An ecological-economic modelling procedure to design compensation payments for the efficient spatio-temporal allocation of species protection measures

Using an interdisciplinary approach, we present an ecological-economic modelling procedure to design compensation payments for species protection. We develop our procedure on the example of White Stork protection in a spatio-temporally structured landscape generated by human land use. The proposed procedure is able to solve complex allocation problems such as the spatio-temporal allocation of a budget among more than two areas with spatially differing species-specific cost and benefit functions of any shapes. Furthermore, the procedure delivers the efficient compensation payments not only qualitatively but quantitatively. and is hence relevant to the implementation of species protection policies. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.