Measuring environmental losses from natural disasters: a case study of costing bushfires in the Northern Territory

This paper offers an integrated framework to account for environmental—largely non-marketable (and other tangible or marketable)—losses. Various cost-valuation techniques from the trans-disciplinary field of ‘Ecological Economics’ are also applied. Environmental benefits such as clean air or regulation of water supply and their losses are considered as non-marketable because these are not traded in the typical market.

A costing framework is presented to underpin these losses. A case study is used to cost bushfires-related losses for the Northern Territory in Australia. The Northern Territory  experiences bushfires that are expansive and frequent, yet no costs are estimated as losses from these bushfires are mainly non-marketable.

Such losses are assessed in terms of loss of wellbeing for remote Indigenous populations. Incorporating the loss of environmental values and wellbeing could help evaluate total disaster-related losses to inform disaster management policies and enhance resilience.