Lessons from Finance for New Land-Conservation Strategies Given Climate-Change Uncertainty

Economists have developed decision-making strategies to deal with uncertainty in financial and commercial markets. Conservation professionals can use some of these strategies to increase the probability of achieving their objectives given increases in outcome uncertainty due to climate change. Making optimal use of short-term conservation contracts to preserve options and use of portfolios to reduce the risk of negative conservation outcomes may buffer conservation groups from uncertainty and improve the cost-effectiveness of their spending.