My research program can be described as the three ‘Ms,’ Measuring, Modeling and Mobilizing, of environmental service valuation.

As someone who lives, works and plays in the semi-arid Okanagan environment, which I acknowledge as the traditional, ancestral and unceeded territory of the Syilx peoples, I am keenly aware of the central role that water plays in this landscape.  Where there is water, there is life.  When we take water and use it in agriculture, which accounts for more than half of the water used by humans in the Okanagan, we are able to produce an abundance that the land cannot provide without it.  However, life is reduced in those places from which water is taken.  Many of the environmental services produced by this landscape are closely tied to the way that water interacts with the landscape.  Therefore, many of the decisions that policy makers must make invariably impact on water resources, particularly where those decisions involve agriculture.  Much of the research I have done has directly or indirectly involved water, and the work I plan to do going forward similarly does.

Measuring how natural systems provide environmental services and how human actions impact on the provision of environmental services is the realm of the natural scientists who study these systems.  I count on the work of these scientists to inform my valuation work, and am grateful for the collaborations I have had.  Measuring the value to humans of these environmental services is a contribution I can make, where that value is represented by what humans, individually or collectively, would be willing to sacrifice to protect or enhance the level of services provided.  I have applied methods ranging from bioeconomic and hydroeconomic modeling through to hedonic property analysis and choice experiments to measure these values, and have explored the limitations of framing value through the lens of an individual, homo economicus.

Models can play a role in estimating the value provided by environmental services.  Models have a key role in understanding how policy changes will impact on these environmental services and the resulting value for our communities.  Predicting the changes in the levels of environmental services relies on the modeling work of the natural scientists who study these systems, and I am again grateful for the collaborations and consultations I have had that helps inform my work.  Translating these changes into changes in the value contributed integrates results of the measurement work with these predictive models.  Results of this work put the contribution that environmental services make to our wellbeing onto a ledger that can be compared to that of other public investments, providing the information policy makers can use to more holistically compare the alternatives before them.

Mobilization of the work I do, taking it from information policy makers have available to use and enhancing the likelihood it will be used, is I believe an essential part of the work I do.  Policy makers seldom read academic journal articles.  However, they are often willing to partner in research projects, and through that partnership learn both about the work that has been done elsewhere, and have access to the results of the research they are participating in.  I see pursuing partnerships and maintaining continuing relationships with partners, even after particular research projects have concluded, as an important part of mobilization.  Final dissemination products for the projects I am involved in are developed in consultation with the partners, to meet their needs and increase the likelihood that the research results will inform decisions.

I do maintain that the role of the work I do is to inform decisions, not to drive decisions.  The tools I use, developed over decades by economists working at the interface between human economic decisions and environmental processes, embody simplifying assumptions necessary to make the work tractable.  As a consequence, the results are partial, and should only be seen as one piece of information that policy makers consider when balancing the multiple values that those they are making decisions on behalf of hold.