David Cook

The sheer number and complexity of biophysical and socio-economic models and their outputs can quickly overwhelm stakeholders who are trying to make sense of a natural resource-related issue. Add uncertainty to this bulk of multi-faceted information from risk analyses and the justification for selecting a course of action becomes an even more daunting endeavour. Decision and policy makers have to combine model outputs with a variety of other information sources in order to make difficult trade-offs between often conflicting investment options. A transparent and flexible decision facilitation process is required to help assimilate complex model outputs and other information within the context of policy considerations and guide decision-makers toward agreed conclusions on the issue at hand.
To aid stakeholders in the prioritization of biosecurity risk investment options, we provide information on invasive pest risk including a bio-economic pest impact model, socio-economic activity and ecological impacts. The specialized nature of the information, such as pest impact models, inevitably reach beyond the expertise of a participant group comprised of the public or a policy-making group, thus requiring decision support in the form of interpreting key findings and the corresponding uncertainty. The bio-economic model makes predictions concerning the costs incurred by the industry if the pest becomes part of the production scheme. The model has an associated sensitivity analysis that presents the full range of uncertainty surrounding possible costs. With this knowledge of uncertainty, the stakeholders can gauge how much confidence they want to place in the model output for use as a reference in ranking the pest risks. Outputs of the impact model along with other pest impact information are integrated using a deliberative decision facilitation methodology in order to bridge the communication and knowledge gap between the results and policy making participants. Upon consideration of stakeholder discussion and expert-based information provided, the role of participants is then to weight the factors they deem to be the most important in rating the "relative severity" of a set of biosecurity threats/pests. As a result, the process immerses the stakeholder or policy maker into the discussion of information sources such as model results, and goes a step further by eliciting opinion regarding the most important consequences within the context of the issue.
This decision support, primarily by means of a structured participatory configuration, aids the policy maker to understand the information being used to base the decisions on. This increased understanding helps lead to a sanctioning of the policies concerned - i.e., decisions are more likely to command assent and therefore lead to the desired outcomes if they have been formulated with a wide range of support. Stakeholder inclusion is also beneficial as participants can be the source of relevant local and social knowledge.

Uncertainty is a ubiquitous feature of biosecurity and for this reason managing invasive species has long been a reactive business. In order to move towards proactive management it is critical to communicate uncertainties to the stakeholders. The uncertainty components exist not only in biological but also socio-economic processes during an invader's entry, establishment, spread and impact creation. A STELLA model was developed to capture the dynamics of this socio-ecological system and to estimate the expected economic costs of the apple maggot (Rhagoletis pomonella) over the next 30 years for the entire country of Australia. Like complex climate models, it cannot be meaningfully calibrated because it is simulating a never before experienced state of the system. Therefore it is inappropriate to apply generic techniques which utilize observations to calibrate models to forecast the economic cost of bio-invasion in the real world. Instead of forecasting, a more proper use is as a communication tool for uncertainty, which organizes our existing understanding and present "what if" scenarios in front of stakeholders in a DMCE environment. One of the major modelling outputs, the potential economic cost of the apple maggot, was used in DMCE as a criterion. The DMCE participants were asked to weigh the same criterion twice, before and after the modelling uncertainty was exposed and discussed. The effectiveness of the model as a communication tool was examined by comparing the average group weights and standard deviation of the individual weights before and after the uncertainty injection. Preliminary results showed that after the parameter uncertainty was exposed the mean weight did not change significantly yet the standard deviation of the weights did become smaller. We hypothesized that this could be because of the anchoring effect: economic cost was one of the most important criteria therefore the uncertainty exposure would not make much of a difference in weighting. The decreased dispersion of weights among DMCE participants, as reflected in a smaller standard deviation of the individual weights, indicated that uncertainty communication has a potential of building consensus. This is certainly an area for future research. This integrated modelling-DMCE approach seeks to combine the advantages of dynamic modelling in providing a systematic analysis with the benefits of DMCE. The ecological-economic modeling offers a systematic and more objective way of organizing data and synthesizing knowledge. The DMCE allows a participatory decision-making process with active involvement and commitment from the participants. The integrated approach is more effective in quantifying and communicating bioinvasion uncertainty to stakeholders.

The economic impacts of altering quarantine policies are divided into two main areas: trade evaluations, utilising a partial equilibrium approach to determine the benefits of market liberalisation; or pest management economics, used to determine the on-ground impacts of introduced species. This paper rationalises why these approaches need to be brought together within the policy framework of import risk assessments to provide a greater understanding of the benefits and risks from market liberalisation.

Like the human immune system, a biosecurity system is a constellation of responses to external attacks comprising of many facets, a number of which can change to optimize the response to these unwanted intrusions. When either system hits the wrong target, or is inhibited or crippled somehow, the consequences for the body and the economy can be dire. Like an immune response, an effective response to an invasive alien species incursion may be the result of a series of failed attempts or past experiences rather than being perfect the first time. In view of the enormously complex environment in which responses are made, this paper discusses institutional changes that may facilitate an adaptive approach to biosecurity policies where governance is viewed as a multi-disciplinary, interactive experiment acknowledging uncertainty.

With increasing efficiency in human and freight transport fuelled by the creation of the global market place, pressure is mounting on quarantine administrators to target their resources strategically. A managed approach to decision-making is therefore becoming an integral part of quarantine management since target species and/or entry pathways must be identified and policed effectively. Using the example of Melon Thrips in Western Australia, this paper presents an economic framework that allows decision-makers to prioritise exotic pests based on the damage and production cost increases they are capable of imposing on affected industries. In doing so it identifies a critical level of expected damage associated with the pest that can then be used as a ceiling for incursion response expenditure.

Australia’s membership of the World Trade Organisation has generated a need for analytical techniques demonstrating that the behaviour of its internal markets and regulatory authorities for food and food-related products conform with the provisions of the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement). However, since quarantine has long been considered a scientific issue, it is as yet unclear what role economic models have to play in this process. This article shows how consumer welfare effects can be integrated with the traditional producer welfare effects in quantitative analytical models using the examples of the mango and tomato industries in Western Australia, both of which enjoy quarantine protection from interstate growers.

As a signatory of the World Trade Organisation Agreement, Australia has a responsibility to ensure that the behaviour of its internal markets for food and food-related products abide by the same rules and regulations as international trade. There is therefore an increasing need to demonstrate the validity of any measure which restricts competition between production centres to ensure against an appeal and/or retaliatory actions by trading counterparts. This paper explores two economic evaluation techniques which can be used to examine the welfare implications of quarantine policies imposed on interstate trade, and discusses practical applications of each with the aid of two case studies. One approach relies on an aggregated, industry-wide perspective, and is shown to be most appropriate when the cost characteristics of an industry’s component growing regions are similar. The other focuses on spatial elements of a domestic industry, which is best used when there are significant cost differences between component producing regions. In addition to examining the accuracy of these techniques in policy analysis, the size characteristics of the industries they can be applied to are also analysed. Using the examples of the mango and tomato industries in Western Australia, both of which enjoy quarantine protection from interstate growers, it is shown that the consumer welfare implications of competition restrictions outweigh producer welfare implications in larger industries, and vice versa.

Quarantine trade restrictions enforced on agricultural commodities are both a safety measure and a form of subsidy to local producers. With appropriate strategies in place the risk posed to domestic production systems from exotic pests and diseases is reduced. This often means importers of agricultural commodities are effectively taxed, with negative effects on consumer welfare. Hence, analysis of quarantine policy decisions involves a comparison of notional production gains against social welfare loss. Given the large variety of agricultural industries and the virtually endless list of exotic pests deemed as “threatening” to domestic industries, there is a continuum of problems of this type. In some instances the effects of quarantine policies will be felt mainly by producers, while in others it may be consumers, or a blend of the two. In the case of the mango industry in WA, both producers and consumers are affected. A quantitative assessment of the benefits and costs of Agriculture Western Australia’s import clearance activities governing mango importation is provided here, demonstrating an appropriate framework for the analysis of these issues following on from James and Anderson (1998). Studies of this nature will be of great importance to policy makers in justifying investments in specific quarantine activities given the recommendations of the Nairne Review and the memorandum of understanding between the states and territories of Australia to abide by these guidelines.