9 - Cross-border ecological preservation and biosafety

Abstract

In some circumstances cross-border competition is harmful to ecological preservation; and the costs arising from cross-border transactions and discoordination cannot be underestimated. Cross-border transactions include both economic and noneconomic benefits and costs. Thus the eventual progress achieved in cross-border cooperation must depend upon the extent to which all sides concerned, reorganising their mutual complementarities, are willing to compromise. Nature does not recognise political boundaries, however, and in many cases, species continue to migrate across political borders as they always have, regardless of customs and regulations. Pursuing effective cross-border cooperation and the creation of bilateral and/or multilateral cooperative mechanisms in internationally adjacent areas is the only way by which the win-win exploitation of natural and biological resources can be achieved. Finally, other politically sensitive issues relating to cross-border bioinvasion and bioterrorism are briefly discussed.