What are the economic costs of biological invasions? A complex topic requiring international and interdisciplinary expertise

Abstract

Biological invasions can cause substantial economic losses and expenses for management, as well as harm biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. A comprehensive assessment of the economic costs of invasions is a challenging but essential prerequisite for efficient and sustainable management of invasive alien species. Indeed, these costs were shown to be inherently heterogeneous and complex to determine, and substantial knowledge gaps prevent a full understanding of their nature and distribution. Hence, the development of a still-missing global, standard framework for assessing and deciphering invasion costs is essential to identify effective management approaches and optimise legislation. The recent advent of the InvaCost database – the first comprehensive and harmonised compilation of the economic costs associated with biological invasions worldwide – offers unique opportunities to investigate these complex and diverse costs at different scales. Insights provided by such a dataset are likely to be greatest when a diverse range of experience and expertise are combined. For this purpose, an international and multidisciplinary workshop was held from 12th to 15th November 2019 near Paris (France) to launch several project papers based on the data available in InvaCost. Here, we highlight how the innovative research arising from this workshop offers a major step forward in invasion science. We collectively identified five core research opportunities that InvaCost can help to address: (i) decipher how existing costs of invasions are actually distributed in human society; (ii) bridge taxonomic and geographic gaps identified in the costs currently estimated; (iii) harmonise terminology and reporting of costs through a consensual and interdisciplinary framework; (iv) develop innovative methodological approaches to deal with cost estimations and assessments; and (v) provide cost-based information and tools for applied management of invasions. Moreover, we attribute part of the success of the workshop to its consideration of diversity, equity and societal engagement, which increased research efficiency, creativity and productivity. This workshop provides a strong foundation for substantially advancing our knowledge of invasion impacts, fosters the establishment of a dynamic collaborative network on the topic of invasion economics, and highlights new key features for future scientific meetings.

Economic costs of invasive rodents worldwide: the tip of the iceberg

“…As with many invasive species, the discrepancy between the tremendous impacts of rodent invasions and insu cient control efforts is often driven by a lack of clear and applicable information on rodent impacts worldwide (Courchamp et al 2017). As a result, there is a need for a global and accessible overview of the socioeconomic impacts of invasive rodents to improve public communication on rodent invasion issues, and coordinate transnational efforts of policy makers and local stakeholders (Bacher et al 2018;Diagne et al 2020a).…”

Are the “100 of the world’s worst” invasive species also the costliest?

“…Recently, the InvaCost database has been developed, compiling global economic costs reported from invasive species (Diagne et al, 2020a(Diagne et al, , 2020b. This database allows for the analysis of invasion costs across a range of taxonomic, spatial, temporal and sectorial scales, with costs comprehensively described against an array of descriptors and standardized against a uniform currency (2017 US$).…”

Economic costs of biological invasions in protected areas worldwide - where do we stand?

“…The reporting of economic costs of invasions in PAs has not increased equivalently to increases in reporting of costs observed more broadly. Sporadic cost reporting for PAs, as evidenced by the data and the literature points towards a lack of reporting structures, mechanisms and/or incentives for logging invasion costs, and/or methodological expertise for monetary quanti cations (Diagne et al 2020a;Robertson et al, 2020). Moreover, the results of our survey suggest that these data might exist but, due to a lack of human capacity, time or interest, they are not often made publicly available.…”

“…However, a detailed understanding of the costs incurred by IAS is still lacking for PAs. This is despite the fact that understanding costs of IAS is critical to ensure adequate funding for conservation efforts and to design appropriate management actions that will help mitigate impacts and safeguard biodiversity (Dana et al 2014;Diagne et al 2020a). A preliminary analysis of the number of post-1970 English-language publications available in the Web of Science on costs of biological invasions (Supplementary Material 1), showed that despite the numerous IAS publications (n = 58,729), studies concerning PAs have received relatively little attention (12.6%), and studies evaluating the economic costs in PAs are substantially lower (1.6%).…”