Dr. Luke Brander

Environmental Economics

  • Biography
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • Contact

March 20, 2020
Posted by admin

The global costs and benefits of expanding marine protected areas

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 potential solution to this problem but their economic feasibility has hardly been studied. We conduct an economic assessment of the costs and benefits of six scenarios for the global expansion of MPAs. The analysis is conducted at a high spatial resolution, allowing the estimated costs and benefits to reflect the ecological and economic characteristics and context of each MPA and marine ecosystem. The results show that the global benefits of expanding MPAs exceed their costs by a factor 1.4–2.7 depending on the location and extent of MPA expansion. Targeting protection towards pristine areas with high biodiversity yields higher net returns than focusing on areas with low biodiversity or areas that have experienced high human impact.

The paper can be downloaded here

Welcome

  • I am Dr. Luke Brander, an Environmental Economist based in Hong Kong. All enquiries are welcome.

Archives

  • September 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2019
  • November 2018
  • June 2018
  • February 2018
  • August 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2015
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • July 2013

Categories

  • Desk of Dr. Luke Brander (16)

Dr. Luke Brander. All rights reserved.

Subscribe via RSS