root not
only in the remotest depths of Nifl-heim, where bubbled
the spring Hvergelmir, but also in Midgard, near Mimir’s well (the ocean),
and in Asgard, near the Urdar fountain.
These three great roots permitted the tree to attain such a
marvelous height that its topmost bough, called Lerad (the peace giver),
overshadowed Odin’s hall, while the other wide-spreading branches
towered over all the other worlds. An eagle was perched on the bough
Lerad, and between his eyes sat the falcon Vedfolnir, sending his
piercing glances down into heaven, earth, and Nifl-heim, and reporting
all he saw.
As the tree Yggdrasil was ever green, and its leaves never withered,
it served as pasturing ground not only for Odin’s goat Heidrun, which
supplied the heavenly mead, the drink of the gods, but also for the stags
Dain, Dvalin, Duneyr, and Durathor, from whose horns the honeydew
dropped down upon the earth and furnished the water for all the rivers in
the world.
In the seething caldron Hvergelmir, close by the great tree, was a
horrible dragon called Nidhug, which continually gnawed the roots, and
was helped in his work of destruction by countless worms, whose aim it
was to kill the tree, knowing that its death would be the signal for the
downfall of the gods.
“Through all our life a tempter prowls malignant,
The cruel Nidhug from the world below.
He hates that asa-light whose rays benignant
On th’ hero’s brow and glitt’ring sword bright glow.”
Viking Tales of the North (R. B. Anderson).

Scampering continually up and down the branches and trunk of the


tree was the squirrel Ratatosk (branch borer), the typical busybody and
tale bearer, which passed up and down, reporting the eagle’s remarks to
the dragon, and vice versa, in the hope of stirring up strife between
them.
To maintain the tree Yggdrasil in a perfectly healthy condition, the
Bifröst. Norns or Fates daily sprinkled it with the holy waters from
the Urdar fountain, and as this water trickled down to
earth it supplied the bees with honey. From either edge of Nifl-heim,
arching high above Midgard, rose the gods’ bridge, Bifröst (Asabru, the
rainbow), built of fire, water, and air, whose quivering and changing hues
it retained, and over which none but the gods were privileged to travel to
and fro, on their journey to the earth or to the Urdar well, at the foot of
the ash Yggdrasil, where they daily assembled in council.

“The gods arose


And took their horses, and set forth to ride
O’er the bridge Bifröst, where is Heimdall’s watch,
To the ash Igdrasil, and Ida’s plain.
Thor came on foot, the rest on horseback rode.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).

Of all the gods only Thor, the god of thunder, never passed over the
bridge, for they feared that his heavy tread or the heat of his lightnings
would destroy it. The gods’ watchman, Heimdall, kept guard there night
and day. He was armed with a very trenchant sword, and carried a
trumpet called Giallar-horn, upon which he generally blew a soft note to
announce the coming or going of the gods, but upon which he would
blow a terrible blast when Ragnarok should come, and the frost giants
and Surtr threatened to destroy the world.
“Surt from the south comes
With flickering flame;
Shines from his sword
The Val-god’s sun.
The stony hills are dashed together,
The giantesses totter;
Men tread the path of Hel,
And heaven is cloven.”
Sæmund’s Edda (Thorpe’s tr.).

Now although the original inhabitants of heaven were the Æsir, they
were not the sole divinities of the Northern races, who
The Vanas.
also recognized the power of the sea and wind gods, the
Vanas, dwelling in Vana-heim and ruling their realms as they pleased. In
early times, before the golden palaces in Asgard were built, a dispute
arose between the Æsir and Vanas, and they soon resorted to arms to
settle it, using rocks, mountains, and icebergs as missiles. But
discovering ere long that in unity alone lay their strength, they agreed to
let the quarrel drop and make peace, and to ratify the treaty they
exchanged hostages.
It was thus that the Van, Niörd, came to dwell in Asgard with his two
children, Frey and Freya, while the Asa, Hoenir, Odin’s own brother, took
up his abode in Vana-heim forever.
CHAPTER II.
ODIN.

Odin, Wuotan, or Woden was the highest and holiest god of the
Northern races. He was the all-pervading spirit of the
Odin’s
personal universe, the personification of the air, the god of
appearance. universal wisdom and victory, and the leader and
protector of princes and heroes. As all the gods were
supposed to be descended from him, he was surnamed Allfather, and as
eldest and chief among them he occupied Asgard, the highest seat.
Known by the name of Hlidskialf, this chair was not only an exalted
throne, but also a mighty watch tower, from whence he could overlook
the whole world and see at a glance all that was happening among
gods, giants, elves, dwarfs, and men.

“From the hall of Heaven he rode away


To Lidskialf, and sate upon his throne,
The mount, from whence his eye surveys the world.
And far from Heaven he turn’d his shining orbs
To look on Midgard, and the earth and men.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).

None but Odin and his wife and queen Frigga had the privilege of
using this seat, and when they occupied it they generally gazed towards
the south and west, the goal of all the hopes and excursions of the
Northern nations. Odin was generally represented as a tall, vigorous
man, about fifty years of age, either with dark curling hair or with a long
gray beard and bald head. He was clad in a suit of gray, with a blue
hood, and his muscular body was enveloped in a wide blue mantle all
flecked with gray—an emblem of the sky with its fleecy clouds. In his
hand Odin generally carried the infallible spear Gungnir, which was so
sacred that an oath sworn upon its point could never be broken, and on
his finger or arm he wore the marvelous ring Draupnir, the emblem of
fruitfulness, precious beyond compare. When seated upon his throne or
armed for the fray, in which he often took an active part, Odin wore his
eagle helmet; but when he wandered about the earth in human guise, to
see what men were doing, he generally donned a broad-brimmed hat,
drawn down low over his forehead to conceal the fact of his having but
one eye.

“Then into the Volsungs’ dwelling a mighty man there strode,


One-eyed and seeming ancient, yet bright his visage glowed;
Cloud-blue was the hood upon him, and his kirtle gleaming-gray
As the latter morning sun dog when the storm is on the way:
A bill he bore on his shoulder, whose mighty ashen beam
Burnt bright with the flame of the sea and the blended silver’s gleam.”
Sigurd the Volsung (William Morris

Two ravens, Hugin (thought) and Munin (memory), perched upon his
shoulders as he sat upon his throne, and these he sent out into the wide
world every morning, anxiously watching for their return at nightfall,
when they whispered into his ears news of all they had seen and heard,
keeping him well informed about everything that was happening on
earth.

“Hugin and Munin


Fly each day
Over the spacious earth.
I fear for Hugin
That he come not back,
Yet more anxious am I for Munin.”
Norse Mythology (R. B. Anderson).
VALHALLA—Hoffmann.

At his feet crouched two wolves or hunting hounds, Geri and Freki,
which animals were therefore considered sacred to him, and of good
omen if met by the way. Odin always fed these wolves with his own
hands from the meat set before him, for he required no food at all, and
seldom tasted anything except the sacred mead.

“Geri and Freki


The war-wont sates,
The triumphant sire of hosts;
But on wine only
The famed in arms
Odin, ever lives.”
Lay of Grimnir (Thorpe’s tr.).
When seated in state upon his throne, Odin rested his feet upon a
footstool of gold, the work of the gods, whose furniture and utensils were
all fashioned either of that precious metal or of silver.
Besides the magnificent hall Glads-heim, where stood the twelve
seats occupied by the gods when they met in council, and Valaskialf,
where his throne, Hlidskialf, was placed, Odin had a third palace in
Asgard, situated in the midst of the marvelous grove Glasir, whose
leaves were all of shimmering red gold.
This palace, called Valhalla (the hall of the chosen slain), had five
Valhalla. hundred and forty doors, wide enough to allow the
passage of eight hundred warriors abreast, and above the
principal gate were a boar’s head and an eagle whose piercing glance
looked all over the world. The walls of this marvelous building were
fashioned of glittering spears, so highly polished that they illuminated all
the hall. The roof was of golden shields, and the benches were
decorated with fine armor, the god’s gifts to his guests. Here long tables
afforded ample accommodations for the warriors fallen in battle, who
were called Einheriar, and were considered Odin’s favorite guests.

“Easily to be known is,


By those who to Odin come,
The mansion by its aspect.
Its roof with spears is laid,
Its hall with shields is decked,
With corselets are its benches strewed.”
Lay of Grimnir (Thorpe’s tr.).

The ancient Northern nations, who deemed warfare the most


honorable of occupations, and considered courage the greatest virtue,
worshiped Odin principally as god of battle and victory, and believed that
whenever a fight was about to occur he sent out his special attendants,
the shield, battle, or wish maidens, called Valkyrs (choosers of the slain).
They selected one half the dead warriors, and bore them on their fleet
steeds over the quivering rainbow bridge Bifröst, into his hall, where
many honors awaited them. Welcomed by Odin’s sons, Hermod and
Bragi, the heroes were then conducted to the foot of Odin’s throne,
where they received the praises due their valor. When some special
favorite of the god was thus brought into Asgard, Valfather (father of the
slain), as Odin was called when he presided over the warriors,
sometimes rose from his throne to meet him at the door and himself bid
him welcome.
Besides the hope of the glory of such a distinction, and the promise
The feast of of dwelling in Odin’s beloved presence day after day,
the heroes. other more material pleasures awaited the warriors in
Valhalla. They were seated around the board, where the
beautiful white-armed virgins, the Valkyrs, having laid aside their armor
and clad themselves in pure white robes, constantly waited upon them.
These maidens, nine in number, according to some mythologists,
brought the heroes great horns full of delicious mead, and set before
them huge portions of boars’ flesh, upon which they feasted most
heartily. The usual Northern drink was beer or ale, but our ancestors
fancied this beverage too coarse for the heavenly sphere. They
therefore imagined that Valfather kept his table liberally supplied with
mead or hydromel, which was daily furnished in great abundance by his
she-goat Heidrun, continually browsing on the tender leaves and twigs
on Yggdrasil’s topmost branch, Lerad.

“Rash war and perilous battle, their delight;


And immature, and red with glorious wounds,
Unpeaceful death their choice: deriving thence
A right to feast and drain immortal bowls,
In Odin’s hall; whose blazing roof resounds
The genial uproar of those shades who fall
In desperate fight, or by some brave attempt.”
Liberty (James Thomson).

The meat upon which the Einheriar feasted was the flesh of the
divine boar Sæhrimnir, a marvelous beast, daily slain by the cook
Andhrimnir, and boiled in the great caldron Eldhrimnir; but although
Odin’s guests had true Northern appetites and fairly gorged themselves,
there was always plenty of meat for all.

“Andhrimnir cooks
In Eldhrimnir
Sæhrimnir;
’Tis the best of flesh;
But few know
What the einherjes eat.”
Lay of Grimnir (Anderson’s version).

Moreover the supply was exhaustless, for the boar always came to
life again before the time for the next meal, when he was again slain and
devoured. This miraculous renewal of supplies in the larder was not the
only wonderful occurrence in Valhalla, for it is also related that the
warriors, after having eaten and drunk to satiety, always called for their
weapons, armed themselves, and rode out into the great courtyard,
where they fought against one another, repeating the feats of arms
achieved while on earth, and recklessly dealing terrible wounds, which
were miraculously and completely healed as soon as the dinner horn
sounded.

“All the chosen guests of Odin


Daily ply the trade of war;
From the fields of festal fight
Swift they ride in gleaming arms,
And gaily, at the board of gods,
Quaff the cup of sparkling ale
And eat Sæhrimni’s vaunted flesh.”
Vafthrudni’s-mal (W. Taylor’s tr.).

Whole and happy once more,—for they bore one another no grudge
for the cruel thrusts given and received, and lived in perfect amity
together,—the Einheriar then rode gaily back to Valhalla to renew their
feasts in Odin’s beloved presence, while the white-armed Valkyrs, with
flying hair, glided gracefully about, constantly filling their horns or their
favorite drinking vessels, the skulls of their enemies, while the scalds
sang of war and stirring Viking expeditions.

“And all day long they there are hack’d and hewn
’Mid dust, and groans, and limbs lopp’d off, and blood;
But all at night return to Odin’s hall
Woundless and fresh; such lot is theirs in Heaven.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).

Thus fighting and feasting, the heroes were said to spend day after
day in perfect bliss, while Odin delighted in their strength and number,
which, however, he foresaw would not long avail to ward off his downfall
when the day of the last battle had dawned.
As such pleasures were the highest a Northern warrior’s fancy could
paint, it was very natural that all fighting men should love Odin, and early
in life should dedicate themselves to his service. They vowed to die
arms in hand, if possible, and even wounded themselves with their own
spears when death drew near, if they had been unfortunate enough to
escape death on the battlefield and were threatened with “straw death,”
as they called decease from old age or sickness.

“To Odin then true-fast


Carves he fair runics,—
Death-runes cut deep on his arm and his breast.”
Viking Tales of the North (R. B. Anderson).

In reward for this devotion Odin watched with special care over his
favorites, giving them a magic sword, spear, or horse, and making them
invincible until their last hour had come, when he himself appeared to
claim or destroy the gift he had bestowed, and the Valkyrs bore them off
to Valhalla.

“He gave to Hermod


A helm and corselet,
And from him Sigmund
A sword received.”
Lay of Hyndla (Thorpe’s tr.).

Whenever Odin took an active part in war, he generally rode his


eight-footed gray steed, Sleipnir, brandished his white
Sleipnir.
shield, and flung his glittering spear over the heads of the
combatants, who only awaited this signal to fall upon one another, while
the god dashed into their midst shouting his warcry: “Odin has you all!”

“And Odin donn’d


His dazzling corslet and his helm of gold,
And led the way on Sleipnir.”
Balder Dead (Matthew Arnold).

At times he also used his magic bow, from which he shot ten arrows
at once, every one invariably bringing down a foe. Odin was also
supposed to inspire his favorite warriors with the renowned “Berserker
rage” (bare sark or shirt), which enabled them, although naked,
weaponless, and sore beset, to perform unheard-of feats of valor and
strength, and go about as with charmed lives.
As Odin’s characteristics, like the all-pervading elements, were
multitudinous, so were also his names, of which he had no less than two
hundred, almost all of which were descriptive of some phase of his
being. He was considered the ancient god of seamen and of the wind:

“Mighty Odin,
Norsemen hearts we bend to thee!
Steer our barks, all-potent Woden,
O’er the surging Baltic Sea.”
Vail.

Odin, as wind god, generally rode about on his eight-footed steed


Sleipnir, a habit which gave rise to the oldest Northern
The Wild Hunt.
riddle, which runs as follows: “Who are the two who ride
to the Thing? Three eyes have they together, ten feet, and one tail; and
thus they travel through the lands.” And as the souls of the dead were
supposed to be wafted away on the wings of the storm, Odin was
worshiped as the leader of all disembodied spirits. In this character he
was most generally known as the Wild Huntsman, and when people
heard the rush and roar of the wind they cried aloud in superstitious fear,
fancying they heard and saw him ride past with his train, all mounted on
snorting steeds, and accompanied by baying hounds. And the passing
of the Wild Hunt, known as Woden’s Hunt, the Raging Host, Gabriel’s
Hounds, or Asgardreia, was also considered a presage of misfortune of
some kind, such as pestilence or war.

“The Rhine flows bright; but its waves ere long


Must hear a voice of war,
And a clash of spears our hills among,
And a trumpet from afar;
And the brave on a bloody turf must lie,
For the Huntsman hath gone by!”
The Wild Huntsman (Mrs. Hemans).

People further fancied that if any were so sacrilegious as to join in


the wild halloo in mockery, they were immediately snatched up and
whirled away with the vanishing host, while those who joined in the
halloo with implicit good faith were rewarded for their credulity by the
sudden gift of a horse’s leg, hurled at them from above, which, if they
carefully kept until the morrow, was changed into a solid lump of gold.
Even after the introduction of Christianity the ignorant Northern
people still dreaded the on-coming storm, declaring that it was the Wild
Hunt sweeping across the sky.

“And ofttimes will start,


For overhead are sweeping Gabriel’s hounds,
Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart
To chase forever on aëreal grounds.”
Sonnet (Wordsworth).

Sometimes it left behind it a small black dog, which, cowering and


whining upon a neighboring hearth, had to be kept for a whole year and
carefully tended unless the people succeeded in exorcising it or
frightening it away. The usual recipe, the same as for the riddance of
changelings, was to brew beer in egg-shells, which performance so
startled the spectral dog that he fled with his tail between his legs,
exclaiming that, although as old as the Behmer, or Bohemian forest, he
had never yet seen such an uncanny sight.
“I am as old
As the Behmer wold,
And have in my life
Such a brewing not seen.”
Old Saying (Thorpe’s tr.).

The object of this phantom hunt varied greatly, and was either a
visionary boar or wild horse, white-breasted maidens who were caught
and borne away bound only once in seven years, or the wood nymphs,
called Moss Maidens, who were thought to represent the autumn leaves
torn from the trees and whirled away by the wintry gale.
In the middle ages, when the belief in the old heathen deities was
partly forgotten, the leader of the Wild Hunt was no longer Odin, but
Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, King Arthur, or some Sabbath
breaker, like the squire of Rodenstein or Hans von Hackelberg, who, in
punishment for his sins, was condemned to hunt forever through the
realms of air.
As the winds blew fiercest in autumn and winter, Odin was supposed
to hunt in preference during that season, especially during the time
between Christmas and Twelfth-night, and the peasants were always
careful to leave the last sheaf or measure of grain out in the fields to
serve as food for his horse.
This hunt was of course known by various names in the different
countries of northern Europe; but as the tales told about it are all alike,
they evidently originated in the same old heathen belief, and to this day
ignorant people of the North still fancy that the baying of a hound on a
stormy night is an infallible presage of death.

“Still, still shall last the dreadful chase,


Till time itself shall have an end;
By day, they scour earth’s cavern’d space,
At midnight’s witching hour, ascend.

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