Monitoring costs of result-based payments for biodiversity conservation: Will UAV-assisted remote sensing be the game-changer?

Paying landowners for conservation results rather than paying for the measures intended to provide such results is a promising approach to biodiversity conservation. However, key roadblocks to the widespread implementation of such result-based payment schemes are the frequent difficulties in monitoring target species for whose presence a landowner is supposed to receive a remuneration. Until recently, the only conceivable monitoring approach would be monitoring techniques involving qualified experts investigating the presence of target species on-site. With the rise of remote sensing technologies and the increased capabilities and decreased costs of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), opportunities for technological monitoring have entered the scene. We analysed the costs of monitoring yellow flower coverage as an indicator for an ecological target of a hypothetical result-based payments scheme and then compared the costs for expert monitoring against UAV-assisted monitoring. We identified the underlying cost structure and cost components of both monitoring approaches and used a scenario analysis to identify the influence of factors like the costs of UAVs and analysis, area size, and monitoring frequency. We found that although expert monitoring is currently the lowest-cost monitoring approach, cost developments in the future will likely render UAV-assisted monitoring more cost-effective.