Cost benefit analysis (COBA)

Part 1

Cost benefit analysis tests the economic viability of an existing or proposed activity, and/or compares two or more ways of doing something. Because of prevailing social and economic structures, the standard of measure generally used is money. This leads to difficulties in establishing the worth of "unpriced values" such as scenery, clean air and personal happiness. In a natural resources management context, cost benefit analysis involves subtracting the monetary costs of a development from the monetary value of all the benefits generated by the same development to obtain a net monetary benefit or cost for the proposed ...