THE ECONOMICS OF BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION: A STUDY IN A COFFEE GROWING REGION OF INDIA / доклад на 25 конференции IAAE, Reshaping Agriculture’s Contribution to Society, International Convention Centre, Durban, South Africa, 16-23 August 2003

This paper analyses the economics of biodiversity conservation in the context of a tropical forest ecosystem in India, where coffee is the main competitor for land use. Using primary data covering a cross-section of coffee growers, the study notes that the opportunity costs of biodiversity conservation in terms of coffee benefits foregone are quite high. Even after including external costs due to wild life damages and defensive expenditure to protect against wild life, the NPVs and IRRs from coffee for all land holding groups were high. Even if the expected benefits were to decrease by 20% and costs rise by a similar proportion, still the IRRs from coffee were quite high (19.5 to 20.1 per cent). The study notes that the external costs accounted for between 7 to 15 per cent of the total discounted costs of coffee cultivation, and smaller holdings proportionately incurred higher external costs as compared to large holdings. The study also notes high transaction costs incurred by the growers to claim compensation for wild life damages. Notwithstanding these disincentives, the study notes that the local community were willing to pay in terms of time for participatory biodiversity conservation, and they preferred a decentralized government institution for this purpose.