Ecosystem resilience, i.e. an ecosystem’s ability to maintain its basic
functions and controls under disturbances, is often interpreted as insurance:
by decreasing the probability of future drops in the provision of ecosystem
services, resilience insures risk-averse ecosystem users against potential
welfare losses. Using a general and stringent definition of “insurance” and a
simple ecological-economic model, we derive the economic insurance value
of ecosystem resilience and study how it depends on ecosystem properties,
economic context, and the ecosystem user’s risk preferences. We show that
(i) the insurance value of resilience is negative (positive) for low (high) levels
of resilience, (ii) it increases with the level of resilience, and (iii) it is one
additive component of the total economic value of resilience.

zusammen mit Herrn Prof. Dr. Stefan Baumgärtner