Conference Agenda

In 2025, an international survey of environmental and natural resource economists was conducted to assess the degree of professional consensus across the global community. The survey was distributed to members of five major professional associations: the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), the Asian Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AAERE), the African Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AFAERE), the Latin American Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (LAERE), and the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES). The survey itself borrowed from, and expanded upon, prior surveys given to members of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) in 2012 and in 2023. By building off of the earlier AERE surveys, this study can compare levels of consensus around important environmental and natural resource issues across a truly global platform. The results reveal a strong global consensus among environmental and natural resource economists on many issues (73% of questions). However, regional variation exists, on issues ranging from environmental regulation and the role of taxes, to the relative importance of specific local issues including biodiversity and the conservation of fish and wildlife habitat.

Natural grasslands (NG) are vital ecosystems that provide multiple ecosystem services (ES), including carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, soil health, and fodder provision. In Uruguay, NG constitute the predominant biome, yet an estimated 15\% has been lost over the past two decades due to agricultural intensification, afforestation, and the expansion of non-native pastures. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) offer a promising tool to realign private incentives with public environmental objectives. However, because farmers can undertake a wide array of actions and generate diverse outcomes relevant for NG conservation, a clearer understanding of their preferences for different PES designs is essential. This paper informs the design of effective PES schemes for NG conservation in by eliciting Uruguayan farmers’ preferences for both actions and outcomes directly linked to NG quality and biodiversity. While many PES programs have historically focused on activities (e.g., avoided deforestation), planners may benefit more from paying for realized environmental outcomes (e.g., carbon storage). Yet evidence on farmers’ preferences for activity- versus outcome-based schemes—and the trade-offs between them—remains limited. We contribute to this literature by estimating farmers’ willingness to accept (WTA) for different contract attributes that incorporate both types of incentives, with particular emphasis on NG quality and biodiversity. We used a discrete choice experiment with 335 farmers across Uruguay to characterize preferences for key PES attributes and to estimate WTA for each. All choice scenarios were adjusted by soil type to ensure comparability across heterogeneous production conditions while maintaining consistent trade-offs. We additionally explore heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences and assess whether targeted contracts or menu-based offerings may be more effective in this context. Our findings highlight that farmers do consider some level of conservation as privately beneficial, which is consistent with Uruguayan technical recommendations. Preferences heterogeneity among farmers that do already some conservation and those who don't is considerable, and highlights the relevance of fertilizers and non native seeds for production in the country. Identifying these farmers preferences can be a key input into policy options for native grasslands conservation.

China's recently announced 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) marks a significant step-up in its climate ambition, yet the economic costs of achieving this target remain unassessed. To address this gap, we conduct a coordinated inter-comparison of eleven computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, providing the first comprehensive cost assessment of China's new NDC and extending the analysis to its 2060 carbon neutrality pledge. We show that meeting the 2035 target would results in an annual GDP change ranging from -1.3% to +0.5%, accompanied by a carbon price of 20-415 yuan/tCO2. Substantial inter-model heterogeneity reflects divergent strategic pathways towards mitigation. To identify cross-model variation, we develop a diagnostic indicator system for three core strategies—energy-system decarbonization, economic restructuring, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment—and visualize model-specific strategy portfolios through a fingerprint framework. Building on model parameters and the diagnostic indicators derived from mitigation strategies, we employ machine learning to attribute the divergences in cost projections across models. Our study delivers the first integrated analysis of costs and mitigation strategies for China's updated NDC, and offers a generalizable analytical lens for future model inter-comparisons by linking structural assumptions, strategic portfolios, and economic outcomes.

Agents subject to regulation occasionally perform above and beyond the minimum imposed standard; this voluntary overcompliance can be especially important in the context of climate change mitigation, where each agent’s additional contributions benefit society by reducing cumulative damages from emissions. I study the case of California, which has both aggressive decarbonization regulation and high participation in voluntary green power providers called Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs). I find that CCAs procure more green power for their customers than is required, that higher income and pro-environmental political attitudes are strong predictors of selection into CCAs, and that measures of higher willingness-to-pay for decarbonized power among communities correlate with higher voluntary green procurement. However, in assessing CCAs’ impacts on statewide decarbonization progress, I find that CCAs amount to a reshuffling of voluntary greenness rather than statewide additionality. This is because California’s incumbent utilities were already engaged in voluntary green procurement prior to large-scale CCA entry. After CCAs began serving a larger proportion of statewide load, stagnation or backsliding in other parts of the sector occurred, such that the state performed 5% above the RPS in 2017 but 0% above it in 2022, while CCA load share grew from 2% to 21% of statewide sales in the same timeframe. I also provide evidence that CCAs’ elevated levels of renewable energy are mostly attributable to resources originally procured on behalf of other incumbents, such that CCAs fare no better than other types of retailers at adding new renewable generators to the system on a per-kWh basis. These findings suggest that the primary effect of voluntary green power is to affect the distribution rather than the overall magnitude of decarbonization.

The field of environmental and natural resource economics (ENRE) has seen an increase in work on questions of equity and justice in recent years; has this same shift been reflected in our undergraduate classes? We study the focus of teaching in a sample of ENRE courses and suggest ways in which classes can be reoriented to better meet the current moment. We first use data from conference programs to document the increase in ENRE work on equity and justice. Next, we construct a data set from 92 syllabi from undergraduate classes at 46 US schools relating to environmental economics, natural resource economics, or climate economics from top liberal arts and research schools as well as large and less selective schools, nationwide. We find that over 80% of classes cover topics of markets and market failure, with most of them significantly emphasizing market-based solutions to environmental problems. The word ``efficiency'' appears an average of 2.4 times per syllabus. However, only a third of classes cover environmental justice, and the words ``justice'' and ``equity'' appear only 0.59 and 0.36 times per syllabus, respectively. The emphasis on efficiency over justice and equity is stronger at schools that are public as compared to those that are private, and at schools that are less selective as compared to those that are more selective. We also study the most commonly used textbooks in these courses, finding that the most common ideas communicated in chapter titles are ``costs,'' ``natural resources,'' ``benefits,'' and ``markets'' or ``efficiency.'' Equity and justice are far less featured in the textbooks, as in the syllabi. We then offer ways to center equity in such courses, pointing readers to a website (https://just-enviro-econ.github.io/) we have created with resources such as a sample syllabus, readings, activities,