Natural protected areas: Are economic benefits higher than economic costs?
This study aims to examine whether protected areas are economically efficient in the conservation of biological diversity. In doing so we compare economic benefits and economic costs of natural protected areas (NPA), in order to verify weather NPA benefits outweigh their costs.
Data/Methods:
Our analytical framework is based on the theory of environmental economics and our reasoning followed a defensive expenditure procedure, assuming that creation and maintenance of NPA by a society is an evidence of a self-protective behavior. We analyzed the whole Brazilian Conservation Area System (SNUC in the Portuguese anachronism) with almost 700 NPA in 2011. We first estimated actual current expenditures (fixed and variable expenditures) as the as economic costs In a second moment we redefined economic costs based upon a methodology adopted by the Brazilian the Ministry of the Environment that proposes a minimum required expenditure (ideal costs).Then we compared both estimative with economic benefits, estimated through conservation transferred benefits (CTB) procedures.
Results:
When testing this hypothesis for the Brazilian reality the results confirmed that actual spending is below the ideal spending. This generates what we called Sustainability Gap which is nothing more than a gap between what we should invest and what we actually invest in terms of NPA. It was also confirmed that the CTB is significantly greater than the costs, which demonstrates that the strategy could be economically efficient. It was concluded from these results that the absence of management criteria, including criteria for economic analysis before and after the creation of CA significantly influenced the economic efficiency of these areas. Results also suggest that under expenditure on NPA also creates a vicious circle that minimizes the benefits to society that can be obtained from the NPA and consequently makes frivolous governmental spending in the environmental policy.