Summer School in Environment and Resource Economics

Workshop » Summer School » Summer School in Environment and Resource Economics

07 May 2012 - 23 May 2012 Swutel Hotel, Thailand

Course Description: The three-week SANDEE Summer School 2012 on Natural Resource and Environmental Economics covers issues in natural resource management, environmental economics, sustainable development, and climate change. The natural resource management section will focus on renewable resources, such as fisheries, forestry, and non-renewable resources. Environmental economics will cover issues such as externalities and market failures, non market valuation of environmental goods and environmental damage assessment, climate change, sustainability and green accounting. Participants will be exposed to theoretical issues and economic tools for analyzing environmental and resource problems in developing countries.

Modules
The course is divided into six different modules. Module One is a review of optimization (static and dynamic) and mathematical tools (differential and integral calculus) frequently used in resource and environmental economics. This is followed by Module Two on natural resource economics (non-renewable as well as renewable). Module Three will cover basic econometrics and hands -on training in statistical software that can be used for doing different assignments, and also will be useful for doing empirical paper presentation and research. Module Four will cover some selected special topics in environmental economics: global change and earth system, ecosystem services, green accounting, sustainability and resilience, and climate change. Module Five will focus on non-market valuation techniques for valuing environmental goods and services.

Each module consists of lecture sessions, generally followed by policy discussions/assignments or presentations by the participants. During the workshop, participants are expected to develop a research concept note and present this at the end of the course. In week two, researchers will get chance to discuss and reshape their research ideas with faculty before making presentation. Last two days of the summer school are exclusively devoted to research concept note presentation by the participants. In addition, researchers will review and present various empirical papers intermittently throughout the workshop. From these sessions, participants will learn how to do empirical research of their own.

Organization
Mani Nepal (Senior Environmental Economist at SANDEE) is the course director and Anuradha Kafle (Communication Research Officer at SANDEE) will co-ordinate the course. Core teaching faculty for the course includes Prof. Partha Dasgupta, Prof. Enamul Haque, Prof. Karl-Goran Maler, Dr. Mani Nepal, and Prof. Jeff R. Vincent. There will be several additional guest lectures that would increase participants' exposure to contemporary environmental issues and research.

Core Faculty

Sir Partha Dasgupta is the Frank Ramsey Professor in Economics at Cambridge University. He has also taught at the London School of Economics and Stanford University. Among many important appointments he has the honor of being the first economist to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. In 2007, Partha Dasgupta received the John Kenneth Galbraith Award from the American Agricultural Economics Association. Prof. Dasgupta is a co-founder of SANDEE and also an ex-chair of SANDEE's Management and Advisory Committee.

Enamul Haque is Professor at United International University, a private university in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has a Master's degree in Economics as well as in Agricultural Economics. He completed his doctoral degree from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada in Natural Resource Economics. Professor Haque has been a SANDEE research advisor for many years.

Karl-Göran Mäler is the former Director of the Beijer International institute of Ecological Economics and Professor of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1981. In 2005 he shared the European Lifetime Achievement Award in Environmental Economics with David Pearce. Partha Dasgupta and Karl-Goran Maler shared the Volvo Environment Prize in 2002 and the Kenneth Boulding award from the International Society of Ecological Economics (ISEE) in 2004. Prof Mäler is a co-founder of SANDEE.

Mani Nepal is Senior Environmental Economist at SANDEE. He has a MS degree in Policy Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and doctoral degree from the University of New Mexico in Environmental/Development Economics and Applied Econometrics. Prior to joining SANDEE, he worked as a visiting faculty at the University of New Mexico, and held senior economist position at the Department of Finance and Administration, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Jeffery R. Vincent is Clarence F. Korstian Professor of Forest Economics and Management at Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University. Prof. Vincent's research experience is related to economics of natural resource management and policy in developing countries, with an emphasis on forests, agriculture, and water in Asia. Prior to joining Duke, he held positions at University of California (San Diego), Harvard, and Michigan State University. He received the Cozzarelli Prize for the best article in applied biological, agricultural, and environmental sciences published in PNAS (2006) and the McKinsey Award for the most significant article published in the Harvard Business Review (2003). He has degrees from Yale University (Ph.D), Michigan State University (M.S), and Harvard University (A.B.).