Injecting power dynamics and biodiversity protection into elementary microeconomics

Microeconomic theory is applied to protecting the biodiversity that conservation biologists have identified as important and threatened in several ways, including creating market values for ecosystem services and providing incentives for local people to protect habitats. Yet, economists frequently ignore the power dynamics inherent in the social systems involved with the biodiversity measures they propose and assess, which brings them into conflict with political ecologists. To bridge this gap between economists, political ecologists, and conservation biologists, I discuss how to frame the important introductory microeconomic topics of consumer sovereignty and the equimarginal rule with the additions of the type of power dynamics commonly used by political ecologists. I use the topics of shade grown coffee and the Noah’s Ark framework, both very familiar to conservation biologists, to place this discussion within the context of protecting biodiversity. I conclude that introducing these topics will better serve the biodiversity analysts who take only the economics principles course.