Post-border investment (ACERA Project No. 1104D)

Abstract

The Australian Government routinely invests in the management of pests and diseases that are established in the landscape, even though the benefits of these investments are not well understood. Public funding to manage established pests occurs in five investment areas: (i) national coordination; (ii) research and development; (iii) raising awareness of the impacts of pests; (iv) strategic investment in on-ground work; and (v) building community capacity to manage pests.<br/>The aim of this project was to evaluate these different investment strategies with a view to informing the development of future Australian Government policies for management of established pests and diseases. This report details the various tools and techniques that may be used in investment evaluation, the trigger points at which investment might start and finish, and the measurement problems that invariably arise in impact evaluation because of data defficiencies. An attempt was made to use two case studies to explore, retrospectively, the benefits and costs of a range of publicly funded pest management activities, but this task proved difficult because key data were not always collected or reported in a way that would allow for meaningful impact evaluation.<br/> The report also describes and applies a decision-analysis framework that may be used to understand the effect on a pest population of the various investment activities that are routinely funded. To improve investment evaluation of publicly funded pest-management activities in the future we recommend that:<br/><ul><li>data collection for the purposes of quantitative impact evaluation be given a high priority, and that the costs of data collection and management be included in project budgets.</li><li>impact evaluation be addressed prospectively rather than retrospectively. Objectives of the different activities, and measures by which success could be evaluated should be clearly stated at the outset, and data should be collected on these measures during the project so that meaningful quantitative impact evaluation can be undertaken.</li><li> the trigger for all investment in pest-management activities be determined by the level of public net benefits (public benefits minus public costs),</li><li> the decision-analysis framework suggested in this report be used to inform both prospective and retrospective evaluation of pest management activities.</li><li> where retrospective evaluation is the only option for pest-management evaluation, that a meta-analysis of all available data on selected programmes be undertaken.</li></ul>