Sustainable Finance for Invasive Species Management in the Pacific Islands

Abstract

Ecosystems have immeasurable intrinsic value that can never be priced. Ecosystems also exist as ecological infrastructure that delivers valuable ecosystem services for human wellbeing including supporting, regulating, provisioning, and cultural services. The conceptual framework underlying the analysis in this report focuses on the way that ecosystem services cross over from the biophysical to the social and economic world. This enables the pricing of the human labour and technology cost of protecting and enhancing ecosystems (ecological infrastructure) that provide these services that benefit human wellbeing. We routinely price this cost of protecting ecosystems in organisational budgets for core and grant funding. We can also price these same costs in a manner that does not rely on government core or grant funding, but instead on a sustainable financing framework.