Biodiversity Loss and Limits to Substitutability
The impacts of biodiversity loss on human well-being depend on how much we value benefits from nature and the extent to which substitutes exist in the market for these benefits. The lack of markets for environmental goods and services, coupled with non-linearities and irreversibility in socio-environmental systems, present unique challenges for understanding the consequences of biodiversity loss. We use a rationed-good framework to explore how species scarcity impacts marginal WTP for species and its income elasticity. Our findings indicate that the market goods and the benefits to human well-being from species become more complementary as species abundance decreases.
Valuing Outdoor Culture and Heritage
Ethan is a co-Investigator with researchers from the Land, Environment, Economics and Policy Institute (LEEP), the National Trust and Forestry England, on an ambitious cross-disciplinary project to explore the relationship between the natural and historic environments.
Working closely with other projects funded under the Culture and Heritage Capital Programme, the researchers are supporting the development of a Culture and Heritage framework for decision making by improving the understanding of the value to people provided by culture and heritage, exploring the challenges faced by land managers and contributing to a robust evidence base and best practice guidelines for incorporating culture and heritage into national accounts and management decisions.
For more information visit https://netzeroplus.ac.uk/project/outdoor-culture-and-heritage
Future Fish Wars: Valuing Ocean Ecosystem Wealth
Will climate change give rise to “fish wars”, militarized disputes between countries over marine fisheries, as fishing fleets chase ocean ecosystem wealth? Ethan is a co-Principal Investigator on a project to understand how climate change outcomes could drive future fisheries conflicts. New theory will be developed to include the impact of multiple actors on the value of natural assets such as fisheries, and to estimate value asymmetry and compression under climate change, which the existing theory lacks.
Valuing Coastal Natural Capital
Natural capital accounts can help determine optimal investment decisions in response to global change. Understanding the attribution of natural capital assets to various services flows is crucial for ecosystem accounting efforts. Using coastal beach dune ecosystems as an example, I provide evidence that the location and spatial arrangement of assets matter for their economic valuation. I provide case studies from the east coast of the US using the hedonic property value method with a dataset combining detailed property characteristics, transaction records, and high-resolution remotely sensed measures of coastal features. I show that beach sand capitalizes in coastal property values in Connecticut at about a third of the rate at which beach sand capitalizes in properties in North Carolina and Florida. I also show that the market size in which I can determine beach sand capitalization is much smaller in the Connecticut case study, about one-eighth the distance form the coast. These case studies exemplify the opportunities for remote sensing and “big data” approaches to aid natural capital accounting efforts.
Ocean Accounting
Ocean Economy Dashboard for Norway
All Data Imported using Q4OpenData, Statistics Norway: Official Statistics (English)