Amy Ando ’90, professor at the University of Urbana-Champlain, traveled back on Williams on October 2 to give a 1960 Scholars Lecture entitled, “How Should We Make Environmental Investments When the Future Climate is Uncertain?” Ando is a professor in the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Economics, and her research focuses on natural resource economics, specifically the interplay between public and private entities. She has published papers in journals such as Science and the Journal of Law and Economics and serves on a variety of advisory boards including the journal of Land Economics and Conservation Letters and the Association of Land and Resource Economists. Additionally, Ando has used her expert knowledge in EPA and USDA advisory workshops and to shape the City of Chicago’s storm water management policies.
Ando’s talk concerned how society should invest in the environment when future climatological conditions are unknown. With the onset of climate change, many habitats and lands that one might have previously chosen for development or conservation will soon change. For example, sea level rise will change the shores of the East Coast and wine production will gradually move northward. Developers and viticulturists alike must take these changes into consideration when planning long-term investment projects. With such concerning climatological changes, decision-makers can use tools from economics and finance to make informed choices. One can diversify investments with portfolio theory, avoiding as much loss to investment as possible in order to reduce the risk of investment. As Ando’s work protecting waterfowl habitat in the Prairie pothole region illustrated, this process would involve having multiple stewardship objectives from a single project. With her combined knowledge of environmental management and economic decision-making, Ando presented the usefulness and necessity of an interdisciplinary approach for effective resource conservation.
To learn more about Amy and her research, please visit http://ace.illinois.edu/directory/amyando.
By Sara Clark ’15
