The Optimal Allocation of Conservation Funds

摘要

This paper presents a framework to evaluate alternative designs of conservation programs and their implications for the allocation of conservation funds. We show that the efficient allocation of conservation funds must consider two important "pooling" effects-cumulative effects and interrelationships among alternative environmental benefits. Ignoring the cumulative effects of environemntal benefits may cause conservation funds to be overly dispersed geographically and, as a result, may result in minimum environmental benefits when the budget is small.