Economic costs of biological invasions in Asia

Liu, Chunlong; Diagne, Christophe; Angulo, Elena; Banerjee, Achyut Kumar; Chen, Yifeng; Cuthbert, Ross N.; Haubrock, Phillip J.; Kirichenko, Natalia; Pattison, Zarah; Watari, Yuya; Wen, Xishan; Courchamp, Franck

doi:10.3897/neobiota.67.58147

Cited by 47 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Most costs stemmed from direct damage rather than management spending and principally impacted the agriculture sector. This dominance of damage-related costs over management aligns with trends in other geographic regions worldwide (Crystal-Ornelas et al 2021;Haubrock et al 2021a;Heringer et al 2021;Liu et al 2021). Invasion impacts in the UK were largely driven by animals, which were both the most studied and costliest taxa.…”

Section: Question 1: Invasion Costs Distributions Through Space and Sectorssupporting

confidence: 69%

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Cuthbert¹,

Bartlett²,

Turbelin³

et al. 2021

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Although the high costs of invasion are frequently cited and are a key motivation for environmental management and policy, synthesised data on invasion costs are scarce. Here, we quantify and examine the monetary costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom (UK) using a global synthesis of reported invasion costs. Invasive alien species have cost the UK economy between US$6.9 billion and $17.6 billion (£5.4 – £13.7 billion) in reported losses and expenses since 1976. Most costs were reported for the entire UK or Great Britain (97%); country-scale cost reporting for the UK's four constituent countries was scarce. Reports of animal invasions were the costliest ($4.7 billion), then plant ($1.3 billion) and fungal ($206.7 million) invasions. Reported damage costs (i.e. excluding management costs) were higher in terrestrial ($4.8 billion) than aquatic or semi-aquatic environments ($29.8 million), and primarily impacted agriculture ($4.2 billion). Invaders with earlier introduction years accrued significantly higher total invasion costs. Invasion costs have been increasing rapidly since 1976, and have cost the UK economy $157.1 million (£122.1 million) per annum, on average. Published information on specific economic costs included only 42 of 520 invaders reported in the UK and was generally available only for the most intensively studied taxa, with just four species contributing 90% of species-specific costs. Given that many of the invasive species lacking cost data are actively managed and have well-recognised impacts, this suggests that cost information is incomplete and that totals presented here are vast underestimates owing to knowledge gaps. Financial expenditure on managing invasions is a fraction (37%) of the costs incurred through damage from invaders; greater investments in UK invasive species research and management are, therefore, urgently required.

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Section: Question 1: Invasion Costs Distributions Through Space and Sectorssupporting

confidence: 69%

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Cuthbert¹,

Bartlett²,

Turbelin³

et al. 2021

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“…However, InvaCost only reported cost data for 35 species, suggesting a huge underestimation of invasion costs in Mexico -since costs are available for only 10% of known IAS. This proportion is similar to that reported in other studies, which have found that less than 10% of invaders have reported costs: Germany , France (Renault et al 2021), the United Kingdom, (Cuthbert et al 2021b), Asia (Liu et al 2021), Argentina (Duboscq-Carra et al 2021 or Australia (Bradshaw et al 2021). Even if one cannot conclude that actual costs should be ten times higher, the very high overall economic costs we found for only 10% of IAS in Mexico hints at a real, total cost that is staggering.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Economic costs of invasive alien species in Mexico

Rico-Sánchez¹,

Haubrock²,

Cuthbert³

et al. 2021

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Invasive alien species (IAS) are a leading driver of biodiversity loss worldwide, and have negative impacts on human societies. In most countries, available data on monetary costs of IAS are scarce, while being crucial for developing efficient management. In this study, we use available data collected from the first global assessment of economic costs of IAS (InvaCost) to quantify and describe the economic cost of invasions in Mexico. This description was made across a range of taxonomic, sectoral and temporal variables, and allowed us to identify knowledge gaps within these areas. Overall, costs of invasions in Mexico were estimated at US$ 5.33 billion (i.e., 109) ($MXN 100.84 billion) during the period from 1992 to 2019. Biological invasion costs were split relatively evenly between aquatic (US$ 1.16 billion; $MXN 21.95 billion) and terrestrial (US$ 1.17 billion; $MXN 22.14 billion) invaders, but semi-aquatic taxa dominated (US$ 2.99 billion; $MXN 56.57 billion), with costs from damages to resources four times higher than those from management of IAS (US$ 4.29 billion vs. US$ 1.04 billion; $MXN 81.17 billion vs $MXN 19.68 billion). The agriculture sector incurred the highest costs (US$ 1.01 billion; $MXN 19.1 billion), followed by fisheries (US$ 517.24 million; $MXN 9.79 billion), whilst most other costs simultaneously impacted mixed or unspecified sectors. When defined, costs to Mexican natural protected areas were mostly associated with management actions in terrestrial environments, and were incurred through official authorities via monitoring, control or eradication. On natural protected islands, mainly mammals were managed (i.e. rodents, cats and goats), to a total of US$ 3.99 million, while feral cows, fishes and plants were mostly managed in protected mainland areas, amounting to US$ 1.11 million in total. Pterygoplichthys sp. and Eichhornia crassipes caused the greatest reported costs in unprotected aquatic ecosystems in Mexico, and Bemisia tabaci to terrestrial systems. Although reported damages from invasions appeared to be fluctuating through time in Mexico, management spending has been increasing. These estimates, albeit conservative, underline the monetary pressure that invasions put on the Mexican economy, calling for urgent actions alongside comprehensive cost reporting in national states such as Mexico.

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“…Compared to other regions, Central and South America have higher accumulated costs than Africa (USD 18.2 billion; Diagne et al 2021b) and a similar cost to that found in Europe when we used the same inclusion criteria, considering low reliability or potential costs (USD 140.2 billion; ). However, Central and South America have lower costs than North America and Asia (USD 1.26 trillion and USD 432.6 billion, respectively; Crystal-Ornelas et al 2021;Liu et al 2021). These differences were not entirely surprising considering the lower number of invasive alien species in Central and South America compared with North America (van Kleunen et al 2015;Pyšek et al 2019), as well as the research deficit in invasion biology in Central and South America (Bellard and Jeschke 2015), which can negatively affect the number of reported costs to the continents.…”

Section: General Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The economic costs of biological invasions in Central and South America: a first regional assessment

Heringer¹,

Angulo²,

Ballesteros‐Mejia³

et al. 2021

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Invasive alien species are responsible for a high economic impact on many sectors worldwide. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies assessing these impacts in Central and South America. Investigating costs of invasions is important to motivate and guide policy responses by increasing stakeholders’ awareness and identifying action priorities. Here, we used the InvaCost database to investigate (i) the geographical pattern of biological invasion costs across the region; (ii) the monetary expenditure across taxa and impacted sectors; and (iii) the taxa responsible for more than 50% of the costs (hyper-costly taxa) per impacted sector and type of costs. The total of reliable and observed costs reported for biological invasions in Central and South America was USD 102.5 billion between 1975 and 2020, but about 90% of the total costs were reported for only three countries (Brazil, Argentina and Colombia). Costs per species were associated with geographical regions (i.e., South America, Central America and Islands) and with the area of the countries in km2. Most of the expenses were associated with damage costs (97.8%), whereas multiple sectors (77.4%), agriculture (15%) and public and social welfare (4.2%) were the most impacted sectors. Aedes spp. was the hyper-costly taxon for the terrestrial environment (costs of USD 25 billion) and water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) was the hyper-costly taxon for the aquatic environment (USD 179.9 million). Six taxa were classified as hyper-costly for at least one impacted sector and two taxa for at least one type of cost. In conclusion, invasive alien species caused billions of dollars of economic burden in Central and South America, mainly in large countries of South America. Costs caused by invasive alien species were unevenly distributed across countries, impacted sectors, types of costs and taxa (hyper-costly taxa). These results suggest that impacted sectors should drive efforts to manage the species that are draining financial sources.

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Economic costs of biological invasions in Asia

Cited by 47 publications

References 50 publications

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Economic costs of biological invasions in the United Kingdom

Economic costs of invasive alien species in Mexico

The economic costs of biological invasions in Central and South America: a first regional assessment

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