Central to environment and development studies is the recognition that natural resources are intricately linked with the everyday life of households in developing countries. Sustainability is a much more immediate concept and faces pressing obstacles in the form of day-to-day sustenance and even survival. Conventional approaches to economics have often ignored the link between economic development and preservation of environmental health.
The Environment and Development Research Group was created to address this shortfall, but primarily maintains an economics focus on the problem with an emphasis on biodiversity-related issues. We conduct research on a variety of problems related to the economics of environment and development. Special emphasis is placed on projects in developing countries and on the economics of biodiversity conservation.
Key areas of research interest within the group include the valuation of environmental resources (e.g. biodiversity, fisheries, soil and forest products); natural resource and environmental management in developing countries (e.g. conservation incentives, land husbandry, protected areas and community-based management of biodiversity); bioeconomic modeling with environmental influences (e.g. economic models of fisheries and ecosystem complexity, bioinvasions or eutrophication); and sustainable aquaculture in developing and developed countries (e.g. shrimp farming in India, salmon aquaculture in temperate coastal areas). Many students have had the opportunity to conduct fieldwork for their research projects overseas and to interact with personnel from management agencies dealing with resource and environmental issues.