The Value of Nature – Applied Economics for Environmental Policy and Decision Making

The course takes point of departure in some of the great environmental challenges facing societies today, e.g., biodiversity decline, climate change, and air and water pollution. This will involve a policy-oriented focus on how we as societies use land and water areas and how we interact with nature and ecosystem services, for instance in relation to outdoor recreation. Against this backdrop, the course will apply economic theory, methods, principles and thinking to a range of contemporary environmental topics and themes. Relating to the total economic value framework, this will involve discussing how to assess costs and benefits of marketed as well as non-marketed impacts of new environmental policies and projects in practice, also considering the importance of interdisciplinary collaborations in applied work.

This leads naturally to economic regulation options which will be covered by practical examples. These include both public authority regulation and voluntary schemes. Limitations of economic valuation and regulation will be discussed. Throughout the course, concrete examples of applied empirical analyses will be presented and discussed, focusing on how environmental economics in practice can be used for providing information, advice and decision support in current environmental policy processes relating to the green transition and the overall sustainability agenda. While there is thematic overlap with the course «Economics of the environment and climate change»», the approach here is different – taking point of departure in the contemporary problems, and from there apply and discuss the role of economics as one of the disciplines guiding environmental policy.