
doi: 10.2139/ssrn.6438366
In Hawaiʻi, biodiversity loss poses material risks to economies and societies, yet extinction risk remains weakly integrated into the environmentaleconomic statistics that guide public policy, budgeting, and investment. Globally, the System of EnvironmentalEconomic Accounting Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) provides a standardized framework for incorporating ecosystem change into national accounts and can be foundational to generating indicators of extinction risk. This study demonstrates how extinction risk can be derived from SEEA EA ecosystem extent and condition accounts using the Landcover change Impacts on Future Extinctions (LIFE) score. We compile the first SEEA EA pilot ecosystem accounts for the Main Hawaiian Islands and apply them to assess changes in extinction risk for species dependent on two threatened forest ecosystem functional groups- Tropical/Subtropical lowland rainforests, and Tropical/Subtropical dry forests and thickets- between 2013 and 2019. We show that ecosystem condition variables, such as rainfall, can drive rapid transitions between the two ecosystem functional groups even where land cover appears stable, and lead to divergent extinction risk trajectories across locations. Employing LIFE-based extinction risk measures within the SEEA EA framework transforms biodiversity loss from a standalone ecological indicator into a standardized, aggregable, and decision-ready accounting signal compatible with conservation management and conservation finance mechanisms. We further show how Hawaiʻi’s SEEA EA can support coordinated, evidence-based conservation and act as an enabling infrastructure for mobilizing private capital, where standardized extinction-risk and ecosystem accounting inform risk-adjusted investment and the development of public revenue-backed environmental bonds.
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