Policy
Nature’s Role in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
The United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, combine environmental, social and economic objectives by recognizing the close connection between environment and development. One of those connections is the idea of "natural capital", or the benefits humans receive from nature. We are developing the conceptual underpinnings for defining the natural capital component of relevant development goals. This work includes quantifying the role of nature in SDG goals, and identifying sustainability targets on a global scale with appropriate national scale case studies. This approach allows for an exploration of inevitable trade-offs between goals and targets across time, which can assess sustainability through 2030 and beyond. Efforts are underway to characterize climate threats to ecosystems and their associated services, particularly in the context of nature-based solutions, and guide decision making on how best to manage these threats relative to desired outcomes. This work also intersects with Gerber’s role as coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and serves as a foundation for implementation across corporate and government contexts.
The United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, combine environmental, social and economic objectives by recognizing the close connection between environment and development. One of those connections is the idea of "natural capital", or the benefits humans receive from nature. We are developing the conceptual underpinnings for defining the natural capital component of relevant development goals. This work includes quantifying the role of nature in SDG goals, and identifying sustainability targets on a global scale with appropriate national scale case studies. This approach allows for an exploration of inevitable trade-offs between goals and targets across time, which can assess sustainability through 2030 and beyond. Efforts are underway to characterize climate threats to ecosystems and their associated services, particularly in the context of nature-based solutions, and guide decision making on how best to manage these threats relative to desired outcomes. This work also intersects with Gerber’s role as coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and serves as a foundation for implementation across corporate and government contexts.
Conservation Markets
We develop novel solutions to wildlife conservation. One example is the potential application of conservation markets in whale conservation. An economic approach may offer a way forward in the current gridlock in International Whaling Commission policy-making: whale shares that can be bought and sold. Because conservationists could bid for whale shares, whalers could profit from whales even without harvesting them. In this way, a whale share market could open the door to both sustainable whaling and harvest reduction. Future work will examine the biological and economic complexities associated with wildlife conservation markets.