Sharing and expanding the co-benefits of conservation

Conservation interventions typically focus on protecting public goods, but they often also create private spillover co-benefits. For example, protecting open space may increase the values of adjacent properties and protecting a coral reef may increase fishing opportunities outside. These privately-captured co-benefits can confer substantial value, but are rarely tapped to help promote and expand conservation efforts. One reason, we argue, is that doing so is difficult: While co-beneficiaries are easily convinced of the benefits of the conservation intervention, they are not obliged to pay for it, and so usually free-ride and enjoy these benefits gratis. In this paper, we document and quantify the magnitude of co-benefits in the literature and identify the conditions under which co-benefits could be tapped to offset the cost of conservation for conservationists. In light of these conditions, we propose an approach that involves voluntary compensation for the provision of co-benefits to expand the total amount of resources available for conservation efforts. We show that taking advantage of these co-benefits lowers the cost of implementing conservation actions while being incentive compatible for all parties involved.