Faculty Research Fellow Les Kaufman Co-Authors Paper on Value of Marine Environmental Stewardship

Les Kaufman, a Faculty Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and a Professor in the Department of Biology, co-authored a recent paper on the value of marine environmental stewardship in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The paper, titled “Stranded capital: environmental stewardship is part of the economy, too,” is a product of the Pardee Center’s research program on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS), which Kaufman leads. 

The authors calculated that marine stewardship and conservation activities (in the form of donations and volunteer hours) contributed $179 million to the Massachusetts economy in 2014, which was more than commercial finfish operations ($105 million) or whale watching ($111 million). They argue that donations and volunteer efforts are important indicators of environmental values that are difficult to quantify and often overlooked, to the detriment of economic decision making surrounding coastal ecosystems.

Click here to read the paper.

The authors’ research was also featured in a recent article in Anthropocene magazine.

The Pardee Center’s CHANS project explores the dynamic interactions between people and natural systems, and seeks to understand the implications of important trade-offs that confront policymakers faced with natural resource management decisions. Specifically, this work explores the relationship between biodiversity and human well being, food-energy-water systems dynamics, and recovery of coral reef systems. The research encompasses four geographic areas: Cambodia (Tonle Sap and the Mekong Delta), East Africa (Lake Victoria), South Florida and Belize (the tropical west Atlantic and Caribbean Basin), and the Gulf of Maine.