Ecosystem Management, Planning, and Economics

Catalog description

Making decisions as an ecosystem manager requires knowledge of economics, planning, and finance. The course provides students with a solid understanding of the key finance, planning, and economic principles needed to manage a variety natural resources and ecosystems. The first part of the course discusses cost benefit analysis from a financial perspective. Cost benefit analysis is fundamental to making decisions in ecosystem management. The module covers topics such as time value of money, discounting, inflation, risk, appraisal, and taxes, and culminates in understanding the criteria to make investment decisions with limited budgets. The second part provides students with an understanding of planning processes and tools for developing management plans for natural resources systems. This part focuses on the unique aspects of managing ecosystems, including biodiversity management and dealing with multiple stakeholders and multiple competing objectives. Students are given an overview of the use of models and decision support systems for aiding in the exploration and evaluation of large numbers of management alternatives within complex social and biological systems. The third part provides an overview of ecosystem economic concepts and principles in a market economy. Importantly, it discusses the common issue of markets not working (failures) especially in natural resources and ecosystems. This last part of the course begins by discussing how the market should work and the critical importance of well-defined property rights. Then market failures such as pollution and other externalities are discussed. In this context it is important to value many of the non-market goods and services, which is the next topic discussed. Innovative valuation methods of ecosystem benefits such as recreation and biodiversity are described. Finally, a series of applications and case studies of various ecosystem resources including carbon pricing, bioenergy, water quality, and food is provided.