Alien Species.vp - IUCN

Who should pay? Economic dimensions of
preventing harmful invasions through
international trade and travel
Peter T. Jenkins
Abstract
While the problem of biological invasions is becoming better recognized internationally,
the funds available for dealing with the problem remain woefully inadequate. This paper
suggests six policy tools to help ensure that those responsible for generating the problem
pay appropriate fees to support appropriate management actions, including insurance
requirements; bonding requirements; civil fines; criminal penalties and fines; fees; and
corrective taxes. These need to address invasive alien species problems arising from
intentional introductions, from travelling intercontinentally by ship or plane, or through
importing cargo intercontinentally. Several national policy mechanisms are also available,
including economic incentives and disincentives. The mechanisms proposed would
be fair and appropriate, correlated with the amount of trade and travel, provide sustained
funding for the long term, and be sensible to consumers, travellers, and policy makers.
Introduction
At the UN/Norway invasives species conference in Trondheim in 1996, a Kenyan delegate who
agreed that trade could cause invasions, asked me a question for which I had no good answer:
how could developing countries afford to pay for the necessary risk analysis, and for
prevention, monitoring, and control systems? This paper looks at some economic aspects of
that critical question.
A special double issue of IUCN’s World Conservation (4/97 – 1/98) was devoted to the
invasives problem. In the overview, Prof. Daniel Simberloff (1998) said that to slow the rush
toward global biological homogenization, international policy makers needed to support three
broad actions: (1) creating a less fragmented institutional response; (2) moving to a regulatory
approach that allows no new non-native species to be imported unless they have been carefully
assessed and shown to be safe; and (3) committing much greater funding to the multitude of
demands in preventing the so-called accidental introductions and in controlling existing
infestations. This paper discusses only Simberloff’s action (3), the funding problem. But the
funding problem needs resolution or else neither key international bodies nor the developing
world likely will be able to implement actions (1) or (2).
The economic factors leading to invasives introductions may be as important as the letter of
regulatory laws (McNeely, 1998). The U.S. magazine BusinessWeek recently published an
excellent and frightening article on “Bioinvasions” (Ginsburg, 2000). It vividly described
economic globalization’s ecological “Dark Side” (to use Star Wars terminology). It focused on
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