2:00 PM
UPDATES ON WAYS TO MANAGE AND VALUE NATURAL RESOURCES
Moderator:
R. DAVID SIMPSON, PH.D.
Director of Ecosystem Economic Studies, Office of Policy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Dr. David Simpson is Director of Ecosystem Economic Studies in the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Economics. His research and policy work has focused on the economic valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services and the design of policy measures to conserve them. He has published dozens of scientific articles and book chapters on these and related topics.
Dr. Simpson was a Coordinating Lead Author in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and serves on the Policy and Technical Experts Advisory Committee to the World Bank’s Wealth Accounting for the Value of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) project. Before coming to EPA Simpson was a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future and held faculty appointments at University College London and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Dr. Simpson earned his bachelor’s degree from Whitman College and his Ph. D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For more information, see http://yosemite.epa.gov/EE/epa/eed.nsf/ae920736ab481760852575a6006ab364/1a0377d50df5e004852575a7005e47cd!OpenDocument
Speakers:
KENNETH BAGSTAD
PH.D., Senior Environmental Specialist, Global Partnership for Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES), The World Bank
Dr. Ken Bagstad is a Senior Environmental Specialist seconded to the World Bank’s Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) program. For this work, he is developing and testing ecosystem services models to inform national accounts for Rwanda, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Guatemala. His interests center on developing next-generation data and models that support faster and more accurate ecosystem service assessments for decision making.
Since 2010, Dr. Bagstad has worked with the U.S. Geological Survey to account for nature’s value in decision-making by U.S. Federal government agencies. He has partnered with agencies including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and USDA Forest Service on ecosystem service assessments at sites across the U.S.
For the last eight years Dr. Bagstad has also served as a lead modeler for the Artificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services (ARIES) program, and has led the comparative analysis of ecosystem services using multiple other assessment tools.
Dr. Bagstad holds a Ph.D. in ecological economics from the University of Vermont.
CAROL A. JONES, PH.D.
Visiting Scholar, Environmental Economics and Policy, Environmental Law Institute
Dr. Carol Adaire Jones joined the Environmental Law Institute as Visiting Scholar in September 2014, following 30 years of service leading, managing, and conducting high-quality research in government and academia. An environmental economist, her focus has been on valuing natural resource damages for federal and state environmental litigation, and conducting research to inform the design of environmental and resource conservation policy.
At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 1990-1997, Carol oversaw valuation of the natural resource damage claims for 36 cases brought by NOAA as a trustee for coastal and marine resources, which recovered over $190 million in addition to the $1 billion Exxon Valdez settlement. As lead economist on the Oil Pollution Act regulations-writing team, she was an architect of the innovative restoration-based framework to value ecosystem services in natural resource damage claims, widely adopted by federal, state and tribal natural resource trustee programs and the EU. She also coordinated the "Blue Ribbon Panel on Use of Contingent Valuation in Natural Resource Damages."
Serving in several positions at USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) from 1999-2014, Carol provided leadership for award-winning USDA research that has made timely contributions to policy debates on farm, agri-conservation, climate change, environmental markets, R&D and technology, water quality, and rural health policies. She has also served on the faculty of the international business school INCAE in Costa Rica during 1998-1999, and the University of Michigan (Economics Department and the School of Natural Resources) during 1984-1990, and as a Gilbert White Fellow at Resources for the Future (1988-1989).
Carol received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, her M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She has published extensively on various topics, including climate change mitigation in the agriculture/forestry sector, environmental trading, environmental certification, farm policy and farm household wellbeing, valuation of natural resources, and design of regulatory policies and enforcement. See her profile on ResearchGate to access her publications.
For additional information, see http://www.eli.org/bios/carol-adaire-jones.
SARAH J. RYKER, PH.D.
Deputy Associate Director for Ecosystem Services, White House Council on Environmental Quality
Dr. Sarah J. Ryker is the Deputy Associate Director for Ecosystem Services at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She is leading development of Federal policy and guidance on more fully considering ecosystem services in Federal planning and decision-making.
Previously, Dr. Ryker has worked for the U.S. Geological Survey as Deputy Associate Director for Climate and Land Use Change and as a researcher in water resources, for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s research center where she developed and led a team focused on energy and environmental research and policy, and for the National Academy of Sciences as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow focused on global water resources and legal interpretation of scientific evidence.
Dr. Ryker’s Ph.D. is from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy.
THEODORE D. TOMASI, PH.D.
Partner, Economics and Decision Sciences, Environmental Resources Management
Dr. Ted Tomasi heads ERM’s global Economics and Decision Sciences practice. He has over 30 years of experience as a professional economist, specializing in natural resource and environmental matters. He has focused on the development and application of methods for valuing natural capital and ecological services, natural resource damage assessment, and assessing and managing risk in natural resource and environmental decisions. His research and consulting activities have focused primarily on land and water-related issues.
He has served on the faculties of the Universities of Minnesota, Michigan and Delaware, and at Michigan State University. For the past 20 years he has been a consultant to governments and private industry on natural resource and environmental matters, in which capacity he has directed several large-scale consulting engagements and provided expert testimony and litigation support in several significant environmental cases.
He holds a B.A. in Environment and Public Policy and M.A. in Economics from the University of Colorado, and a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Economics from the University of Michigan.