When thinking about rewilding research, you might think about biologists out in the field looking at ecosystem dynamics, or maybe sociologists weighing up the wolf debate. But where do economists fit in a project about rewilding?
WildE is a diverse consortium, bringing together researchers from many different scientific disciplines. As economists, our role in the project is to study and understand choices. For economists, choices are everything. Why do people make one choice over another? What drives this choice? What would the best choice be based on economic theory?
We study why someone might buy one product over another, or what would be the best policy choice to steer the economy. For example, a relevant question in recent years has been whether central banks should raise interest rates, so that consumers choose to save more, or lower these interest rates, so that consumers choose to spend more.
As environmental economists, we also analyse choices. We look at the choices people make in relation to nature and the environment. For example, we might assess the impact of a carbon tax and see if this would change the products that companies produce and people buy. We also try to understand the choices our society makes concerning natural areas. We try to understand how important people find the biodiversity of an area, compared to other factors such as carbon storage, recreational possibilities, visual appearance and of course, the costs!
When economists talk about costs, it can sometimes be a bit tricky to understand. One type of cost might be related to maintaining or protecting a natural area. However, economists will also argue that there are other costs. We argue for example that any area used for nature cannot be used for another purpose such as agriculture, housing, or industry. We therefore need to consider the income that these other activities would bring in. We call this ‘opportunity costs’ – the costs of foregone income of the other activities. In the context of WildE, economists from INRAE, UCPH and EFI work on finding agricultural and forest land with the lowest opportunity costs, making them prime areas for rewilding from an economist’s perspective.
For the benefits of nature to society, economists also talk about values in the broadest sense. We do not only talk about goods that people can buy and sell, but also about the value of non-marketable goods. To understand this concept, think about a natural area such as a nearby forest. You might have visited this forest many times, but never had to pay to enter this forest. In this sense, your forest visit doesn’t have a marketable value. However, when given the choice, you would likely pay some money to prevent the forest from being cut down. You therefore have a “Willingness to Pay” for this nature area to exist, even though you might have never actually paid for it directly as a good. In most European countries, we pay for such goods through our taxes, and show our preferences through our voting. However, as economists, we also try to directly assess the Willingness to Pay for specific nature areas for different groups.
In terms of WildE, we try to assess how rewilding affects people’s Willingness to Pay for natural areas. We ask if people are willing to pay more for areas that allow for more natural processes. I look, for example, at choices for recreation in the context of rewilding. What kind of nature do people like to visit? What drives the preference to visit one natural area over another? And how does rewilding affect these recreational choices?
In a study in Denmark, we look at the effect of introducing different grazing animals. We analyse the distance people are willing to travel to visit a forest that has grazing animals such as bison, moose, or cattle present. We also look at how important these animals are when compared to other aspects of the forest visit, such as the type of forest (deciduous or coniferous), access or accessibility. In the rewilding context, other economists have looked at the effect of the introduction of carnivores or allowing for more natural processes such as decaying deadwood and natural regeneration of forests.