Hutton Seminar Series: Payments for Ecosystem Service schemes - what do we mean by PES and how can we improve the performance of these schemes?
In this Hutton Seminar Series talk, Professor Nick Hanley will describe the general characteristics of PES schemes, and then review the “design challenges” involved in the establishment of a PES scheme. He will also focus on three issues which are key to achieving ecological effectiveness and improving economic efficiency: spatial coordination, differentiated payments, and whether landowners should be rewarded for ecological outcomes, rather than changing management actions. This is illustrated using empirical examples from the UK and beyond.
Nick Hanley is Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of St Andrews. His main areas of expertise are environmental cost-benefit analysis, environmental valuation (especially with stated preference methods), the economics of sustainable development, agricultural economics and the ecosystem services’ framework. His research focuses on understanding the economic costs and benefits associated with environmental conservation and sustainable land use. His work, which is helpful to guide the design of environmental policies (including Payment for Ecosystem Services and others), has primarily relied on the use of economic methods and stated preference approaches. However, he has also innovatively combined the use of these techniques with insights from behavioural science and spatial modelling. During more than 20 years of experience in the field of environmental economics, Professor Hanley has studied the costs and benefits linked to marine and coastal conservation, water quality improvements, forest conservation and biodiversity protection in a variety of different empirical settings in Scotland and the UK, as well as in developing countries.
