Alien Species.vp - IUCN

Peter T. Jenkins
instruments at the very time the potentially damaging activity occurs and at the industry
sector level. That leaves only two really helpful economic tools: fees and taxes.
Economists have argued for decades that the best way to achieve environmental goals is
through appropriate fees and taxes to internalize externalized costs to the polluter, rather than
just command and control regulations (e.g., Arnold, 1995; Dower and Repetto, 1994). But
reasonable criteria are needed to categorize who is contributing to the problem and who makes
sense to pay such fees and taxes.
Pathways as sources of fees and taxes
There is money out there. The value of world trade in goods in 1998 was US$5.2 trillion (WTO,
1999). The value of international airline passenger ticket revenues appears to well exceed
US$100 billion annually (ICAO, 1999). I submit that the intercontinental transportation,
export/import, and travel businesses, and the consumers/travellers who provide the demand,
are the fair choice to be the funding sources.
I focus on intercontinental trade and travel rather than just international because this gets to
the key pathways for harmful invasions, that is, between the seven continents. Intra-continent
invasions and even intra-national invasions certainly have occurred, but not with the magnitude
of impacts as intercontinental invasions. Also, applying economic policy tools to invasions at
the intercontinental trade and travel level is simpler and easier to measure than applying those
tools every time one of the 250+ national borders is crossed; and free-trade zones such as the
European Economic Community would inhibit the application of these tools.
We should not get bogged down in arguing whether it is fair to seek contributions from those
responsible for pathways that lead to so-called unintentional introductions. Analysts in the past
oversimplified this issue by treating each introduction pathway as either “intentional”, such as a
sport fish release, or “unintentional”, such as the discharge of a foreign marine organism in a
ship’s imported ballast water. The distinction is useful to a point, but it does not fix blame
clearly enough on the shippers and import/exporters who cause so-called unintentional
introductions. At some threshold of knowledge about a phenomenon, such as harmful ballast
water discharges from the hundreds of ships that arrive in U.S. ports weekly, the people
involved should be held responsible, even if we cannot say specifically who caused which
invasion. What once were considered unintended consequences must be considered as fully
intended when they are repeated over and over. 1
When an industry is on notice yet continues
with the risky activity, ignorance of the specific harm is no excuse. So-called unintended, but
foreseeable, harmful introductions actually can be viewed as fully intended by the industry as
externalized costs of international trade and travel.
Airline passengers have objected to the practice in some countries of spraying cabins for
potentially invasive insects which might, for example, have stopped the mosquitoes which are
suspected to have carried the West Nile Virus into the New York City area. Airlines and
passengers object to such spraying, and they would protest 100% inspection of passenger
luggage for biological contraband. Both actions would slow down air travel further and could
harm airline profits. Instead, charging a fee to pay for needed work to monitor and quickly stop
airline-mediated invasions, and for public education, is a logical alternative.
A fair approach that most people, including policy makers, will understand is to extract the
funds from the three main economic categories of intercontinental introduction pathways,
outlined below. It is likely better to label the charges fees rather than taxes, because tax seems
more negative and aimed at general revenue raising. Appropriate international institutions can
develop tables as to what exactly is covered and what is a fair fee value. Clearly, many details
would need negotiation.
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