Earth Economics is the newest member of the Pacific Northwest Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit. CESUs provide research, technical assistance, and education to federal land management, environmental, and research agencies and their partners. Members from biological, physical, social, cultural, and engineering disciplines provide the expertise needed to address natural and cultural resource management issues at multiple landscape scales.
On June 15th, 2024, Carson Risner (Senior Research Analyst) presented at the Equitable Green Infrastructure in a Changing Climate webinar, part of the Green Infrastructure Webinar Series hosted by Shannon Sloane Pepper of the Southwest Environmental Finance Center, organized by the Environmental Finance Center network, and sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Glen Delaney and Carson Risner recently presented to the Green Infrastructure Federal Collaborative, a quarterly gathering of federal agency staff and mid-level managers who are experts on green infrastructure and larger nature-based solutions.
In 2023, the Land Trust Alliance partnered with Earth Economics to develop the Ecosystem Services Valuation Tool (ESVT), an accessible tool that can be used by land trusts to provide high-level estimates of the value of co-benefits generated by the lands they steward.
Thank you to all who attended our Earth Day webinar to launch our GiveBIG campaign for 2024. We are excited to share that we will be raising funds to support the Tacoma Tree Foundation (TTF) with an economic analysis. All funds raised during this year’s GiveBIG will be used to cover the staff time for Earth Economics to produce a benefit-cost analysis of TTF’s tree planting in and around Tacoma. If you missed it, you can view a recording of the webinar here.
On January 31, Angela Fletcher (Senior Researcher and Data and Tools Manager) presented our work valuing the co-benefits of rangeland management in the southwestern US at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Range Management in Sparks, NV. She summarized the results of the work, which reveal a broad sense of the economic importance of rangeland conservation investment in providing non-market benefits to communities.
In 2024, we will focus our pro bono efforts on expanding our schoolyard greening efforts. We are currently working with the Trust for Public Lands to assess the benefits that green schoolyards in Tacoma, WA provide to students, teachers, and the broader community. Please help us to increase the number of schools we can include in these assessments.
On August 1st, 2023, the White House Office of Management and Budget* (OMB) released draft guidance on Assessing Changes in Environmental and Ecosystem Services in Benefit-Cost Analysis for public comment. This is part of a broader strategy to develop natural capital accounting at the federal level. Here is our response.
