This volume is an outcome of the first research programme of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science's Beijer Institute. The Institute was formed in 1991 with the primary goal of promoting interdisciplinary research between natural and social scientists in general, and ecologists and economists in particular, in an attempt to improve our understanding of the interdependency of economic and ecological systems. The programme invited a group of leading scholars in economics, ecology and related disciplines to consider the theoretical and policy issues associated with the biodiversity loss caused by direct depletion, by the destruction of habitat and by specialisation in agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

While it was motivated by the massive extinction of species, the Biodiversity Programme had a broader agenda than the problem of extinction. It addressed the driving forces behind all socially undesirable change in the composition of species and so went far beyond the protection of currently endangered species (much as their loss threatens the welfare of society). It included both the reasons for the overexploitation of environmental resources by millions of independent consumers and producers around the globe, and the scope for changing their behaviour so as to protect the ability of ecosystems to provide the ecological services on which humanity depends. This may be referred to as the problem of biodiversity conservation. It requires neither the preservation of all species, nor the maintenance of the environmental status quo.