I'm setting up this blog as a means of presenting discussions of the environment, natural resource and sustainable development through the lens of economics. There are multiple aims and intended audiences, but fundamentally, the discussion is intended to be at a "non-technical" level for non-specialist readers. This includes undergraduates (particularly, but not only, students in the Bachelor of Resource Economics degree), but also academics from other disciplines, and the general public. Read through for more details.
As well as discussing some general issues (not least, related to climate change), I intend to highlight research activities going on in the Agricultural and Resource Economics group (in the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources), and to discuss and summarise some of the seminars given in the area of environmental economics and sustainable development by members of the group or by invited outside speakers.
I'm particularly interested in fostering multi-disciplinary research projects, not least with biological scientists and ecologists, and I hope to post some stuff on the potential for interaction between economists and natural scientists. In a multi-disciplinary Faculty such as ours, people talk about this kind of stuff all the time, but multi-disciplinary projects are not that easy to set up and manage. So I can hopefully use this blog to sound out ideas on what how we might proceed in the area of integrated multi-disciplinary research, and what pitfalls to look out for. (Scientists typically know little about economics, but they have opinions on it -- and a little knowledge can become a dangerous thing when trying to figure out how to work together.)
If I'm as good about this as I promised myself to be, this should be updated regularly. Fingers crossed, and if you've gotten this far, thanks for reading.