Tom Breeze‡, W. Daniel Kissling§, Maria Lumbierres§, Joana Santana|, Alejandra Morán-Ordóñez¶, Roy Van Grunsven#, Tim Hirsch¤, Tree Robionson‡, Simon Potts‡, Ian McCallum«, Ute Jandt»˄, Cesar Capinha˅, Andres Marmol-Guijarro¦ˀˁ, Jessica Junker₵, Pavel Stoevℓ₰, Camino Liquete₱, Henrique M. Pereira₵Corresponding author: Tom Breeze ( t.d.breeze@reading.ac.uk ) Corresponding author: Andres Marmol-Guijarro ( andres_camilo.marmol_guijarro@idiv.de ) Corresponding author: Henrique M. Pereira ( hpereira@idiv.de ) © Tom Breeze, W. Daniel Kissling, Maria Lumbierres, Joana Santana, Alejandra Morán-Ordóñez, Roy Van Grunsven, Tim Hirsch, Tree Robionson, Simon Potts, Ian McCallum, Ute Jandt, Cesar Capinha, Andres Marmol-Guijarro, Jessica Junker, Pavel Stoev, Camino Liquete, Henrique M. Pereira. This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Breeze T, Kissling WD, Lumbierres M, Santana J, Morán-Ordóñez A, Van Grunsven R, Hirsch T, Robionson T, Potts S, McCallum I, Jandt U, Capinha C, Marmol-Guijarro A, Junker J, Stoev P, Liquete C, Pereira HM (2025) D4.4 Business model for a European biodiversity observation network based on the outcomes of the cost-benefit analysis of different monitoring scheme option. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e173693 |  |
Although biodiversity monitoring costs are widely cited as a constraint, there have been very few assessments of these costs and even fewer studies have assessed the potential benefits of this monitoring. Here, we synthesise available evidence, alongside a comprehensive assessment of the costs of proposed biodiversity monitoring to explore the relative costs, benefits risks and opportunities in biodiversity monitoring. We find that the costs of biodiversity monitoring, €0.5bn-€3.6bn/year, are greatly outweighed by the combined economic benefits and opportunities arising from the availability of co-ordinated, high-quality data, which are estimated to be >€25.2bn/year.