I am delighted to see that biodiversity economics has become a discipline in its own right. Those of us who have been addressing the multiple dimensions of biodiversity have long sought better ways of incorporating economic thinking into our various challenges. Biodiversity loss is a serious preoccupation for the entire science of conservation biology, which has its own journal and scientific society, but it remains weak in delivering appropriate policy advice, largely because it is not able to demonstrate the economic implications of policy alternatives.

Other parts of the biodiversity community deal with what ultimately is an economic relationship, namely sustainable use. While the concept certainly has significant ethical dimensions, it more fundamentally deals with the costs and benefits of alternative management strategies, and these often will be based on economic principles. Is it more cost-effective to have safari hunting of rhinoceros, or photo safaris? How can economic calculations of sustainable off-take incorporate stochastic events, such as annual changes in rainfall (and thus productivity of vegetation)?

Others working on biodiversity focus on very specific issues, such as the impact of invasive alien species on natural ecosystems and human economies. Quantification of the negative impacts of these invasive alien species can help to convince policy-makers to design, implement and support appropriate measures to prevent such species from becoming established or to manage them efficiently once they have become part of an ecosystem.