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Conservation
Conservation
Economics, Science, and Policy
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.
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
Continued
18 Conservation
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
References
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.