Distancia de transporte y tiempo de desembarque

The Public Interest Calculus is a framework developed by the economists Teul- ings, Bovenberg and van Dalen (2003) at the request of the Netherlands Minis- tries of Economic Affairs and of Finance. The purpose of the framework is to provide a means for assessing when there is a role for government in regulating economic affairs, and what the nature of this role might be. The framework in- cludes a decision tree for assessing whether government intervention in mar- kets is justified, and if so, whether this should entail a regulatory role or one of direct intervention.

Given that the discussion concerning public support for conservation and management of genetic resources can be situated within a broader discussion of regulatory roles in general, it is both interesting and relevant to examine what the outcome of the Public Interest Calculus (PIC) would be in the case of agricul- tural genetic resources.

The reasoning behind the PIC framework hinges on the economic concept of external effects. External effects occur if the action of one party or a transac- tion between two or more parties has positive or negative consequences for another party who is not involved in the relevant decision-making. A common example is pollution, where the decision, for example, of a farmer to apply pes- ticides to a field does not necessarily include consideration of the full effects of this action on the toxicity of water to other users. If external effects are complex in that many parties may be affected, then this decreases the likelihood that a private bargain or compromise can be struck, meaning that government inter- vention might lead to a better outcome.

According to the PIC framework, there is a justification for direct govern- ment intervention in the management and conservation of genetic resources. The reasoning is essentially that the economic welfare in the future, and particu- larly of future generations, is likely to be compromised by 'private' management of GRFA. The decisions of farmers concerning which varieties of a crop to sow, or which breeds of livestock to rear, are generally based on the farmers' imme- diate interests. If such a decision, by choosing for a modern variety or breed, contributes further to genetic erosion, and even to the variety or breed extinc- tion, the farmer does not bear all these consequences. These external effects,

115 many of which may only be perceived by future generations, imply, according to

the PIC that some kind of intervention is necessary to ensure optimal manage- ment of genetic resources.

The PIC framework also includes some criteria for assessing whether, in the presence of external effects, it is better to promote competition among provid- ers of a good or service, instead of the government attempting to provide this directly. If the nature of the good or service is such that it is likely that multiple actors could offer it, as opposed to only one, then governments might examine options for regulating their activities. However, in the case of promoting genetic resource conservation, for example in a genebank, the available expertise and the nature of the costs involved means that there are likely to be few advan- tages to promoting competition among different 'providers'. According to the PIC framework, government should then choose between contracting terms with a single provider that are based on inputs or on outputs. The latter are generally preferred, but not always possible.

The PIC framework does not however provide much guidance when one con- siders different and specific activities that can be viewed as part of the manage- ment and conservation of GRFA. (This is similar to the critique of the PIC by J. Theeuwes, 2004). To some extent, the nature of the benefits and associated external effects can be differentiated according to some of these categories.

Nor does the PIC analysis offer guidelines for determining how much of each of these activities is enough. The framework suggests the use of cost-benefit analysis but this is limited in the case of GRFA by lack of detailed information on the benefits associated with different levels of activities of conservation and management. Some sort of weighing up of estimated costs against benefits might be feasible where the latter are measured, not in monetary terms, but perhaps in physical units (e.g. number and diversity of resources conserved ex situ). It might furthermore be possible for expert opinion to be used to achieve some kind of relative ranking of discrete options. This would allow a more systematic assessment of the costs versus the benefits, but will clearly not of- fer an 'objective calculus' for public decision-making. (It can also be questioned how many resources should be expended in undertaking such an analysis. A key concern here is the policy space, or room for manoeuvre, in terms of either de- voting more or fewer resources to GRFA, following the results. Another per- spective might be to limit or avoid such an analysis if the budget allocation for GFRA is relatively fixed.)

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Appendix 2