Dr. Luke Brander

This study for WWF-Australia provides a global review and summary of the literature on the economic value of marine turtles. It also estimates the value of provisioning services and non-use values provided by marine turtles in the Asia-Pacific — a region characterised by the highest diversity of marine turtles, gravest threats and ongoing population decline.

Luke conducted an economic valuation of ecosystem services provided by the marine environment of the Cook Islands. This study was part of the Cook Islands Ridge to Reef (R2R) project, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in partnership with the Cook Islands Government with support from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The report […]

Luke recently published an update of the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD) in collaboration with the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) and Scotlands Rural College (SRUC). This update was funded by the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The ESVD now contains 4,042 records on the economic value of ecosystem services. […]

Luke recently published an article in the journal Marine Policy on the global costs and benefits of expanding marine protected areas. Marine ecosystems and the services they provide contribute greatly to human well-being but are becoming degraded in many areas around the world. The expansion of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) has been advanced as a […]

As part of the current revision process of the UN Statistics System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA), Luke authored a background paper for the Expert Meeting on Ecosystem Valuation in the context of Natural Capital Accounting organised by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) in Bonn. The paper provides an overview of the environmental […]

Luke authored a toolkit on environmental economic methods for marine ecosystem management for the GEF Large Marine Ecosystems Learning Exchange and Resource Network (GEF LME:LEARN) project. GEF LME:LEARN is a GEF-UNDP-IOC/UNESCO project designed to improve global ecosystem-based governance of Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) and their coasts by generating knowledge, building capacity, harnessing public and private […]

Luke published an article in the journal Ecosystem Services on the economic value of forests in regulating landslide risk. The role of forests in regulating landslide risks is well established but estimates of the economic value of this ecosystem service are limited. In order to incorporate the role of forests for landslide risk mitigation in […]

Luke co-authored a report for WWF on the current state-of-the-art in ecosystem service-economy modelling and research. The report also identifies what new modelling and analyses are needed to fill key knowledge gaps and deliver evidence on the potential global socio-economic impacts of future changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services. The report can be accessed here: […]

Luke co-authored a guidance manual on economic valuation of marine and coastal ecosystem services. The purpose of this guidance manual is to show how the value of marine and coastal ecosystem services can be estimated and used to support decisions about the use and management of marine ecosystems. It is designed to help a broad […]

Luke co-authored five studies on the economic value of coastal and marine resources in the South Pacific as part of the Marine and Coastal Biodiversity Management in Pacific Island Countries (MACBIO) project. The studies are for Fiji, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu; and assess the economic value of subsistence fishing, commercial fisheries, mineral and […]