Ownership of environmental values and opportunity costs

Conservationists have recently used the concept of opportunity costs to calculate potential costs of conserving key sites with high environmental values. However, the validity of this approach can be questioned. The author briefly reviews property rights and decisionmaking on matters involving environmental values. Two examples are discussed: nature conservation, and the planting of genetically modified crops. The examples are considered in relation to existence values, citizens' preferences, problems associated with aggregating social preferences, and the observation that there are costs associated with exercising rights. The problems of the use of opportunity costs as a means of compensation for lost rights to environmental values are those of (1) who should determine the values; (2) whether payments should be made as compensation or as fines; and (3) who should receive the payments. These problems raise issues of equity, particularly as poor people often have claims to rights over areas with high environmental values. In conclusion, the roles of equity and sovereignty in the distribution of entitlements are emphasised and the difficulty of taking a policy decision to use market mechanisms for conserving biodiversity is discussed.