Economic evaluation of biological invasions: A survey

Invasive species are one of the main reasons for the loss of biodiversity. Therefore, national strategies are developed to deal with biological invasions. Economic evaluation as a tool of policy advice has to take into account three challenges: (1) reflecting ecological knowledge, which is characterised by high uncertainty, (2) taking into account the political framework shaped by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and (3) being methodologically sound, e.g. considering all types of values and avoiding general flaws. In this paper we survey and critically analyse economic studies on biological invasions. We test with an evaluation grid whether the studies meet the challenges. We analysed 23 studies generally and 10 in more detail in order to assess their suitability as a policy advice and their methodical quality. As a result we note three main gaps: (1) current studies mostly have methodological shortcomings compared to their theoretical basis; (2) they do not take into account the politically formulated needs of the CBD; and (3) they hardly reflect the high degree of uncertainty associated with biological invasions.