Guest Blog: Climate change is real - all sensible people know this, but let’s stay positive
- 4 Mar 2016
A number of weeks ago I attended a meeting with mainly social scientists and economists, presenting on my project about valuing coastal ecosystems and how they’re affected bydifferent stressors. This event was the “Valuing Nature Placements” start-up meeting in London, and when I began my presentation I described myself as a field ecologist with very little knowledge of environmental economics.
In a guest blog Amy Binner, one of our placements in the Valuing Nature Placement Scheme, discusses her research and the first day of her placement at Defra.
How can academics, environmental economists, modellers, and programmers get to grips with the needs of government, policymakers, or practitioners who use their research?
A new report published by national land management charity, the Land Trust, shows just how much nature adds to people’s health and sense of safety.
The report, undertaken by independent economic consultants, found that every pound invested in parks and nature reserves contributes £30 towards health and wellbeing, and £23 towards crime reduction and community safety.
What does economics mean for valuing nature? Valuing Nature's Ece Ozdemiroglu, the Economics Lead in the Programme Coordination Team, tells us more.
Economics is all about allocating limited resources amongst our unlimited needs and wants. How we use, manage and protect environmental resources is therefore particularly interesting to economists.
BESAFE (Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Arguments for our Future Environment) recently produced a report on how we can use the value of nature to argue more effectively for conserving biodiversity. In a guest blog, the authors discuss the results that show a surprising range of motivations behind the conservation of nature.
I recently talked to Professor Rosie Hails, the head of the Programme Coordination Team (PCT) for the Valuing Nature Programme (VNP), about the importance of considering nature's cultural, social and economic services. Rosie also discusses the role of the VNP, and explains how the PCT works to bring research communities together.
To learn more, please watch the video below or view it on the Valuing Nature YouTube channel.
An interesting paper by Sandifer et al (2015) explores the opportunities to enhance health and biodiversity conservation:-
Exploring connections among nature, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human health and well-being: Opportunities to enhance health and biodiversity conservation doi:10.1016/j.ecoser.2014.12.007