Opportunity costs of conservation in a biodiversity hotspot: the case of southern Bahia

Biodiversity 'hotspot' areas, which are characterized by concentrations of endemic species and severe anthropogenic loss of natural habitat, might be thought ∗ Corresponding author. The property survey was carried out by IESB under a grant from PROBlO, which supported also the interpretation of the land cover data by E.C. Landau and colleagues. The World Bank's Research Support Board supported the data analysis reported here, compilation of the vegetation maps by W. Wayt Thomas and AndrM.de Carvalho, and (with supplementary funding from the Rain Forest Trust) supported digitization of the land capabilities data. We are grateful to IBGE for making those data available and to David Stoms at the Institute for Computational Earth Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, for undertaking digitization. Conservation International digitized the vegetation maps and contributed to data integration and analysis. Preparation of the paper was supported by the Norwegian Trust Fund for the World Development Report 2003, for which an earlier version served as a background paper. The findings and interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank, its Executive Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.