Issue no. 11, Autumn 2014

BIOECON 2014 outcomes

Ben Groom (LSE) and Andreas Kontoleon (Cambridge Land Economy) co-hosted the 16th annual BioEcon conference on the economics of biodiversity conservation last 22-23 September 2014. The conference was held at the majestic buildings of King's College Cambridge and was attended by over 140 delegates from academia and the policy world.

BIOECON organising committee planned the first ever UNEP pre-conference training workshop on "Building Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services into National Policy" for civil servants from developing countries. The workshop was attended by over 100 delegates primarily from the developing world. A series of six videos on the seminars held are now available... » more

» Click here to access the Workshop seminars videos

Guest article

Procurement auctions for nature conservation: a laboratory experiment

by Brooks Kaiser, University of Southern Denmark

The U.S. Endangered Species Act is held up both as an example of strict legislation working to guard biodiversity preservation (Yaffee, 1982) and an uneconomical law that creates perverse incentives that may actually reduce such preservation. Passage of the 1973 act itself, and that of the three earlier acts leading up to it in the 1960s, was not controversial; few congressmen wanted to vote against the preservation of endangered species!  » more

BIOECON News

New Project: Economy and conflicts in grazing systems in northern latitudes: Loss to carnivores in reindeer herding and sheep farming
NTNU, in cooperation with Trondheim Business School

This project focuses on conflicts in two different grazing systems in Norway, reindeer herding and sheep farming. Reindeer depend on common property pastures for grazing, and the major herding areas are characterized by internal competition, high animal densities, and food shortages during the winter... » more

Workshop: The Israeli Mediterranean shores and their economic valuation

The workshop "The Israeli Mediterranean: The Management Aspect" was held at Haifa University on 14.9.14. The workshop was devoted to the exploration of different economical and regulatory issues concerning the future exploitation and management of Israeli Mediterranean waters. These issues included the effort to valuate different ecosystem services and how to incorporate them into national accounts...» more

PUBLICATIONS

Book: Naturressursenes Økonomi (The Economics of Natural Resources)
O. Flåten and A. Skonhoft (eds), Gyldendal, 2014
Norway is a rich country - much thanks to abundant natural resources and good management. This book analyses the use and management of natural resources in an economic perspective. The aim is to provide knowledge about the Norwegian resources and the economy and the institutions of the natural resource-based industries, and - not least - to provide the necessary theoretical basis for economic analysis of utilization and management of natural resources.... » more

Working paper: An Economic Analysis of Ecosystem Services under Different Fertilizing Regimes in Agroecosystems
Yoav Peled, Shiri Shamir, Avraham Haim
Throughout the world, intensive and high input agricultural production methods are widely practiced, quite often at the expense of existing biodiversity and various benefits originating from the landscape. By addressing agricultural systems as managed ecosystems and using the ecosystem services approach, sustainable strategies can be developed, maximizing landholders and other affected stakeholders' welfare...» more

Article:The use of agrobiodiversity for plant improvement and the intellectual property paradigm: institutional fit and legal tools for mass selection, conventional and molecular plant breeding
Fulya Batur and Tom Dedeurwaerdere
Focused on the impact of stringent intellectual property mechanisms over the uses of plant agricultural biodiversity in crop improvement, the article delves into a systematic analysis of the relationship between institutional paradigms and their technological contexts of application, identified as mass selection, controlled hybridisation, molecular breeding tools and transgenics....» more

Article A pragmatist approach to transdisciplinarity in sustainability research: From complex systems theory to reflexive science
Florin Popa, Mathieu Guillermin, Tom Dedeurwaerdere
The importance of questioning the values, background assumptions, and normative orientations shaping sustainability research has been increasingly acknowledged, particularly in the context of transdisciplinary research, which aims to integrate knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge...» more

Working Paper: The Passive Use Value of the Mediterranean Forest
Vladimir Otrachshenko
In this study we estimate the passive use value of forest in different ecological zones in the Mediterranean region. We estimate these values for forests using meta-analysis. These estimates are used to reveal the annual monetary values per hectare for each country....» more

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The BIOECON Newsletter is a six-month publication. Next issue: Spring 2015