Annual Summary of Grants
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  American Farmland Trust
Assessing the Economic Factors Driving Agricultural and Point Source Participation in Market-Based Ecosystem Trading Programs
With the grant of $35,000 American Farmland Trust (AFT) received from the Alex. C. Walker Foundation in December 2008, AFT conducted two economic and market analyses to inform the design and launch of a private, market-based environmental trading system involving industrial facilities purchasing credits from farmers. The grant was critical for laying the foundation for launching the Conservation Marketplace of Minnesota, a multi-partner water quality trading market that brings together corporations, municipalities, and private landowners to protect water quality and restore wildlife habitat on agricultural land. Walker Foundation funding supported: 1) An analysis of the private market demand for ecosystem service credits in the watershed (i.e., the economic factors influencing industry's motivation to purchase environment credits from farmers); and 2) An analysis of the supply side for ecosystem service credits (i.e. the ability and inclination of farmers to produce sell credits).
Purpose: Farmers are paid to produce food, fiber and fuel in response to market prices. They also provide environmental goods such as cleaner air and water and wildlife habitat for which there are no market prices and for which they are not compensated. These environmental benefits are highly valued by the public. However, one of the great economic imbalances in the U.S. economy is the lack of naturally occurring markets for environmental services.
Establishing private ecosystem markets can help solve this market failure. But for markets to be established, it must be economically attractive for farmers to adopt conservation or production practices that improve the environment. Sufficient analysis of the supply and demand of ecosystem service credits is needed. Finally, farmers must be educated to understand the economics for their individual farm of changing practices and selling credits.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Setting Uniform Baselines for Water Quality Trading Markets
    As the 8-state Ohio River Basin Water Quality Trading Project – the first interstate water quality trading market of its kind in the United States – is about to begin launching pilot trades between point sources and farmers in the region, there is an imminent need to establish a uniform baseline to support interstate trades. AFT proposes to analyze the impacts of different approaches to baseline issues in water quality trading markets from the standpoint of agriculture (the nonpoint source credit sellers) and then use this analysis to develop and reach consensus on a defensible, uniform baseline for the Ohio River Basin Water Quality Trading Market to support interstate trades. The work AFT proposes and its analysis will provide clarity and conformity concerning the required level of conservation that a farmer must meet in order to be able to generate a tradable conservation credit in this large-scale regional market.
    Purpose: AFT's proposed project will address the purposes selected above by:
    • Analyzing impacts and tradeoffs of different methods for setting baseline requirements for farmers to participate in WQT programs; • Laying out the issues from a farmer’s perspective (economic, environmental, equity); • Synthesizing research literature on baselines (e.g., recent data show Pennsylvania farms may generate 2-3 times more credits than identical farms in Virginia, due to baseline requirements adversely affecting the economics of trading); • Adding lessons and implications from AFT’s water quality trading experiences in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, and the ORB; • Analyzing related issues also critical to a robust, successful market, including treatment of early adopters, farmers achieving baselines, interim credits, measurement/verification of baseline status; and • Making recommendations for a defensible, uniform baseline for the ORB market that supports interstate trades.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   American Forest Foundation
    Conservation Incentives (CI): Increasing the use of market-based approaches to conserve and enhance ecosystem services on private lands.
    Under a grant from the Walker Foundation to the American Forest Foundation (AFF) in 2010, project lead Todd Gartner conducted three market-based efforts: 1) convening an Ecosystem Markets Conference; 2) developing an ecosystem market pilot for the Gopher Tortoise in the southeast US; and 3) creating a payment for watershed services program in New England. In 2010, Todd moved on to lead the conservation incentives and markets program at the World Resources Institute (WRI) www.wri.org but remained lead on the efforts highlighted above. He continues to work in close collaboration with AFF.
    Purpose: Ecosystems provide us with indispensable services including flood control, air quality, recreation, wildlife habitats, and drinking water purification among others. Many of these services, however, are characterized by significant market failures that do not reflect their true value. Therefore, with little monetary incentives to protect these services, landowners are often motivated to exploit their natural capital at the risk of ecosystem service decline. In order to offset these market imbalances, and thereby protect the provision of these invaluable services, the CI program was created. The CI has taken the lead in further developing the field of market-based conservation to help private landowners meet both their ecological and economic goals.
    The objective of this proposal is to advance the use of market-based approaches and conservation incentives through outreach, education, multi-partner collaboration, on-the-ground incentive-based projects, and networking leadership.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Breakthrough Institute
    Climate Policy 2.0: Creating a Politically Viable Strategy to Accelerate the Global Transition to Low-Carbon Energy
    Bringing Americans together around a new climate and energy policy framework first requires bringing together policy makers and policy wonks. Too often conversations about climate policy focus narrowly on either the supply or the demand side. Those focused on energy demand propose to make fossil fuels more expensive through new regulations, a carbon tax, and/or a revamped version of cap and trade legislation. Those focused on energy supply call for ways to promote renewables, natural gas, and nuclear energy through increased research and development, subsidies and tax credits, and public-private partnerships aimed at accelerating innovation. In June 2013, the Breakthrough Institute held a meeting to discuss both approaches with leading policy thinkers to clarify the roles of demand- and supply-side policy tools. Breakthrough presented a draft of our carbon pricing paper, and Adele Morris of the Brookings Institution and James Handley of the Carbon Tax Center presented their responses.
    Purpose: This project explores and develops market-based solutions to global warming by seeking clarity on how US climate policy should incorporate, on one hand, policy tools designed to alter energy demand — such as carbon pricing and regulations — and, on the other, supply-side policies such as government support for technology innovation and development. Proponents of carbon pricing believe it will send a market signal that will encourage private sector investment and innovation in clean energy technologies while reducing commitments to fossil fuels. Alternatively, the 35 years of public-private investments in the United States, including a $10 billion tax credit, that have led to today’s shale gas revolution offer important lessons for the future of clean energy innovation. Clarifying the appropriate roles for demand- and supply-side energy policies is important for understanding how the market can be leveraged in support of better climate policy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Breakthrough Institute - The Next Generation of Nuclear Policy
    Next generation nuclear reactors have the potential to lead a nuclear renaissance in the United States that could help power the globe with zero-carbon energy. But the existing policy and regulatory framework is outdated, built during the Cold War for old nuclear reactor designs, and is ill suited to support the development of new reactors that could be sold on the open market. Moreover, nuclear energy faces stiff challenges in terms of cost and politics. Breakthrough Institute’s report How to Make Nuclear Cheap offers an important step forward in the effort to achieve economical advanced nuclear reactors.
    Purpose: The first nuclear power plants came from federal labs. They were so big and costly that only the largest, publicly regulated utilities could build and operate them. Now, start-ups are creating new reactor designs that are smaller and amenable to private investing. These next generation reactors could be developed, marketed, and sold as products. A whole new market lies in waiting. The Breakthrough Institute will research and develop federal policy proposals – on issues from licensing to waste disposal, financing to liability, testing and commercialization – that will help get the next generation of nuclear reactors to market.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Nuclear 2.0: Essential Energy for the 21st Century
    We are at a crucial moment in the development of nuclear energy. For nuclear to be a significantly larger part of the energy mix, the development of safer and cheaper advanced designs must be accelerated. To do so, Breakthrough will work to reform public policy and innovation funding as well as garner stronger support from the public for next-generation nuclear.
    Purpose: Start-ups such as TerraPower and Transatomic Power are playing an important part in bringing next generation nuclear to market. But these companies face technological hurdles as well as infrastructure, regulatory, and economic obstacles. Following up on our report, “How to Make Nuclear Cheap,” Breakthrough will develop policy proposals that will help create the framework and institutions needed so that innovative, new nuclear designs and the companies that produce them can succeed.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • A High-Energy, Low Footprint Planet
    From China to India to sub-Saharan Africa, industrializing countries are leading the way on energy innovation, with the development of advanced nuclear a key piece of their portfolios. Given the twin challenges of expanding energy access and shrinking the human footprint, the need for nuclear power is great. But much work remains to accelerate nuclear's development and deployment. As such, Breakthrough is seeking support to continue playing a lead role in researching how nuclear is a critical energy and conservation tool. Our strategy is to demonstrate how, due to its small footprint, nuclear has the ability to meet energy needs while sparing more land for wildlife and habitats. We also propose to survey historical costs for nuclear, with the goal of challenging the consensus that nuclear is intrinsically expensive and justifying the expansion of advanced nuclear.
    Purpose: Four years after Fukushima, nuclear energy is gearing up for a global renaissance. From India to Russia to China, nations are driven to innovate for clean, cheap, and reliable energy. But the nuclear renaissance still faces significant technological hurdles as well as infrastructure, regulatory, and economic obstacles. Following the release of our report How to Make Nuclear Cheap, Breakthrough began research to understand the historical costs of nuclear, including the late adopters – Korea, India, and Japan – which are commonly left out of the literature when energy analysts claim that nuclear is intrinsically expensive. This key research will provide a more complete picture for nuclear's cost, which shapes our ambitions and challenges for the next generation of nuclear.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • An Ecomodernist Approach to Climate Action
    Through our original reports and analyses, communications work, and events and conferences, Breakthrough will craft pragmatic proposals to identify practical pathways that get the most out of present day low-carbon technologies such as conventional nuclear, hydro, natural gas, and renewables; accelerate low-carbon innovation; and ensure that existing energy infrastructure does not obstruct the market entrance of new zero-carbon technologies we will need to achieve deep decarbonization.
    Purpose: Solutions to climate change will not be delivered by mandate, nor will new clean energy technologies be developed in a government lab and given to the public. Making clean energy cheap is a public-private partnership, and innovative firms and entrepreneurs must be involved every step of the way. The goal of Breakthrough's research, communications, and network-building is to design and advance policy proposals that accelerate technological innovation so clean energy technologies can compete without subsidy in the market. Market-based instruments like carbon taxes will be all the more effective with cheap, scalable clean technologies available.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Nuclear Economics and Innovation
    Through our original reports and analyses, communications work, and events and conferences, Breakthrough will address several policy and knowledge gaps in the nuclear space. Our work would clarify cost drivers in nuclear power plants and reveal options for cost reductions; it would disrupt the conversation around nuclear security and nuclear exports, opening new space for international nuclear innovation and deployment; it would expand the policy options for nuclear deployment, including state-directed energy policy and bottom-up nuclear entrepreneurialism; and it would get closer to the bottom of opposition to nuclear power in rich and poor countries, hopefully paving the way for new types of nuclear advocacy.
    Purpose: More work must be done to ensure the continued operation of existing nuclear plants and, even more importantly, the development and commercialization of advanced nuclear reactors. In the past years, we have shifted the policy conversation towards a new framework for accelerating innovation in advanced nuclear power. That has included our reports “How to Make Nuclear Cheap,” “How to Make Nuclear Innovative,” and “Planting the Seeds of a Distributed Nuclear Revolution.” Making clean energy cheap is a public-private partnership, and innovative firms and entrepreneurs must be involved every step of the way. The goal of Breakthrough's research, communications, and network-building is to design and advance policy proposals that accelerate technological innovation so clean energy technologies can compete. Market-based instruments like carbon taxes will be all the more effective with cheap, scalable clean technologies available.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Brookings
    Policies to Assist Coal Workers and Their Communities
    In this project, Brookings scholar Adele Morris will participate in field-based listening sessions with community development and economic transition leaders in coal-reliant communities, as organized by the Partnership for Responsible Growth (PRG). She will also conduct research and engagement on the issues independently of the PRG. Brookings plans to submit a second proposal in January 2019 in which Morris will incorporate her findings from this work into a policy brief. The goal is to inform the provisions of carbon tax legislation that could provide funding for assistance to these workers and communities.
    Purpose: This project will allow us to conduct further research contributing directly to the Walker Foundation’s purposes: • It investigates the underlying causes of economic imbalances, such as depressions, recessions and unemployment, and the factors which contribute thereto; • It investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-enterprise system; • It explores market-based solutions; • It investigates approaches that can be applied to solving economic imbalances that may affect the United States, and challenges to the free enterprise system;
    Our project will directly serve these objectives by exploring the range of pragmatic approaches to ameliorate the disproportionate impacts that a carbon tax will have on those reliant on the coal industry.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Engagement, Research, and Outreach related to Carbon Pricing and Associated Policies
    Engage in activities and analysis related to carbon pricing policies domestically and internationally.
    This project is part of the Brookings Climate and Energy Economics Project and builds on earlier work supported by the Alex C. Walker Foundation. This grant will support work on analyzing carbon pricing policies including research that investigates the design of carbon pricing policies and helping to inform ways to address adverse outcomes of climate polices on vulnerable populations. This specific grant will support engagement, new research and analysis on carbon pricing (especially via a carbon tax) at the state, federal, and international levels, with a focus on pursuing the most timely and useful work as policy developments unfold. The grant can also support opportune work on policies to address particular issues that arise in pricing carbon, such as measures to address competitiveness concerns and ease economic transitions for coal workers and their communities.
    Purpose: Our project will directly serve these objectives by engaging in research, analysis, and outreach related to the design and implementation of carbon taxes and other carbon pricing policies in individual states, by the U.S. federal government, and in other countries. It will also explore ways relieve the economic dislocation that results from declines in coal production in the United States. Our work will offer recommendations to guide policymakers on how to move forward with carbon pricing while meeting other goals. We will communicate with policymakers, stakeholders, and the public through our policy briefs, as well as through meetings, presentations, and related research and scholarly publications.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Policies to Assist Coal Workers and Their Communities – Part 2
    In this project, Brookings scholar Adele Morris worked with the Partnership for Responsible Growth (PRG) on their field-based listening sessions with community development and economic transition leaders in coal-reliant communities. She also conducted research and engagement on the issues independent of the PRG. This is Brookings’ second proposal to the Walker Foundation for this two-part project in which Morris will incorporate her findings from this work into a policy brief. The goal is to inform the provisions of carbon tax legislation that could provide funding for assistance to these workers and communities.
    Purpose: This project will allow further research to be conducted, which will contribute directly to the Walker Foundation’s purposes:
    • it investigates the underlying causes of economic imbalances, such as depressions, recessions, and unemployment, and the factors which contribute thereto; • it investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-enterprise system; • it explores market-based solutions; and • it investigates approaches that can be applied to solving economic imbalances that may affect the United States and challenges to the free enterprise system.
    The project will directly serve these objectives by exploring a range of pragmatic approaches to ameliorate the disproportionate impacts that a carbon tax will have on those reliant on the coal industry.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • How can U.S. financial market supervisors incorporate climate considerations into their responsibilities?
    This project will explore what the U.S. financial market regulators could or would say as they engage in the Network for Greening the Financial System and other processes like it. The policy research paper emerging from this expert discussion will inform current and future policymakers, investors, banks, and other stakeholders about how the international dialogue on climate as a financial risk translates to the United States. For example, the paper will explores issues such as how U.S. institutions could assess the risks of a low carbon transition on greenhouse gas-intensive firms when a regulatory approach to reducing emissions in the U.S. has not yet been adopted. The research will lay out options and describe their advantages and disadvantages.
    Purpose: This project investigates the effects of the global financial system, as regulated by agencies such as the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission, in fostering a sustainable economy. The research will investigate the causes of and solutions to impairment of the free-enterprise system through the effects of financial market regulation, for example via rules for the disclosure of climate-related risks by public companies. The research will explore solutions that involve the respective roles of market participants and market regulators, and the authors will disseminate information on the results and findings.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Solving the Climate Crisis through Regulations and Markets
    This project will explore various aspects of climate change through the interplay of regulations and markets with important implications for climate policy.
    Purpose: Our project falls within the (1) and (4) categories of the Walker Foundation Grant Guideline topics. The proposed project will build on the CRM’s efforts to conduct research and policy work to advance our knowledge of how we can solve the climate crisis by leveraging both regulations and markets, and improve our understanding of the interplay between climate policy and market-based solutions. With a specific focus on issues that are currently underexplored in the debate, broad topics for our proposed climate work in the project period may include carbon pricing, climate risk management and technological solutions to climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Addressing Climate Change through Public Policy and Markets
    Climate change is one of the most important challenges mankind is facing and it is therefore important to find ways to address it through regulation and harnessing the power of markets. Together the two projects we propose, will focus on this challenge by seeking to understand the underexplored issues related to the climate crisis and by exploring potential avenues for policy change.
    Purpose: Our project falls within the (1) and (4) categories of the Walker Foundation Grant Guideline topics. The first of two proposed projects will build on the CRM’s efforts to conduct research and policy work to advance our knowledge of how we can solve the climate crisis by leveraging both regulations and markets and improve our understanding of the interplay between climate policy and market-based solutions. With a specific focus on issues that are currently underexplored in the debate, broad topics for our proposed climate work in the project period may include carbon pricing, climate risk management and technological solutions to climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association
    Integrated Catch-Based Management of Northeast Fisheries to Reduce Wasteful At-Sea Discarding
    This 'Fisheries Integration Initiative' seeks to promote effective fisheries management solutions for New England. Recent changes to the management of New England’s groundfish fishery have been well-documented. However, among the most important and widely overlooked consequences of the new groundfish management plan is its unintended impacts on other demersal (bottom-living) fish stocks, including monkfish, skates and dogfish. Without quick action, these issues threaten to undermine the primary goal of this initiative, which is to end overfishing and protect our region’s fisheries resources. The most effective solution is to integrate the management of all demersal stocks with the groundfish plan (an approach similar to British Columbia’s multispecies groundfish fishery). The longer the management of these over-lapping fisheries remains segregated, the more risk there is to currently healthy stocks and the harder it will ultimately be to transition to ecosystem-based management.
    Purpose: The management of New England's fisheries is conducted through a number of disjointed management plans, despite the repeated failure of this approach in other fisheries. While many species are caught in the same areas and with the same gear, their respective management plans are incongruous. Recently, these differences have multiplied with the adoption of a ‘catch-based’ management system in the multispecies groundfish plan. Fishermen targeting groundfish under the new rules also frequently catch other bottom-feeding species such as monkfish, skates, and dogfish which are still managed using effort-controls. At this time, however, many of these fishermen will be forced to wastefully discard these fish at sea due to the lack of integration of these complicated regulations. This threatens the underlying resource and undermines responsible and profitable harvesting. Without a single integrated and functioning market for all of these stocks, both our fish and fishermen will suffer.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Ensuring Catch Share Implementation in New England's Groundfish Fishery
    New England’s groundfish fishery, which includes cod, haddock, pollock, & flounders, has been struggling to rebuild depleted fish populations for decades. Current management measures have proved ineffective. CCCHFA, in partnership with other Walker Foundation grantees, is leading a regional shift to market-based catch share management. The unexpected level of regional demand for catch share management has immobilized the regulators as they face resource limitations. The emerging political issues related to the timely implementation of catch shares require CCCHFA to be flexible in working with the regulators to develop solutions that will continue making progress. Discretionary support from the Walker Foundation has allowed CCCHFA to convene and mobilize stakeholders, program partners, Council members and staff, and government employees as needed to re-mobilize the adaptation of catch shares.
    Purpose: The adaptation of catch shares in the groundfish fishery will bring market based fisheries management to New England. By allocating a dedicated share of the fishery’s total catch to communities, these innovative and economic incentive-based tools align sustainable fishing with the economic interest of fishermen. This form of adaptive management prevents overfishing, increases efficiency and safety, and allows fishermen to be responsible for the socio-economic decisions that are made on a local level.
    Traditional management fosters “the tragedy of the commons,” and fish populations and fishing businesses continue to suffer as fishermen fish as hard as possible. Under catch shares programs, a community that exceeds their catch limit is penalized the following year. With dedicated catch shares, individual fishermen respond to the concept that overfishing is like removing principle from your bank account; they now have market-based incentives to end overfishing.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Carbon Tax Center
    The Carbon Tax Center Emergency Funding
    The Walker emergency grant helped us respond to, engage with and acknowledge the hundreds of individuals who are besieging us with questions, requests, suggestions and donations. The Carbon Tax Center amplifies the voices of people in America and abroad who believe that taxing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is central to efforts to reduce the rate of and damage from climate change. CTC educates and informs policymakers, opinion leaders and the public about the benefits and critical need for significant, rising and equitable taxes on the carbon content of fossil fuels.
    Purpose: Carbon taxing corrects economic imbalances between human beings and the ecosystems that provide the stable climate, healthy forests, adequate rainfall and intact coastlines essential to economic activity.
    Monetary flows necessary for healthy economies require prices of key commodities and services such as energy and power that "tell the truth" about their underlying costs. Carbon taxing is a vital means to that end.
    Most "solutions" to climate change employ subsidies, allocations and regulations that twist our market system into knots and pile up enormous albeit hidden costs. Carbon taxing is the only large-scale antidote and alternative.
    Carbon taxing is not merely market-based, it is market-correcting, enabling the markets through which billions of decisions involving fuels and energy to be more truthful, reliable, efficient and robust.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (Strategies for the Global Environment)
    A Carbon Tax in the U.S.: Design and Distributional Issues
    The objective of this project is to develop a high-level report outlining key considerations for policymakers for designing and implementing a carbon tax policy in the United States.
    Purpose: The research will investigate an approach to addressing climate change as an economic imbalance that needs to be valued and managed appropriately by market actors. Establishing a transparent and predictable price for greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon tax would provide a market-based policy solution to achieve important climate goals while providing flexibility and incentives for business innovation.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Center for Sustainable Economy
    Ocean Acidification & Warming Implications for the Social Costs of Carbon
    In this project, CSE is preparing a peer-reviewed manuscript addressing one of the big gaps in the federal social cost of carbon (SCC) used by an increasing number of agencies in their decision-making and economic analysis – the costs of ocean acidification and warming (OAW). The manuscript will be published by Elsevier in an exciting new Major Reference Work: Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, which will be available in 2017 in print, as an ebook and online on ScienceDirect and as part of the Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences. The manuscript will also be shared with the National Academies of Sciences and the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (IWG) to help make the case that the social cost of carbon (SCC) needs to be substantially increased to reflect OAW damages, and that existing sources of information and methods are sufficient to do so.
    Purpose: Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market's failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into fossil fuel prices supports a tremendous level of over-production and over-consumption of oil, gas, and coal.
    Establishing an accurate SCC that can be used in regulatory analysis for public sector projects and eventually as a basis for a carbon tax is thus a critical step along the way towards internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and rebalancing markets to support efficient use of energy resources.
    But the SCC has to be as comprehensive as possible. Otherwise, its ability to help correct the immense market failure associated with climate change will be limited. We believe that omitting the costs of ocean acidification from the SCC severely hampers its effectiveness. As such, this project is critical for improving the effectiveness of SCC as a market-based solution to climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds
    This Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds (formerly known as "Climate Risk Bonds") project is focused on tackling the hidden subsidies we all pay in the externalized costs of fossil fuel extraction, transport, storage and combustion. In line with the internationally recognized “polluter pays" principal, our work on fossil fuel risk bonds is an effort to get these costs borne by the polluter.
    Purpose: The fossil fuel industry is exacting a growing cost on the lives of all people, and the planet overall. The costs of climate change alone is as Lord Richard Stern noted in his "Stern Review of Climate Change" in 2006, the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics." This market failure means that the market for oil, gas and coal is distorted in favor of these polluting energy resources over carbon-free and low carbon energy solutions. Elected officials in the city of Portland, OR, have put in place a "green bonds" program in order to enhance the City's investments in sustainable infrastructure. CSE has developed a proposal for a “Climate Risk Bond” program to supplement this program, to provide an economic disincentive for the fossil fuel industry to expand their export activity in the city while also generating revenues needed to both dismantle and/or make safer existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Economic Benefits of Baltimore's Stormwater Management Plan
    CSE completed an analysis of the economic benefits of Baltimore's new stormwater management plan using the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as a framework for analysis. The GPI is a measure of economic wellbeing that takes social and environmental costs into account as well as the benefits of green infrastructure. Our results show that emphasizing green infrastructure solutions to stormwater pollution in Baltimore will generate up to $25 million in benefits each year with a social return on investment of nearly 40%.
    Purpose: Economic growth as defined by gross domestic product (GDP) and its related indicators is a fundamental cause of economic imbalance because GDP fails to account for the costs of economic activity on society, the environment, or future generations. Instead, all economic activity is classified as beneficial in the GDP framework. The GPI corrects this imbalance by accounting for social and environmental costs and helping to identify economic activities that can be sustained into the future as well as unsustainable activities that are depleting our stocks of natural, built, human and social capital. A Genuine Added Value (GVA) metric will operationalize the GPI at the business level, and foster the development of market-based solutions that incentivize businesses that make significant contributions to genuine progress in Maryland.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Internalizing the Costs and Risks of Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
    CSE received support from the Alex C. Walker Foundation to make use of policy opportunities to demonstrate the genuine economic benefits of internalizing the costs of pollution in three settings: climate risk bonds (CRBs), stormwater management in Maryland, and oil and gas discharges in Cook Inlet. After an initial review of strategic opportunities we determined that the climate risk bond work was, by far, the most important and potentially impactful focus of this work. In particular, political momentum at the international (Paris accords), national (fights over Arctic drilling), state (dismay with the many externalized costs of fracking and extraction), and local levels (catastrophic accidents and spills) has created a number of opportunities to advance our work to internalize the social costs of both new and existing fossil fuel infrastructure in decision-making processes and thereby help remedy perhaps the world's most important market failure.
    Purpose: A major cause of economic imbalance is the failure of decision makers to account for the externalized costs of pollution and, conversely, the economic benefits of reducing that pollution when making public policy or investing public funds. With generous support from the Walker Foundation in 2015 CSE will take advantage of three strategic opportunities to integrate pollution costs and pollution control benefits into public decision-making processes and explore innovative, market-based solutions. These opportunities are associated with our proposed work on climate risk bonds (greenhouse gas pollution), stormwater management in Maryland (nitrogen and phosphorous pollution from urban areas) and oil and gas exploration activities (produced water and drilling wastes) in Cook Inlet, Alaska.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Forest Carbon Tax and Reward
    Center for Sustainable Economy and its partners are advocating for state-level forest carbon tax and reward programs as a way to dis-incentivize high-emissions logging operations and dramatically scale up beneficial practices that result in continuous increases in carbon storage. Industrial logging activities are the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon and many other states yet, to date, climate action plans and policies exclude this sector. A forest carbon tax and reward program is a market based solution for folding this sector in to state climate agendas in an efficient, effective manner.
    Purpose: Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market’s failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into prices for fossil fuels or wood and paper products supports a tremendous level of over-production, over-consumption, and wasteful use of these commodities. Incorporating OAW costs into the SCC and putting a price on high-emissions logging operations are critical market-based solutions for internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and rebalancing markets to support efficient use of energy resources, forestlands, and wood products.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds
    This Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds project is focused on tackling the hidden subsidies we all pay in the externalized costs of fossil fuel extraction, transport, storage and combustion. In line with the internationally recognized “polluter pays" principal, our work on fossil fuel risk bonds is an effort to get these costs borne by the polluter.
    Purpose: The fossil fuel industry is exacting a growing cost on the lives of all people, and the planet overall. The costs of climate change alone is as Lord Richard Stern noted in his "Stern Review of Climate Change" in 2006, the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics." This market failure means that the market for oil, gas and coal is distorted in favor of these polluting energy resources over carbon-free and low carbon energy solutions. The risks fossil fuels pose to the planet and people are only growing with their continued combustion over time. One way of preventing this market distortion from continuing is to put a price on carbon at the national level. Our project is exploring an alternative approach, which would allow local jurisdictions to impose bonds representing the full burden of fossil fuels being externalized on local jurisdictions as a cost of doing business.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • US Forest Carbon Pricing Initiative
    In 2019 CSE will continue work to transform industrial forest practices in the US to climate smart alternatives through market-based solutions. Our work will emphasize the Pacific Northwest and Southeast regions and bolster the campaigns of climate coalitions and forest protection advocacy organizations we work with. Specific activities will include: (1) publishing high quality information about the impacts of industrial forestry on carbon emissions and climate resiliency; (2) designing and advocating for market based solutions such as redirecting subsidies, cap and invest or forest carbon tax and reward; (3) building strong partnerships with conservation and climate communities in each region to help advance these solutions and call public attention to the urgency of this issue, and (4) making the case for transformation of industrial forest practices to decision makers charged with developing climate solutions.
    Purpose: Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market’s failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into prices of wood and paper products supports a tremendous level of over-production, over-consumption, and wasteful uses of these commodities.
    Putting a price on high-emissions logging operations is a critical market-based solution for internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and rebalancing markets to support climate smart forestry.
    With respect to forestlands, CSE has pioneered the world’s first-ever forest carbon tax and reward program concept, which is now being considered in Oregon by the Legislative Assembly. We also developed model language for folding the timber industry into the cap and trade framework, now operational or close to it in 20 states and provinces in North America.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds, No Tar Sands by Rail
    CSE's Fossil Fuel Risk Bond program addresses the hidden subsidies we all pay in the form of externalized costs of fossil fuel extraction, transport, storage and combustion. In line with the internationally recognized “polluter pays" principal, our work on fossil fuel risk bonds is an effort to get these costs borne by the polluter. In addition, we unexpectedly began working on fighting tar sands by rail coming from Canada to two ports: Portland, OR and Port Westward, OR.
    Purpose: The fossil fuel industry is exacting a growing cost on the lives of all people, and the planet overall. The costs of climate change alone is as Lord Richard Stern noted in his "Stern Review of Climate Change" in 2006, the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics." This market failure means that the market for oil, gas and coal is distorted in favor of these polluting energy resources over carbon-free and low carbon energy solutions. One way of preventing this market distortion from continuing is to put a price on carbon at the national level. Our project is exploring an alternative approach - fossil fuel risk bond programs. These programs would empower state and local governments to enact a range of financial assurance mechanisms to ensure that fossil fuel corporations, and not taxpayers, bear the full costs catastrophic accidents, leaks, spills, and climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • US Forest Carbon Pricing Initiative
    CSE will continue work to transform industrial forest practices to climate smart alternatives through market-based solutions. Our work will emphasize the Pacific Northwest and Southeast regions and bolster the campaigns of climate coalitions and forest protection advocacy organizations. Specific activities will include: (1) publishing high quality information about the impacts of industrial forestry on carbon emissions and climate resiliency; (2) designing and advocating for market based solutions such as redirecting subsidies, cap and invest or forest carbon tax and reward to put a price on forest carbon and the externalities associated with industrial forestry emissions; (3) building strong partnerships with conservation and climate communities in each region to help advance these solutions and call public attention to the urgency of this issue, and (4) making the case for transformation of industrial forest practices to decision makers charged with developing climate solutions.
    Purpose: Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market’s failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into prices of wood and paper products supports a tremendous level of over-production, over-consumption, and wasteful uses of these commodities.

    Putting a price on high-emissions logging operations is a critical market-based solution for internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and making wood product markets more efficient.

    CSE has pioneered several market based solutions including forest carbon tax and reward, subsidy reform, cap and invest and climate resiliency plans for large owners. In 2019, we will work with public officials and partners in Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, Georgia and other states to advocate for these interventions within ongoing decision-making processes and campaigns.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds – a multi-state strategy
    With funding from the Walker Foundation, CSE will build out our successful Fossil Fuel Risk Bond (FFRB) work by monitoring progress of jurisdictions that have already embraced the program, providing expert support to these jurisdictions, and working closely with state and national level partners to get FFRB programs adopted at the national level and in key states and counties. The fossil fuel risk bond policy, incubated at CSE, provides a tool for state and local governments to begin to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the costs of its toxic infrastructure and climate change. FFRB programs have two basic strategies for doing this: (1) financial assurance mechanisms to hold individual owners of fossil fuel infrastructure accountable for the costs of accidents, spills, catastrophic explosions and abandonment of facilities, and (2) surcharge-based fossil fuel risk trust funds to provide badly needed funding for climate adaptation, mitigation, and climate disaster response.
    Purpose: The economic rationale behind fossil fuel risk bond programs is simple. Every year, the fossil fuel industry externalizes trillions of dollars in economic damages onto the backs of taxpayers. These costs manifest in the form of climate disasters, fossil fuel infrastructure disasters, and the costs of interventions needed to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. According to the UN’s most recent analyses, the cost of achieving climate stability has been priced out between $1.6 trillion and $3.8 trillion per year and is rising every year we delay bold climate action. Lord Stern famously said that this represents the greatest market failure that the world has seen. Fossil fuel risk bond programs are one policy tool governments at every level can use to correct this market failure and force the fossil fuel industry to internalize the gargantuan costs it is passing on to the rest of the world.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • US Forest Carbon Pricing Initiative
    With funding from the Walker Foundation, CSE will work to transform industrial forest practices with a high climate impact to climate smart alternatives through market-based solutions. At the federal level, our work will focus on taking advantage of the many new opportunities created by the Biden-Harris Administration and the 117th Congress. The Forest Carbon Coalition, co-directed by CSE, will help mobilize scientific, community, and conservation organizations to support an agenda that includes accounting for logging and wood products sector emissions, a forest carbon tax and reward program, and redirection of harmful subsidies. CSE will also work with coalitions in place in Oregon, Washington, North Carolina and Maine to promote these market-based solutions as essential components to state-level climate action plans. In addition, CSE will prepare and submit a manuscript on our forest carbon tax and reward program to a leading peer-reviewed journal.
    Purpose: Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market’s failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into prices of wood and paper products supports a tremendous level of over-production, over-consumption, and wasteful uses of these commodities.
    Putting a price on high-emissions logging operations is a critical market-based solution for internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and rebalancing markets to support efficient use of energy resources, forestlands, and wood products.
    With respect to forestlands, CSE has pioneered the development of several market based policy interventions that decision makers can use to help expedite the transformation of industrial forest practices to climate smart alternatives. These include forest carbon tax and reward, subsidy reform, cap and invest, no net loss and climate resiliency plans for large owners.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • US Forest Carbon Pricing Initiative
    CSE will continue work to transform industrial forest practices to climate smart alternatives through market-based solutions. We will work nationally with members of Congress and at the state level in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast to bolster the campaigns of climate coalitions and forest protection advocacy organizations. Activities will include: (1) completing a replicable two part report with the Dogwood Alliance quantifying the impacts of industrial forestry on carbon emissions and climate resiliency in North Carolina; (2) advocating for market based solutions such as redirecting subsidies, cap and invest or forest carbon tax and reward to put a price on forest carbon storage; (3) maintaining and expanding the Forest Carbon Coalition, a network of scientific, conservation and climate organizations in each US region working advance these solutions, and (4) engagement with decision makers charged with developing climate solutions at the federal, state, and local levels.
    Purpose: Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market’s failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into prices of wood and paper products supports a tremendous level of over-production, over-consumption, and wasteful uses of these commodities.
    Putting a price on high-emissions logging operations is a critical market-based solution for internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and rebalancing markets to support efficient use of energy resources, forestlands, and wood products.
    With respect to forestlands, CSE has pioneered the development of several market-based policy interventions that decision makers can use to help expedite the transformation of industrial forest practices to climate smart alternatives. These include forest carbon tax and reward, subsidy reform, cap and invest and climate resiliency plans for large owners.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds, No Tar Sands by Rail
    CSE's Fossil Fuel Risk Bond program addresses the hidden subsidies we all pay in the form of externalized costs of fossil fuel extraction, transport, storage and combustion. In line with the internationally recognized “polluter pays" principal, our work on fossil fuel risk bonds is an effort to get these costs borne by the polluter. In addition, we are engaged in an attempt to halt the transport of tar sands by rail in two ports in the Portland, Oregon area.
    Purpose: The fossil fuel industry is exacting a growing cost on the lives of all people, and the planet overall. The costs of climate change alone is as Lord Richard Stern noted in his "Stern Review of Climate Change" in 2006, the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics." This market failure means that the market for oil, gas and coal is distorted in favor of these polluting energy resources over carbon-free and low carbon energy solutions. One way of preventing this market distortion from continuing is to put a price on carbon at the national level. Our project is exploring an alternative approach - fossil fuel risk bond programs. These programs would empower state and local governments to enact a range of financial assurance mechanisms to ensure that fossil fuel corporations, and not taxpayers, bear the full costs catastrophic accidents, leaks, spills, and climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds
    Fossil fuel risk bond programs provide a way to ramp up the funding necessary to put scores of people to work – including displaced oil, gas, and coal workers – while ramping down fossil fuel consumption, decommissioning obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure, and implementing climate adaptation projects to help make communities safe in the face climate disasters. CSE's Fossil Fuel Risk Bond program addresses the hidden subsidies we all pay in the form of externalized costs of fossil fuel extraction, transport, storage and combustion. In line with the internationally recognized “polluter pays" principal, our work on fossil fuel risk bonds is an effort to get these costs borne by the polluter. As set forth in our report available on our website, fossil fuel risk bond programs are systematic efforts by state and local governments to evaluate and respond to the financial risks they face at each stage of the fossil fuel lifecycle in their jurisdictions.
    Purpose: The fossil fuel industry is exacting a growing cost on the lives of all people, and the planet overall. The costs of climate change alone is as Lord Richard Stern noted in his "Stern Review of Climate Change" in 2006, the "greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen, presenting a unique challenge for economics." This market failure means that the market for oil, gas and coal is distorted in favor of these polluting energy resources over carbon-free and low carbon energy solutions. One way of preventing this market distortion from continuing is to put a price on carbon at the national level. Our project is exploring an alternative approach - fossil fuel risk bond programs. These programs would empower state and local governments to enact a range of financial assurance mechanisms to ensure that fossil fuel corporations, and not taxpayers, bear the full costs catastrophic accidents, leaks, spills, and climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds – a multi-state strategy
    With generous support from the Alex C. Walker Foundation in 2022, CSE and its partners made major advances towards full implementation of the fossil fuel risk bond concept in Oregon and Washington, including statewide legislation in both states and a comprehensive ordinance in King County. Details are provided below.
    Purpose: The economic rationale behind fossil fuel risk bond programs is simple. Every year, the fossil fuel industry externalizes trillions of dollars in economic damages onto the backs of taxpayers. These costs manifest in the form of climate disasters, fossil fuel infrastructure disasters, and the costs of interventions needed to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. According to the UN’s most recent analyses, the cost of achieving climate stability has been priced out between $1.6 trillion and $3.8 trillion per year and is rising every year we delay bold climate action. Lord Stern famously said that this represents the greatest market failure that the world has seen. Fossil fuel risk bond programs are one policy tool governments at every level can use to correct this market failure and force the fossil fuel industry to internalize the gargantuan costs it is passing on to the rest of the world.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • US Forest Carbon Pricing Initiative
    With funding from Walker Foundation, CSE is advocating for inclusion of the logging and wood products sector in federal, state, and local climate action plans and regulation of this sector’s climate impacts through market-based solutions. At the federal level we are participating in new regulatory processes initiated by Executive Order 140008, Executive Order 14072, and the US pledge to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. At the state level, we are focussing efforts on executive actions by governors in North Carolina, Maine, Oregon and Washington. The Forest Carbon Coalition, co-directed by CSE, is mobilizing scientific, community, and conservation organizations to promote climate action agendas at both levels that includes accounting for logging and wood products sector emissions, a forest carbon tax and reward program, redirection of harmful subsidies, and ecosystem service markets as an alternative to timber to finance public schools and services.
    Purpose: Climate change has been referred to as the most spectacular market failure ever. The market’s failure to incorporate the costs of climate change into prices of wood and paper products supports a tremendous level of over-production, over-consumption, and wasteful land use.
    A price on high-emissions logging operations is a critical market-based solution for internalizing the catastrophic costs associated with climate change and rebalancing markets to support efficient use of forests.
    CSE has pioneered several market based interventions to help expedite the transformation of industrial forest practices to climate smart alternatives. These include forest carbon tax and reward, subsidy reform, cap and invest, no net loss and climate resiliency plans for large owners. We are working at the federal level and in Maine, North Carolina, Washington and Oregon to advance these through decision making processes now underway.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Citizens Climate Education Corp.
    Comments on Optimal Design of Energy Fees and Subsidies
    In January 2014, CCEC delivered to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee a report by the Carbon Tax Center demonstrating that a comprehensive U.S. carbon tax could cut U.S. CO2 emissions more than twice as fast as proposed clean-energy subsidies delivered as tax credits.
    Purpose: (Investigate causes of economic imbalances): Our comments will quantify and emphasize the macroeconomic costs of both energy subsidies and failure to internalize climate damage from carbon emissions.

    (Investigate effect of global financial system and/or monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy): Our comments will spell out ways in which a U.S. carbon tax can incentivize other countries to enact their own carbon taxes.

    (Investigate causes tending to destroy or impair free-market system): Our comments will establish that energy subsidies are exacting large and growing costs on our market economy; and that the failure to include climate damage in the prices of fossil fuels is creating serious economic inefficiencies, with the consequences poised to grow steeply.

    (Explore and develop market-based solutions): Our comments will place a market-based economic instrument -- a steadily rising carbon tax -- at the heart of both climate and tax policy.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Climate Protection and Restoration Initiative
    Compelling GHG Pollution Phase Out Under Existing US Law
    Administrative & public advocacy, research, and legal action as warranted, to secure a strong federal rule pursuant to the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) aimed at phasing out GHG pollution and compelling major sources to remove or pay to remove excess atmospheric CO2, initially incentivized by a rising carbon fee.
    Purpose: The Project relates to the Foundation’s purposes in that present legal structures have enabled major interests, particularly the fossil fuel sector, to treat the atmosphere as a free and open dump for GHG pollution. This has induced a dangerous planetary energy imbalance which, if not reversed, threatens to vastly expand economic instability and immiseration.
    Our project takes as given (but not, of course, immutable) central features of the free-market and democratic system and, attempting to work within and make these systems work, demands enforcement of existing bedrock law towards the intermediate goal of imposing a rising fee on CO2 and other GHG pollutants and a longer-term goal of restoring earth's energy balance at a lower average temperature conducive to humanity and nature as we have come to know it.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions
    Research and publication of a book "Sophie's Planet" on the latest climate science and solutions to emission reduction.
    Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions (CSAS), led by Dr. Hansen, formerly Director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has worked on promoting climate awareness and advocating policy actions for years. Recent science results and decades of experience in climate change have spurred Dr. Hansen to complete his second book, Sophie's Planet, which is expected to be published later this year. The book will clearly describe the most up-to-date climate science, and the threat this poses to young people and future generations. Energy science must be treated on par with climate science, as it is our energy choices that drive human-caused climate change. Rigorous use of the scientific method is crucial for defining and quantifying policy options. We cannot allow ideology to taint description of policy options to curb carbon emissions and transition to clean energy. In order to continue our work and for Dr. Hansen to complete this book, we need near-term support.
    Purpose: The climate problem can be solved best by making the economy as efficient as possible. The economy is most efficient if prices are honest. That means that the price of fossil fuels should include their costs to society. This can be done in a way that makes the medicine not only acceptable, but highly desirable. We need to continue to advance the concept of "carbon fee and dividend," which would spur the economy while increasing GNP and government revenue.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Climate XChange Education and Research Inc
    State Policy Analysis Database for Electricity
    This application is to acquire funding to expand the State Climate Policy Dashboard, a 50-state interactive database of climate policy managed by Climate XChange. Specifically, this request is for funding to expand the electricity policy data to a new scorecard for all 50 states.
    Purpose: State policy is a major driver of economic decisions in the electricity sector. A state policy database and scorecard allow for pinpoint identification of which policies are distorting the electricity market and holding back/unleashing the potential for renewables
    The electricity market is a complicated web of local, state, and federal policy, as well as many market actors such as generators, utilities, consumers, regional authorities, and financial institutions. This project allows market actors easier access to consolidated information on state policy that pertains to the electricity market and helps identify key states and policies to focus on to unlock decarbonization further.
    Many state policies in the electricity sector are market-based solutions that must be carefully measured and tracked to ensure they function properly. The Dashboard will highlight best-in-class market-based solutions at the state level for others to replicate.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Support for Climate XChange & The State Climate Policy Dashboard
    This application is to support Climate XChange's efforts to put forth market-driven solutions to climate change. Climate XChange achieves these impacts primarily through the State Climate Policy Network (SCPN) and State Climate Policy Dashboard (Dashboard). The SCPN is a platform of 16,500 state climate leaders that have access to programming, research, and direct support from Climate XChange to advance state climate policy. The Dashboard is a public database of 65+ climate policies across all 50 states that helps state actors and researchers better navigate technical policy information. Funding will provide added resources to the direct technical support, research and data analysis, and advocacy efforts that enable our network of state climate leaders to push forward sensible and just policy solutions to climate change.
    Purpose: State policy is a major driver of economic decisions in key sectors that contribute to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. It is critical that actors at each level of the climate movement have access to the resources, networks, best practices, and knowledge sharing required to effectively move toward a clean energy economy that protects vulnerable communities, promotes economic growth, and creates jobs.
    Energy markets are a complicated web of local, state, and federal policy, as well as many market actors such as generators, utilities, consumers, regional authorities, and financial institutions. CXC allows market actors to more readily access cutting-edge information on state policy that informs their on-the-ground decisions and influences decision makers on the most effective pathways to decarbonization.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Cook Inletkeeper
    Cook Inletkeeper
    Inletkeeper produced a new report – “The Role of Metal Mining in the Present & Future Alaska Economy” by the economic firm Power Consulting Inc. in March 2021 detailing Alaska’s mining, royalty and bonding structure, with an additional analysis on the socioeconomic and natural resource costs imposed by hard rock mining. The report analyzes 1) the quantifiable effects of mining taxes, royalties and other mining revenues on the State of Alaska and local economies; and 2) in the various environmental and socioeconomic impacts that accrue to local communities near mining operations.
    Purpose: This project will satisfy the Foundation’s guidelines by:
    • Addressing the causes of economic imbalances by researching the “hidden” externalized costs of hard rock mining on Alaska’s people and natural resources; • Investigating causes tending to destroy or impair the free-enterprise system by producing an analysis of Alaska’s mining tax, royalty and bonding structure as it relates to existing and proposed hard rock mines in Alaska; • Disseminating information on the results and findings of a new Alaska Mining Taxes & Royalties Report, which will compare Alaska mining revenues to other industries (i.e., fishing and oil/gas) and assess Alaska’s tax burden on the mining industry compared to other states. This information will play a central role pressing for mining tax reform
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Economic Distortions & The Pebble Mine: Protecting Alaska’s World Class Salmon & Brown Bears
    The proposed Pebble mine threatens the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world as well as the highest concentration of brown bears on the planet. This project will address the economic imbalances in the permitting system that push risk and pollution onto Alaska's publicly-owned resources and the countless families and communities they support.
    Purpose: This project will satisfy the Walker Foundation’s guidelines by:
    • Addressing the causes of economic imbalances by supporting advocacy and legal challenges aimed at internalizing the externalities proposed in the Pebble mine plan, with particular focus on salmon, bear and beluga whale habitat at the Amakdedori export facility in Lower Cook Inlet; • Investigating causes tending to destroy or impair the free-enterprise system by producing an analysis of Alaska’s mining tax, royalty and bonding structure as it relates to the Pebble mine; • Disseminating information on the results and findings of the report “The Economic Contribution of Bear Viewing in Southcentral Alaska, which the Foundation helped produce. This project will also disseminate information and organize Alaskans to take action around the legal challenges and mining taxes/royalties components of the project discussed above.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • The Pebble Mine & the Economic Implications for Tourism in Southcentral Alaska
    Lower Cook Inlet boasts a world-class population of brown bears (Ursus arctos) which drive a thriving, non-consumptive bear-viewing industry. The region includes Katmai National Park and the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary & Refuge. The proposed Pebble mine would industrialize the heart of this unparalleled bear habitat with a large deepwater port facility and accompanying infrastructure. This development would invariably impact a sustainable bear-viewing industry, but to date, we do not understand the investments behind or the revenue generation from such operations. This project aims to quantify the investments in and revenues from bear viewing, to help level the playing field in the debate our Pebble mine development.
    Purpose: This project will investigate the causes of economic imbalances in the permitting process for the Pebble mine by driving the value of non-consumptive bear viewing into the state and federal regulatory decisions that will shape project development. It will also investigate the causes tending to distort the free market system by internalizing the costs and impacts from the Pebble mine on bear viewing businesses and clients into the permitting process.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Alaska Climate Impacts Bibliography
    This project helps quantify and expose market externalities by producing an annotated bibliography of scientific literature on the impacts from climate change and ocean acidification on Alaska natural systems.
    Purpose: This project investigates the the effects of the global financial system by revealing the quantifiable impacts to Alaska resources caused by market externalities, namely, climate change.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
    • Leveling the Playing Field for Oil & Gas Development in Alaska: An Economic Study on the Subsidies Provided by Dismantlement, Removal and Restoration (DR&R) Rules for Industry Infrastructure.
    In September 2013, Cook Inletkeeper released a new report with the Center for Sustainable Economy, entitled "OIl & Gas Infrastructure in Cook Inlet, Alaska: A Potential Public Liability." This report addressed economic imbalances found in oil and gas development by highlighting the externalities surrounding bonding and removal costs for industry infrastructure (e.g., offshore platforms, pipelines, etc.) in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. In Spring 2014, Inletkeeper engaged economist John Talberth with the Center for Sustainable Environment to review the State of Alaska's proposed rules on decommissioning, removing and remediating (DR&R) retired oil and gas infrastructure, and to make policy recommendations for state and federal regulators and lawmakers, to level the playing field and ensure the external costs of DR&R are properly internalized.
    Purpose: The costs for properly removing industry infrastructure—including offshore oil platforms, pipelines and processing facilities—can be significant. In the end, these economic imbalances can result in long term harm to local ecosystems. This project will analyze and critique current dismantling, removal and remediation (DRR) rules to internalize costs and foster a more balanced economic landscape.
    This project will also explore novel avenues to internalize the external climate costs imposed by fossil fuel production. Across the globe, and in the United States, there remains a grudging reluctance to put a price on carbon, despite the fact most economists agree it would be the most effective way to address the current market distortions posed by fossil fuel production and consumption. In response, this project is taking the concept of bonding and other sureties used in environmental and development contexts across the globe, and applying them to climate impacts.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
    • Internalizing the Hidden Costs of Coal: A Case Study of the Proposed Chuitna Coal Project, Cook Inlet, Alaska
    Alaska possesses roughly half the nation's coal reserves, and with rising energy demand, Asian countries increasingly look to Alaska coal reserves for "cheap" and abundant fuel sources. The Chuitna coal mine in Southcentral Alaska, if approved, will secure the markets and install the infrastructure that will transform Alaska into a major coal export province. Yet Cook Inlet fisheries generate over $1 billion a year in economic activity, and the Chuitna coal mine would mine through 11 miles of salmon streams and discharge nearly 2 billion gallons a year of mine waste into fish habitat.
    Purpose: Failure to account for and internalize the true costs of energy production distorts free markets by causing an over-allocation or investment of resources in one use over more economically efficient alternatives. With respect to coal, failure to account for non-market externalities such as air and water pollution, habitat degradation, and carbon emissions along the entire life-cycle of coal production and consumption siphons scarce energy investment dollars away from more sustainable alternatives such as improved efficiency and renewables. Our proposed net public benefits analysis of the Chuitna Coal Project will investigate one of the prime causes of economic imbalances in energy markets – failure to account for the externalized costs of coal in decision making processes for new mines.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
    •   Coral Restoration Foundation International
    Network of Market-driven Restoration Sites
    We seek to restore coral reefs by developing a network of international not for profits (Coral Restoration Network “CRN”) that leverage eco-tourism to provide market-driven, sustainable economic models to support coral reef restoration.
    Purpose: CRFI's project fits within the Walker Foundation's core tenets to seek free market approaches to provide ecosystem services and protect our environment. CRFI seeks to establish a "Membership Program" based on eco-tourism to generate revenues to fund financially sustainable coral reef restoration programs throughout the Caribbean and beyond.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Coral Restoration Foundation, Inc
    Community Based Coral Reef Restoration in Bonaire, NA
    This is a community based coral reef restoration project that will take place in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. The project has been partially funded by the Alex C. Walker Foundation, and by resort fees from the host resort in Bonaire. This ongoing project seeks to expand an existing coral nursery and restoration program to involve multiple resorts on the island. In 2012 and 2013 the staff from the Coral Restoration Foundation, Inc (CRF) worked with members of an affiliated nonprofit on Bonaire called the Coral Restoration Foundation, Bonaire (CRFB) to develop an offshore coral nursery and coral restoration program off the islands of Bonaire and Klein Bonaire. Two offshore, in situ coral nurseries have been set up and stocked with locally collected corals, and the nurseries are now to the point where each month hundreds of second and third generation corals are being transplanted onto the local reefs of Bonaire and Klein Bonaire by supervised groups of tourist volunteers
    Purpose: The Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF) has identified an underutilized group of willing volunteers and donors (the recreational SCUBA diving community) and has developed a system that trains and engages them in helping with all aspects of coral nursery development, coral reef restoration, and restoration site management. Working with resorts in the Florida Keys and Bonaire, CRF has developed a suite of revenue generating options that when implemented can financially support the ongoing costs of managing a coral nursery and restoration programs. CRF is also working with the Bonaire Marine Park to explore ways that a portion of the mandatory park user fees can be diverted to help support the island-wide coral restoration effort.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Messaging for Change
    Staghorn and elkhorn corals were once dominant on reefs in the Florida Keys and wider Caribbean, but since the 1980s, these corals have suffered severe population declines. In 2006, both corals were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The threats contributing to their status and hindering their recovery are disease, ocean warming, ocean acidification, pollution, physical damage, habitat loss, predation, reduced reproduction, and reduced genetic diversity. CRF restores reefs by growing corals in offshore nurseries and outplanting the corals to existing reefs. Projects in the Caribbean, and especially Bonaire, are partly funded through market mechanisms. To ensure the long-term success of such large-scale restoration efforts, it is essential to educate the public on the underlying threats to coral populations. CRF will develop messaging to provide the public with information on the threats and how they might take action to protect our reefs into the future.
    Purpose: Coral Restoration Foundation has proven that large-scale reef restoration is possible. Our organization will outplant 50,000+ corals across eight reefs in the Florida Keys over the next three years. To ensure this work is not undone by the continued impacts of ocean acidification, ocean warming, overfishing, etc., Coral Restoration Foundation will educate the public on how these global threats impact our reefs. By inspiring individuals to take action on their own, we hope to establish the political will to counteract these global threats moving forward.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Community Based Coral Reef Restoration in Bonaire, NA
    This is a community-based coral reef restoration project in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. The project is initially being funded by voluntary “bed taxes” collected from visiting guests by local dive resorts. Additional funding is provided through this grant from the Walker Foundation. The project is supporting the establishment of an offshore coral nursery program to grow corals for use in coastal coral reef restoration projects. The Coral Restoration Foundation (CRF) staff will provide education and hands-on training for local scientists and dive operators on how to grow corals in offshore nurseries, how to transplant them to the nearby degraded reefs, and how to care for them after they have been planted. CRF will also assist local groups to set up training programs for visiting divers and university students to help with all aspects of maintaining the nursery, outplanting nursery-grown corals to the reef, and restoration maintenance operations.
    Purpose: This project will explore and develop a market based system for funding a long term coral restoration program on the island of Bonaire. An initial system of voluntary bed taxes and user fees may eventually lead to a more formal, mandatory fee system that will fund the program long term. We believe that a voluntary system will work well on the island, and if coupled with port taxes for cruise ships and access fees for restored reef sites,, long term funding will be secure. This is a community based project that will engage the diving visitors on the island, so the people paying for the services will be able to see and enjoy the services.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Community Based Coral Reef Restoration in Bonaire, NA
    This is a community based coral reef restoration project located in Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles. The Coral Restoration Foundation Inc (USA) has assisted a local Non Profit called Coral Restoration Foundation Bonaire in setting up an offshore coral nursery program that is now prepared to start transplanting second generation corals onto the local reefs. The restoration program is being funded by voluntary resort fees, diver training programs, branded merchandise sales, and a dive medallion program.
    Purpose: To support this community based restoration project, we will be developing a system of voluntary fees and services that will support the restoration work. A "dollar per room per day" resort fee is currently in place at three resorts on the island, and we will be looking to expand participation in that program in 2013. We have also developed voluntary a dive medallion program set to launch in June 2013, and have developed several specialty dive certification programs that will also be launched in June of 2013 We will also be working with CRF Bonaire to investigate a mandatory conservation fee that is charged to all cruise ship guests visiting the island. This kind of program is gaining more and more support as people recognize the environmental impact of supporting cruise visitors, so there is more support for assessing a conservation fee to mitigate for those impacts. Our Bonaire coral restoration program would well positioned to receive support from such a system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Critical Review Foundation
    Causes of the Financial Crisis
    Critical Review published a special double issue, republished as a book, in which scholars examined the causes of the financial crisis from a wide variety of perspectives. The issue treated different causes, ranging from monetary and housing policy to bank-capital regulations, and produced a comprehensive theory of the crisis as being due to regulatory failure of a new sort: the interaction of different regulations, originating as far back as 1936 and covering different industries. This failure was thus totally unpredictable, but has ominous implications for the future, given the immense proliferation of regulations in every industry.
    Purpose: The financial crisis is (1) an economic imbalance that (2) may have been caused, in part, by monetary policy. The intellectual reaction to the crisis (3) may destroy or impair the free-market system.
    Our special issue will investigate the causes of the crisis, with particular attention to whether economic or political actors' ignorance fostered the crisis. This may suggest (4) free-market solutions. We plan (5) to widely disseminate the special issue; it is also under consideration for republication in book form by Princeton University Press.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Conference on Political Ignorance and Dogmatism
    Through its scholarly journal, Critical Review, the Critical Review Foundation has pioneered a new approach to understanding modern politics, in which ignorance is treated as the default position of voters, political activists, media personnel, and policy makers; and unintentional bias in politics and policy is hypothesized to be a common result. A cohort of seven young scholars who have been influenced by this approach engaged in six hours of public dialogue with ten eminent scholars from political science and other fields at a Conference on Political Ignorance and Dogmatism, held in Boston on August 31, 2008, with the assistance of the Walker Foundation. The comments of Scott Althaus, author of Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics (Cambridge University Press), were representative: “What a wonderful experience! It was among the very best scholarly interchanges that I’ve ever attended….All in all, I consider this to have been a smashing success.”
    Purpose: An accumulation of empirical research in political science supports the conclusion that the general public's ignorance, and political elites' dogmatism, combine to favor the adoption of simplistic public policies that cause more problems than they solve. In short, many problems are caused or exacerbated by the simplicity of our political thinking, when compared to the complexity of the societies that modern states try to regulate.
    This conclusion has been explored in recent years in Critical Review. At the conference, young scholars who have been influenced by Critical Review will test their ideas in open-ended conversation with eminent scholars of public opinion and political psychology.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    •   Defenders of Wildlife
    “Stakeholder Meeting on Red Wolf Ecotourism in North Carolina”
    Defenders of Wildlife (Defenders) hosted a stakeholder meeting to develop a red wolf-based ecotourism plan for communities located in rural northeastern North Carolina. The one-day meeting focused on formulating strategies to initiate the next steps the local community must take to make ecotourism a viable means of economic development.
    Purpose: The project investigates the causes of economic imbalances and exploring and developing market–based solutions by building upon earlier private market based incentives research for rural development in the eastern portion of North Carolina reported in the study by Gail Y. Lash and Pamela Black in Red wolves: creating economic opportunity through ecotourism in rural North Carolina and the project “North Carolina Red Wolf Recovery: Promoting Economic Opportunity through Ecosystem Education and Ecotourism,” which supported the creation of materials providing critical information for stimulating ecotourism in the same area. The Stakeholder meeting helped reach the purposes of the foundation in two important ways. First, the stakeholder meeting better defined the local human economy and constraints to alleviating the economic imbalances the region currently suffers (wealthy coastal regions versus inland farming). The stakeholders at the meeting thoroughly discussed what those imbalances were. They also initiated the development of a red-wolf centered eco-agro-tourism activity strategy that is meant to address this imbalance and provide more economic opportunity in rural areas. Secondly, the stakeholder meeting addressed the development of ecotourism as a market-based solution for (a) increasing the incomes of rural landowners and communities who provide essential habitat for red wolves to continue to exist in the region, and (b) as a means for valuing the natural environment that provides this habitat. With respect to the environmental valuation, the discussion centered on determining what types of fiscal incentive mechanisms (market receipts, tax deductions, public infrastructure development) could more efficiently compensate private landowners for the provision of public wildlife goods.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • The Application of Ecosystem Service Markets to the Conservation of Red Wolf Habitat in North Carolina: A Local Effort with National Implications
    This two part project is in Phase II consisting of the following three tasks: 1) Quantifying the economic value of selected ecosystem service benefits associated with conserving red wolf habitat, including carbon storage on agricultural and undeveloped lands; 2) quantifying the economic value of open space property value premiums and recreation; 3) conducting a cash flow analysis associated with the provision of these services from private agricultural lands, and identifying and promoting policy proposals for the implementation of market-based incentives that link protection of red wolf habitat to national or state resource conservation programs.
    Purpose: This project is innovative in the sense that it takes a new concept, payments for ecosystem services, and applies it to a specific species and habitat. The purposes selected will be addressed by identifying mechanisms in which rural landowners can capture the benefits of conserving red wolf habitat, and will thereby achieve two national public goals: (1) rural areas are in better economic balance with other parts of the country; and (2) protecting the red wolf through market mechanisms can illustrate the potential benefits of monetizing environmental goods within a regulatory framework.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • The Application of Ecosystem Service Markets to the Conservation of Red Wolf Habitat in North Carolina: A Local Effort with National Implications
    The project centers on exploring and developing private market solutions to public wildlife conservation goods. Key project objectives are to (1) identify specific ecosystem services associated with the conservation of red wolves and their habitat; (2) quantify the economic market and non-market benefits that may flow from the continued provision of these services; (3) identify private and/or public incentive or income transfer mechanisms that would allow landowners to capture the benefits of services provided from their land; (4) begin to link protection of red wolf habitat to national or state resource conservation programs that promote market approaches to conservation; and (5) provide a model for implementing ecosystem service payments for wildlife habitat that can be replicated in other areas of the country.
    Purpose: This project is innovative in the sense that it takes a new concept, payments for ecosystem services, and applies it to a specific species and habitat. The purposes selected will be addressed by identifying mechanisms in which rural landowners can capture the benefits of conserving red wolf habitat, and will thereby achieve two national public goals: (1) rural areas are in better economic balance with other parts of the country; and (2) protecting the red wolf through market mechanisms can illustrate the potential benefits of monetizing environmental goods within a regulatory framework.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Facilitating the Development of a Private Voluntary Market for Red Wolf Habitat Credits: Identifying Buyers and Designing a Trading Platform
    This project will build upon Defenders’ previous ecosystem services and marketing work in areas supporting red wolf habitat by identifying potential buyers of red wolf habitat credits within a voluntary market framework. The project will also help identify and facilitate the development of a market structure for such transactions within which local landowners as the suppliers of credits can participate and generate income from their habitat and species conservation efforts. This project will leverage, complement and expand the private market-oriented habitat conservation incentive mechanisms that Defenders developed or is developing: ecotourism, and payments for ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and water quality. The project effort to identify potential buyers of red wolf habitat credits and facilitate market development will benefit from Defenders initiatives in other grant-funded projects at both the regional and national levels.
    Purpose: This project will help address the Walker Foundation’s purposes of (1) investigating the causes of economic imbalances and (2) determining how monetizing environmental goods may help foster a sustainable rural economy in red wolf country. This project will also respond to the foundation’s goal of (3) funding activities that apply ecological economics in the context of market solutions to environmental problems and, in this particular case, wildlife and their habitat. By helping to identify potential individual and institutional buyers of wildlife habitat credits, and connecting buyers and sellers (landowners) through established market trading platforms, this project will assist in the goal of achieving a more sustainable rural economy in red wolf country.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Dogwood Alliance
    Carbon Canopy
    The Carbon Canopy joins together, under a single common umbrella, a diverse collection of stakeholders ranging from private landowners and environmental groups to multi-national corporations working together to develop innovative market-based solutions to conserve and expand ecosystem services on private forest lands in the Southern US. The Carbon Canopy is currently developing working forest carbon projects based on rigorous environmental standards with southern forest landowners to support the expansion of forest restoration, conservation and FSC certification in the Southeastern US, beginning with the Southern Appalachian region. .
    Purpose: For too long, the Southern forest economy has been based almost exclusively on resource extraction at the expense of other forest values such as carbon sequestration, water quality and biodiversity. Carbon Canopy, is working to shift this paradigm through leveraging the greening of the US marketplace into a source of revenue for landowners that commit to manage working forests for long-term carbon sinks under FSC forest management and Climate Action Reserve (CAR) carbon accounting protocols tied to conservation easements.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Carbon Canopy
    Dogwood Alliance received a a $15,000 grant from the Alex C. Walker Foundation for its Carbon Canopy Project which is bringing together diverse stakeholders ranging from private landowners and environmental groups to multinational corporations to develop market-based solutions to conserve forests and expand ecosystem services on private lands in the Southern US. Carbon Canopy, is leveraging the greening of the US marketplace into a source of revenue for landowners that commit to manage working forests for long-term carbon sinks under FSC forest management and Climate Action Reserve (CAR) carbon accounting protocols tied to conservation easements.
    Purpose: Two recent market trends create opportunities to stimulate forestry practices on the South’s private lands that foster better ecosystem stewardship and encourage landowners to keep their forests as forest. First, is the increasing market demand for FSC certified wood and paper products among large corporate consumers and producers. Second, as governments and corporations begin to design and implement policies to address climate change, offset markets are emerging that place a monetary value on the carbon sequestration services forests provide. Large corporations in the US continue to be active players in the emerging voluntary carbon marketplace. Carbon Canopy is building demand for FSC certified, CAR verified offsets coming from private lands in the South through harnessing the growing voluntary market for offsets which is driven in large part today by large US corporations.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Economics Department, Brown University
    Experimental Study of Preferences Over the Distribution of Income
    We conducted twenty decision-making experiments in which 345 undergraduate students and 55 adult subjects participated. Subjects were assigned unequal pre-tax incomes mirroring the distribution of income in the United States, then made decisions about the extent, if any, to which incomes should be redistributed by taxation, under varying tax costs, degrees of efficiency and incentive (administrative) costs, and determinants of initial income. Results suggest willingness to pay to lessen inequality among other individuals, but largely self-interested voting when own income is at stake.
    Purpose: Income differences have been widening in the world's advanced economies since the 1980s. This project doesn't investigate the reasons for that trend, but rather the determinants of the counter-vailing force of redistributive taxation, for which there has continued to be a demand despite the slowing in the sizes of most welfare states. There is, on the one hand, the concern that too much redistribution through the fiscal system dampens incentives to invest in physical assets and in skills. On the other hand, there are concerns that excessive inequality of market outcomes will itself undermine support for the market system, or could give rise to forces undermining political stability. A clearer understanding of the forces underpinning redistributive taxation and expenditure should help to give economists and policy-makers a better understanding, with the possibility of (a) responding to those forces in more efficient ways, and (b) understanding when and to what extent redistribution increases social well-being on balance. Since the study of these matters (especially by the experimental method) is still in its infancy, actual policy proposals are not expected to result from this stage of the project.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    •   Environmental Defense Fund
    Climate Treasure: Bringing Tropical Forest Credits into the Global Carbon Market
    Tropical deforestation releases up to 20% of total global greenhouse gas emissions—roughly equivalent to the fossil fuel emissions of the United States. If rainforest nations had economic incentives to protect their forests—if their forests were worth more alive than dead—we could keep more than 300 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere, sustain critical global ecosystems, alleviate poverty in developing nations, and provide early and important value to the world’s carbon markets. We propose to continue our work on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). The most significant breakthrough with regard to our REDD policy objectives was Brazil’s announcement of a deforestation reduction target of 70% within ten years, below the average annual deforestation of the decade from 1996 – 2005, or 19,500 km² per year.
    Purpose: When standing forests are given economic value, developing countries have financial incentives not to cut them down. We seek, by yearend 2009, to put in place a new framework that delivers market-based incentives to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries (REDD). Our timetable is driven by the fact that nations will gather in Copenhagen in December 2009 to conclude the new international climate treaty. EDF and colleagues will provide the economic analysis and market design solutions that can help guide the international discussion, address key questions that otherwise may act as obstacles, build support from tropical forest nations, and ensure that REDD credits are an integral part of the new climate treaty and that mechanisms for forest credits are well-articulated in domestic and international carbon markets.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Plugging the generation gap: Developing a proactive national policy for low-carbon electricity generation
    Any efforts at reducing US greenhouse gases (GHGs) must squarely address the electric power sector, which accounts for over one-third of the nation’s GHG emissions. Nearly half of the nation’s electricity generation—and more than 80% of power sector GHG emissions—comes from coal-fired power plants, many built more than half a century ago. Retiring those plants will be critical to reducing carbon emissions. In addition, half the nation’s nuclear reactors—accounting now for nearly 10% of the country’s electricity — will come up for retirement during the decade 2030-2039. While a number of lower-emitting technologies are available—including natural gas, nuclear, and renewable sources—none is a panacea. EDF will conduct a focused analytical effort to spotlight the coming “generation gap” and to explore options for how to address it, with an emphasis on market-based policies that create economic incentives to accelerate the development and deployment of new low-carbon technologies.
    Purpose: The need for a farsighted energy and climate policy is clear. Markets on their own will not be sufficient, because carbon emissions remain a massive negative externality whose true price is not reflected in energy markets and because private investments in research and development create positive externalities (in the form of knowledge spillovers to other firms and society at large) that dilute the economic incentives for R&D. Government policies will therefore be central.
    Too often, energy policy has involved the government rewarding favored technologies rather than letting market forces determine which will emerge. The scale of the problem demands a solution that considers a portfolio of technologies and uses economic incentives to encourage the development of the next generation of low-carbon generating technologies, while removing uneconomic barriers to deploy existing ones. With a strong commitment to market-based policies, EDF is well-positioned to carry out such an analysis.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Safeguarding Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish through Market-based Management
    Many stocks in the Gulf of Mexico's reef fish fishery (including red snapper, grouper, amberjack and vermilion snapper) are in trouble, with some classified as overfished. In January 2007, Walker Foundation support helped implement a new market-based management program of catch shares, called individual fishing quotas (IFQs), for Gulf red snapper, bringing new promise for fishery and fishing industry recovery. An IFQ for grouper/tilefish has now been approved and is set for implementation in January 2010. The Gulf Council has also initiated a process to include all remaining reef fish in the IFQ.

    Purpose: Market-based fisheries management makes it possible to protect the environment, increase profits, provide higher quality fish, create more full-time jobs, and save lives. With catch share management, which provides an economic incentive and gives fishermen a stake in their fishery, the Gulf of Mexico reef fish fisheries can gain these benefits. EDF seeks to boost efforts to secure an IFQ catch share program for the reef fish complex by supporting an industry-led IFQ proposal for amberjack and vermilion snapper and a nascent IFQ shareholder association.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Safeguarding Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish through Market-based Management
    Many stocks in the Gulf of Mexico's reef fish fishery (including red snapper, grouper, amberjack, grey triggerfish, yellowtail and vermilion snapper) are in trouble, with some classified as overfished. EDF and Gulf fishermen helped design and implement a new market-based management program of catch shares, called individual fishing quotas (IFQs), which was implemented for commercial red snapper in January 2007. The IFQ program has shown significant and immediate ecological and economic benefits. As a result of this success and the efforts of EDF and allies, a new IFQ program will be implemented in January 2010 for several valuable commercial grouper and tilefish species. However, other species in the complex are in need of similar reforms, and until all reef fish are managed under IFQs, needless bycatch and economic waste will impede the full conservation and business benefits that market-based management offer. EDF is working to bring IFQs to the full Gulf reef fish complex.
    Purpose: Market-based fisheries management makes it possible to protect the environment, increase opportunities for industry profits, provide higher quality fish, create more full-time jobs, and save lives. With catch share management, which provides fishermen with an economic incentive to conserve fisheries and oceans, the Gulf of Mexico reef fish fisheries can gain these benefits. EDF seeks to boost efforts to secure a catch share, called individual fishing quotas (IFQs), for the reef fish complex by supporting the efforts of the nascent Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Safeguarding New England's Groundfish Fishery and Marine Ecosystem through Market-based Management Programs
    Recently published research (Science, 9/18/2008) that looked at data from 11,000 fisheries worldwide from 1950 to 2003 found that fisheries that were managed through “catch share” cap-and-trade systems halted and even reversed steep population declines, while traditionally managed fisheries did not. Environmental Defense Fund, along with partner groups, seeks to replace failed “days-at-sea” regulations for New England’s declining marine fisheries with this proven market-based solution to improve their ecological and economic health and resilience.
    Purpose: Catch shares are market-based fisheries management that make it possible to protect the environment, increase profits, create more full-time jobs and save fishermen’s lives. EDF is overcoming barriers to making catch shares the default management tool for fisheries across the U.S. We are working with fishermen and managers to design catch share systems that best fit local economic and ecological conditions.
    The New England Fishery Management Council is poised to adopt a new groundfish management plan that converts more than half the fleet to catch share management. The Northeast Seafood Coalition, the largest groundfish trade association in New England, has committed to designing and managing 13 of the 19 "sectors" or fishing cooperative-based catch shares. NSC has asked EDF for help in designing business plans for the sectors. This is one of the most highly leveraged opportunities we have to ensure that the fishery successfully moves to catch share management.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Safeguarding New England's Groundfish Fishery and Marine Ecosystem through Market-based Management Programs
    New England's groundfish fishery is in dire need of recovery and reform, with many stocks overfished. Environmental Defense, along with partner groups, seeks to secure increased resources and provide expert advice for implementing a market-based management system of catch shares to improve the ecological and economic health of the fishery.
    Purpose: Market-based fisheries management makes it possible to simultaneously protect the environment, increase profits, provide higher quality fish, create more full-time jobs, and save lives. By using a new market-based tool called catch shares, which provides an economic incentive and gives fishermen a stake in their fishery, the New England groundfish fishery can gain these benefits. This project seeks to help provide the groundwork necessary to implement a new market-based catch shares management program in the troubled New England groundfish fishery. With this proposal, Environmental Defense—working with partners—seeks to help secure and help provide the resources necessary to design and implement a market-based management program for this significant fishery, setting an important precedent for other fisheries in New England and the nation.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Safeguarding New England's Groundfish Fishery and Marine Ecosystem through Market-based Management Programs
    Recently published research (Science, 9/18/2008) that looked at data from 11,000 fisheries worldwide from 1950 to 2003 found that fisheries that were managed through “catch share” cap-and-trade systems halted and even reversed steep population declines, while traditionally managed fisheries did not. Environmental Defense Fund, along with partner groups, seeks to replace failed “days-at-sea” regulations for New England’s declining marine fisheries with this proven market-based solution to improve their ecological and economic health and resilience. After more than 2 years of development, a plan known as Amendment 16 is almost ready; it will will give fishermen the option to continue under the current regulatory system or join a market-based sector.
    Purpose: A new market-based form of fisheries management called “catch shares” makes it possible to simultaneously protect the environment, increase profits, provide consumers with higher quality fish, create more full-time jobs, and save fishermen’s lives. Catch shares provide an economic incentive for fishermen to invest in the long-term health of the fishery. New research has proven conclusively that where well-designed catch share programs are implemented, overfishing stops and fisheries recover. EDF’s ocean program is focused on overcoming existing barriers to making catch shares the default management tool for fisheries across the United States. Our New England team of scientists, policy experts and economists is laying the groundwork necessary to implement catch share systems throughout the region’s marine fisheries, starting with groundfish. We are working with fishermen and managers to design catch share systems that best fit local economic and ecological conditions.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Safeguarding New England's Groundfish Fishery and Marine Ecosystem through Market-based Management Programs
    Under the Obama Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has embraced "catch share" management as the most profitable, effective way to end overfishing and restore the nation's marine fisheries. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), in partnership with industry, non-profit partners and NOAA, is working to help New England fishermen successfully transition to catch shares in New England's troubled marine fisheries.
    Purpose: EDF has been the key proponent of “catch shares,” market-based approaches to fisheries, setting an annual quota on the amount of fish that can be harvested. Fishing boats are allocated defined portions of the quota to maximize their profitability while staying under sustainable harvest limits. This system has the dual benefit of protecting resources while maximizing economic benefits to fishermen. EDF is working to establish catch shares as the default management tool for fisheries in the U.S. In June 2009, the New England Fishery Management Council unanimously voted to adopt a fishing cooperative-based catch share program "sectors" for groundfish. Over 95 percent of the harvest voluntarily agreed to fish under catch shares starting in May 2010. We are working with several sectors to help them develop business plans as they begin fishing under catch share management. We will continue to sponsor fishermen's exchanges where catch shares have already been successfully operating.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Creating Economic Incentives for Tropical Forest Preservation: Compensated Reduction
    Tropical forest destruction contributes to several global environmental problems, including climate change, releasing up to 20% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Compensated Reduction (CR) is an innovative mechanism enabling nations that reduce deforestation to be compensated through the emerging global carbon market. This project will provide the research and analysis needed to create a successful CR program and assess market design options.
    Purpose: To date, the developing nations that hold most of the world's tropical forests have had no incentive to preserve these forests on the large scale necessary to help stabilize the climate. A new concept, Compensated Reduction (CR), can be the solution, by providing a market for reduced deforestation. In the proposed project, Environmental Defense will undertake activities to explore and develop this solution, by addressing technical obstacles, providing economic analysis, and assessing market design options. We seek to provide the underpinnings of a successful CR program.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Safeguarding Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish through Market-based Management
    The Gulf of Mexico commercial reef fishery is a success story for ending overfishing, increasing value by 80% and slashing discards by 70%. The fishery was transformed through catch share management combining conservation incentives with economic viability. But sea turtles captured in the fishery are in decline, and new rules may not save them even as they reduce catch share benefits. EDF proposes to work with the reef fish fleet to create the world’s first market-based model for improving sea turtle conservation while increasing the fishery’s value.
    Purpose: Under typical command-and-control sea turtle rules, fishermen have no incentive to avoid turtles. They fail to solve the bycatch problem and drive down value and jeopardize catch share benefits. EDF seeks to replace today’s command-and-control rules with a market-based strategy to reduce the Gulf reef fish longline fleet’s interactions with turtles and increase its value. Market incentives are created by allocating transferable turtle allowances to individual fishermen, rewarding those who avoid turtles with increased opportunities to catch fish.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Regulating the Carbon Market: Designing sound rules to transition to a low carbon economy
    Passage of climate legislation will mark the beginning, not the end, of the effort to design a sound, market-based system for incentivizing transitioning U.S. to a low-carbon, high efficiency (LCHE) economy. This project will produce the analytic and consultative work needed to design the regulatory framework necessary to oversee and support an effective, transparent national carbon market.
    Purpose: The U.S. carbon market will be the first totally new kind of market in the U.S. in two centuries. It will be based on the “trial run” of successful sulfur dioxide trading over the past two decades, but will be broad in scope and affect every part of the economy. The carbon market will use a cap and trade approach to implement the deliberately chosen, long-term public objective to transition to a LCHE economy. There will be a welter of special interests trying to influence the design and operation of that market for their own purposes.

    The experience of the past two years has driven home the necessity of fair, strong and even-handed regulation and oversight of markets to prevent market manipulation, minimize “herd” behavior, and preserve the integrity of market instruments. EDF will mount a sustained analytic effort to develop regulations and operating principles that will ensure that the carbon market is transparent, effective, and scam resistant.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Environmental Law & Policy Center of the Midwest
    Environmental Law and Policy Center and Carbon Tax Center - Market-Based Approaches to Reduce Carbon Emissions
    The Environmental Law and Policy Center (“ELPC”), in conjunction with the Carbon Tax Center (“CTC”), is analyzing the economic impacts and efficacy of the major market-based (carbon-pricing) mechanisms for stabilizing and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases: cap-and-trade systems and revenue-neutral taxes. Our analysis utilizes the nine-state region in ELPC’s charter: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. This is both large enough to be meaningful in terms of overall U.S. policy and impacts, and small enough to capture impacts and serve as a test case.
    Purpose: The climate crisis is rooted in modern economies' failure to put a price on carbon emissions. This market failure can be corrected directly, fairly and comprehensively through a revenue-neutral tax on carbon emissions. A cap-and-trade program with the cap imposed at the top of the distribution chain might have a similar impact. Putting a price on carbon will correct the "cost externalization" of carbon that threatens the world economy by damaging nature-based resource systems providing food, water, public health and political stability.
    ELPC and CTC's work directly supports the use of market-based, monetary tools, to foster sustainability. Our work addresses economic imbalances by supporting equitable, revenue-neutral approaches to putting a price on carbon and by pro-actively preventing climate-change impacts that will inevitably be borne disproportionately by poorer populations.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Environmental Progress
    Saving Nuclear Power Plants from Premature Closure
    The climate can be saved but only if we save nuclear plants from premature closure. Nuclear can be saved, but only with immediate, aggressive action. Environmental Progress (EP) is seeking support to build upon its success bringing the clean energy crisis to international attention, mobilizing fresh voices, and moving sensible policies to the finish line. As presidential transition teams start crafting their energy and climate priorities this fall, and states continue to seek solutions to nuclear plants at risk of early closure, EP is seeking to significantly step up its research, organizing and policy efforts.
    Purpose: We are investigating why nuclear plants are treated unfairly by state and federal policies, and how that can be remedied.
    We are investigating how the financial system can be reformed to allow for nuclear plants to compete on a level playing field.
    We are exploring how discriminatory policies and the lack of a price on carbon distort markets.
    We are exploring and developing market-based solutions to protecting nuclear, clean energy and the climate.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Saving Nuclear Power Plants from Premature Closure
    Environmental Progress, a 501c3 tax exempt organization, has emerged as the world’s leading environmental organization taking action to protect nuclear plants. EP was founded to address the two most serious threats to environmental progress: continued dependence on wood & dung in poor countries, and climate change. EP’s approach emphasizes educating the public on why nuclear power is important to both lifting everyone out of poverty and saving the natural environment.
    Purpose: EP researches energy transitions and their social and economic implications for U.S. states and other nations, from analyzing the feasibility of nations meeting their Paris agreements, to studying the risks associated with an increasing reliance on natural gas, among other topics.
    EP looks at the role that the World Bank, national ex-im banks, and other financial institutions play in shaping the global energy mix and their potential to promote clean energy development.
    EP will continue to pursue the most up-to-date data on discriminatory energy subsidies and investigate the causes tending to destroy or impair free-enterprise.
    EP research and work helped pass legislation that adequately values carbon-free electricity in NY, IL, CT, and NJ. And EP continues to improve its understanding of accident tolerant fuel development and its potential role in reducing regulatory burden, which may reduce construction delays, and thereby costs, on new builds.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Saving nuclear power plants from premature closure
    Environmental Progress, a project of Policy Impact, a 501c3 tax exempt organization, has emerged as the world’s leading environmental organization taking action to protect nuclear plants. EP was founded to address the two most serious threats to environmental progress: continued dependence on wood & dung in poor countries, and climate change. EP’s approach emphasizes educating the public on why nuclear power is important to both lifting everyone out of poverty and saving the natural environment.
    Purpose: EP researches energy transitions and their social and economic implications for U.S. states and other nations, from analyzing the feasibility of nations meeting their Paris agreements, to studying the risks associated with an increasing reliance on natural gas, among other topics.
    EP looks at the role that the World Bank, national ex-im banks, and other financial institutions play in shaping the global energy mix and their potential to promote clean energy development.
    EP will continue to pursue the most up-to-date data on discriminatory energy subsidies and investigate the causes tending to destroy or impair free-enterprise.
    EP research and work helped pass legislation that adequately values carbon-free electricity in NY and IL. And EP continues to improve its understanding of accident tolerant fuel development and its potential role in reducing regulatory burden, which may reduce construction delays, and thereby costs, on new builds.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Saving nuclear power plants from premature closure
    Save the climate and environment by saving nuclear power through public education and movement-building
    Purpose: EP’s nation and state work involves analyzing the economic implications of legislated and proposed energy policies. State-side, EP continues to report on energy subsidies and investigate the causes tending to destroy or impair free-enterprise.
    EP researches energy transitions and their social and economic implications for U.S. states and other nations. This research helps investigate the greater economic imbalances in relation to climate change, energy security and other environmental matters.
    EP looks at the role that the World Bank, national ex-im banks, and other financial institutions play in shaping the global energy mix and their potential to promote clean energy development and thus a sustainable economy.
    EP explores and develops market-based solutions to maintaining and expanding clean energy. EP has helped states save their nuclear power plants by helping pass legislation that adequately values carbon-free electricity.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE)
    Seminar Series on Environmental Economics, Science, and Policy Analysis for Federal Judges and Law Professors.
    The fundamental objective of this program is to explain to important decision makers and opinion leaders (Article III federal judges and law professors) how the application of economic principles and the market process can foster environmental quality.
    Purpose: The fundamental objective of FREE’s programs are to apply economic analysis to improve environmental quality. Over the past 15 years dozens of federal judges have written us, telling us how even a small amount of economic understanding has immense analytic leverage when considering environmental policy. Every society faces the important challenge of allocating scarce resources over the long term. Take nonrenewable commodities, e.g., copper and coal. The market functions well here. Rising prices signal increasing scarcity and provide incentives for conservation and the search for substitutes (e.g., silicon fiber-optic lines replace copper phone wires). But we also explain the limitation of markets, for example regarding amenity resources.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Environmental Economics for Religious Leaders
    Economics teaches us how the market process, including voluntary organizations, can help us achieve our environmental goals. It also tells us that choices among competing values are indeed necessary in the environmental arena as they are in every other sector of society. The exploration of trade-off is a fundamental part of economic analysis. This project explores and develops market-based solutions to environmental problems with an important audience: religious leaders. With them we will explore how economic analysis may be used to examine environmental policy alternatives, in a manner that minimizes unintended, negative consequences, while maximizing positive impact on the environment.
    Purpose: This project explores and develops market-based solutions to environmental problems by engaging religious leaders in a discussion about how economics can help them design prudent and effective environmental policies. Religious leaders will be more effective if they understand some basic economic principles. Without an understanding of basic economics, commonly accepted command-and-control “solutions” to environmental problems portend great mischief and worse outcomes, especially for the poor. We find this troubling, for the low-hanging fruit has been picked, e.g., legislation removing lead from gasoline and CFCs from the atmosphere. Remaining problems are complex and frequently require time- and place-specific knowledge. Problems with these attributes are unlikely to be resolved by a bureaucratic, one-size-fits-all approach.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Conference Series on Economics, Science, and Policy Analysis for Federal Judges, State Supreme Court Justices, and Law Professors.
    In 2010 FREE offered two conferences in our series, "Economics, Science, and Policy Analysis", to federal judges, state supreme-court justices, and law professors. The first was, “Personal Health Care Choices & Public Policy” and the second was “Terrorism, Civil Liberty, & National Security.” FREE brought economic and ethical perspectives on each of these troublesome topics to an important audience.
    Purpose: Health care is an area fraught with difficult problems and competing values. It is an area where economics offers some important insights. For example, is health care a classic economic good? If not, what are the implications for health care policy? Why is rationing a logical necessity? How should it be done? What are the predictable consequences of alternative means?
    Former CIA director R. James Woolsey Jr. writes: "The next time you pull into a gas station to fill your car with gas, bend down a little and take a glance in the side-door mirror. . . . What you will see is a contributor to terrorism against the United States." What are the economic implications of reducing our dependence on foreign oil? Can we rely solely on market forces, or do we need a more interventionist energy policy? How would Woolsey respond that the two largest suppliers of crude to the U.S. market are Canada and Mexico -- neither known as a terrorist haven?
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • FREE’s conference series in Environmental Stewardship and Economics for Religious Leaders.
    This year’s offering, “Breakthrough: Ethics, Economics, & the Environment” was held September 8-12. The fundamental objective of this program was to explain to religious leaders how economic analysis and the free market process can help further environmental ends while avoiding unintended, negative consequences.
    Purpose: The fundamental objective of every FREE’s program is to show how within carefully designed institutional settings free markets can improve environmental quality. We recognize that in addition to being an engine of prosperity, free markets have two profound, positive qualities. First, only free markets spontaneously and peacefully organize the daily, voluntary interactions of millions of self-interested individuals.
    Second, poverty, not affluence, is the stronger enemy of the environment. Only when people can provide the basics for their families (e.g., food, shelter, and security) will they focus on environmental quality. “These wild things had little human value,” Aldo Leopold reminds us in A Sand County Almanac, “until mechanization assured us of a good breakfast.”


  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Seminar Series on Environmental Economics, Science, and Policy Analysis for Federal Judges and Law Professors
    FREE’s programs are the only ones for the federal judiciary dealing explicitly with the economic, scientific, and policy implications of environmental issues. September 10–15 The Environmental Consequences of Energy Use: Policies for Progress October 8–13 From Terrorism to Tornados: Mitigating Disruptions to Civil Liberties and the Economy Program agendas are posted on our web site.
    Purpose: Economic progress is a prerequisite for improving environmental quality. And environmental quality is linked to economic sustainability. Our programs address critics of globalization and free trade who would have us believe third world environmental and human rights abuses are due to "globalization". They want to arrest the spread of the market economy and modern technology. Their angst over real and contrived problems of globalization would be lessened if they asked one question: "Compared to what?" Global capitalism does bring social stress. However, a technologically robust, market-based economy raises living standards ever higher, faster, and more inclusively than any other system. Developing countries make as much progress in thirty years as industrialized nations did in a century. Critics who ignore these benefits and blindly fight globalization hurt those who most need economic progress.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Conference Series on Environmental Economics for Federal Judges, State Supreme Court Justices, and Law Professors.
    In 2009 FREE offered two conferences in our series for federal judges, state supreme-court justices, and law professors. The first was, “Science, Health, Nanotechnology” & the Law and the second is “Terrorism, Civil Liberty, & National Security.”
    Purpose: Nanotechnology controls the structure of matter at the scale of small numbers of atoms. Nanotechnology has the potential to reshape technology with important applications in energy, the environment, medicine, and manufacturing. Like most technological revolutions, this one will have some downsides. This conference will explore the economic implications of proposed regulatory and intellectual property rights regimes.

    The drive for energy independence is rooted in three concerns. First, we are vulnerable to oil disruptions. Second, our energy demands generate national security entanglements. In 1973 U.S. foreign oil imports were at 33 percent of total consumption. Today they are 58 percent, and may reach 70 percent by 2020. What are the economic implications of reducing our dependence on foreign oil? Can we rely solely on market forces, or do we need a more interventionist energy policy?
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Conference Series on Environmental Economics for Federal Judges, State Supreme Court Justices, and Law Professors.
    In 2008 FREE offered two conferences. The first was Climate Change, Economics, & the Courts. The second is Terrorism, Civil Liberty, & National Security. The fundamental objective of these conferences was to explain how basic economic principles and the free market process can foster environmental quality.
    Purpose: We will explore the potential for market-based solutions to this problem. Creating institutions (i.e., the “rules of the game”) are essential to crafting a least cost, equitable outcome.

    What are the economic implications of reducing our dependence on foreign oil? Can we rely solely on market forces, or do we need a more interventionist energy policy? What policy options might avoid harness market forces with the least amount of distortion and potential for mischief?

  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Georgia Aquarium
    Walker Conservation Fellow
    In October 2011, Brett Howell joined Georgia Aquarium as the Walker Conservation Fellow with funding from the Alex C. Walker Foundation, the first-ever conservation fellowship for the Aquarium. The project objective, as defined in the grant application, was to: • Perform all of the steps required to develop a Marine Payment for Ecosystem Services (MPES) scheme in the Upper Florida Keys, allowing reef restoration activities to become financially self-sustaining. This model has the potential to be replicated in the competitive marketplace restoring reefs to their former conditions as havens of biodiversity. The Fellow will work with state and local authorities, non-profit organizations (NGOs), area businesses and other interested parties to perform an MPES feasibility assessment for coral restoration in the Florida Keys.
    Purpose: 1:Economic imbalances- Reefs are free, causing challenges such as exploitation due to a lack of reef-related property rights. We strive to place a value on reefs, ending the economic imbalance. 2:Effects of the global financial system-An MPES scheme has not yet been widely tested or implemented. If one can be developed for coral reefs, it would help solidify a new financial transaction in the global financial system. 3:Causes tending to destroy or impair the free enterprise system-Since reefs are currently open access free systems, they are only valued based on what can be extracted from them. No value is placed on the broader biodiversity. We strive to create a value for reef biodiversity so that free enterprise mechanisms are not impaired. 4:Market based solutions- We are exploring ways to transition reef restoration from a NGO activity to a free market activity with financial incentives to encourage private enterprise to conduct and support active reef management activities.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Good Energy Collective
    Good Energy Collective
    We will analyze the national potential for a coal-to-small modular reactor (SMR) transition, and develop guidelines for a pilot program to engage potential host communities.
    Purpose: Coal plants are retiring across the U.S. mainly because of cheap natural gas prices. It was federal investment in hydraulic fracturing that led to this boom of natural gas production. Similarly, federal and state governments should make smart investments to spur the commercial SMR market as a way to demonstrate this new technology, support struggling communities in coal country, and eliminate local air and water pollution. Coal communities are worried that they will be left behind by a Green New Deal, but a Coal-to-SMR program could address the market failure of an unequal distribution of benefits from a clean energy transition.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Equity Impacts of Clean Energy Policy Design
    Good Energy Collective (GEC) will analyze the effects of clean energy policies on energy prices to further understand the impact on inequality and the short-term feasibility of decarbonization policies in a period of growing inflationary concerns. In tandem, GEC will analyze the effects on marginalized communities of insufficient baseload energy resources and how different energy policies may be eroding reliability.
    Purpose: This project will meet the goals of the Walker Foundation by investigating causes of impairment to the free-market system through inefficient or counterproductive clean energy incentives and tax schemes, and the effect that such policies have on rising energy costs and income inequality. Further, our state-level and national analyses will investigate the extent to which such policies reduce grid resiliency and reliability, and how the reduced capacity of baseload power places a disproportionate economic burden on low-income communities.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    •   Gulf of Maine Research Institute
    Development of a low-impact semi-pelagic (LISP) trawl
    The purpose of this project is to support fishermen in New England’s struggling ground fish fishery in the purchase of environmentally friendly semi-pelagic trawl doors and a fuel flow meter. The scope of work has evolved significantly since original proposal submission primarily because the necessary funding was not available. In response, the Alex C Walker foundation granted GMRI permission to redirect available funds toward a novel financing model designed to support uptake of gear modifications by fishermen struggling to survive the dual impacts of reduced landings of cod and other ground fish and increasing fishing costs. The project also creates an opportunity to realize a seldom achieved twin benefit of increased profitability and reduced environmental impact – in a previous study GMRI compared semi-pelagic trawl doors and traditional bottom tending doors and found a fuel saving of 10% and a reduction in seabed contact of 95%.
    Purpose: By developing a LISP trawl we expect to reduce fuel consumption by around 20%. This will provide significant relief for fishermen from high and ever-increasing fuel prices, contribute substantially to their profitability, and help revitalize an economically depressed fishery. We believe the aforementioned saving may provide the stimulus for fishermen to invest in fishng gear modifications that reduce seabed impact and the capture of benthic bycatch species. Moreover, such gear may pave the way for fishermen to access new, niche markets for their seafood that until now have been closed to trawl-caught product.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Improving Fishing Profitability Through Sustainable Fishing
    In 2009 the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) received funding from the Alex C. Walker Foundation to demonstrate the novel application of an Environmental Management System (EMS) in a US commercial fishery. This gift matches an unusual challenge grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
    Purpose: GMRI proposes to collaborate with the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association (MFA) and the Island Institute to explore market-based incentives for increasing environmental stewardship. We will develop demersal trawl gear designed to reduce the capture of unwanted fish (bycatch), as well as the amount of fossil fuel used during fishing activities. We will establish an EMS by systematically documenting MFA's efforts to undertake these volutary incremental improvements to their fishing practices and to showcase these improvements to create a percieved market advantage for their seafood products.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • FISHTANK: Designing A New Model for Groundfish Management
    FishTank is an effort to bring together the New England’s ground fishing community to develop a common understanding of alternative management strategies (including the use of market incentives) and collectively articulate one or more preferred options to the New England Fisheries Management Council for consideration as the Council develops a new management plan for the region. This is a stakeholder-driven initiative that grows out of a monthly discussion forum hosted by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute over the past year.
    Purpose: FishTank will enable fishermen to proactively investigate the causes of economic imbalances created under New England's current days-at-sea management system (e.g., preventing access to healthy fish stocks and lack of incentives to reduce bycatch) and to explore potential economic/ecological impacts of a variety of alternative management strategies including market-based solutions. Often the adoption of market-based solutions in fisheries are constrained by existing regulations & slow moving federal processes; however, a recent decision by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) to develop an Amendment to the Multispecies Fishery Management Plan presents a unique opportunity to catalyze change in a relatively short timeframe.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Designing a Monitoring and Reporting System to Support Market-Based Approaches to Fishery Management in New England
    Support from the Alex C. Walker Foundation in 2008 enabled the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to take a lead role in supporting the transition of the New England groundfish fishery to harvesting cooperatives called sectors (a type of catch share management). GMRI provided sector members and policymakers with a clear analysis of the options and costs of phasing in a new system to enable timely and accurate monitoring of each group’s catch. In June 2009, the New England Fishery Management Council authorized the creation of 16 new sectors, marking a significant shift toward a market-based approach to managing fisheries. The new rules will take effect in May 2010.
    Purpose: Movement toward sectors the New England is a significant step toward realizing a market-based approach to fishery management. Groundfish will be the first New England fishery to move away from command and control strategies toward a system that creates economic incentives to utilize a fixed amount of allowable catch most efficiently. Trading of quota both among sector members and between sectors will create markets to allow catch privileges to flow to those who can use them most efficiently and create incentives to avoid species of concern.
    Without a more robust monitoring system, sectors may also create incentives to discard unwanted catch for which fishermen have insufficient quota or to misreport catches. The National Marine Fisheries Service has indicated a lack of resources to address this need and has placed responsibility on industry. We believe that a system developed and run by an independent 3rd party can provide the assurance of accurate monitoring and reporting.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
    Green Tax and Common Assets Project
    The Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project researches, educates and disseminates information on recovery of unearned income from common assets such as the monetary system, speculation, land, minerals, spectrum and other resources. In addition we investigate green taxes on throughput including depletion, land use, and pollution, which are ignored by market economics. These sources of income are a better alternative to taxing productive activities such as income, wages, excise, sales and building construction that create disincentives to productivity. By taking the profit out of speculation in finance, land, and natural resources, investment is directed towards real production and real goods. Additionally, we investigate the feasibility of redirecting some income from common assets to citizens in the form of a dividend, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund annual dividend which contributes to Alaska’s standing as the state with the lowest level of wealth inequality in the U.S.
    Purpose: When market prices do not reflect environmental costs, polluting or depleting products are consumed in greater quantities, and society must pay for these costs through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, health impacts, and other means. Green taxes and common asset fees are market-based solutions that include the true costs of depletion, land use, and pollution into the price of products, thereby correcting imbalances in consumption that result.
    The financial meltdown has exposed how the use of money and land as speculative commodities resulted in near destruction of the free-market economy. Removing the financial incentives for speculation and redirecting it to free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and other creation of real goods and services is one of our goals.
    Redirecting state tax money and pension funds to state banks and credit unions can enhance the local economy as shown by the Bank of North Dakota.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Green Tax and Common Assets Project-2010
    The Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project researches, educates and disseminates information on recovery of unearned income from common assets such as the monetary system, speculation, land, minerals, spectrum and other resources. In addition we investigate green taxes on throughput including depletion, land use, and pollution, which are ignored by market economics. These sources of income are a better alternative to taxing productive activities such as income, wages, excise, sales and building construction that create disincentives to productivity. By taking the profit out of speculation in finance, land, and natural resources, investment is directed towards real production and real goods. Additionally, we investigate the feasibility of redirecting some income from common assets to citizens in the form of a dividend, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund annual dividend which contributes to Alaska’s standing as the state with the lowest level of wealth inequality in the U.S.
    Purpose: When market prices do not reflect environmental costs, polluting or depleting products are consumed in greater quantities, and society must pay for these costs through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, health impacts, and other means. Green taxes and common asset fees are market-based solutions that include the true costs of depletion, land use, and pollution into the price of products, thereby correcting imbalances in consumption that result.
    The financial meltdown has exposed how the use of money and land as speculative commodities resulted in near destruction of the free-market economy. Removing the financial incentives for speculation and redirecting it to free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and other creation of real goods and services is one of our goals.
    Redirecting state tax money and pension funds to state banks and credit unions can enhance the local economy as shown by the Bank of North Dakota.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project-2005
    Green taxes involve increasing resource, land, and pollution taxes, and simultaneously decreasing taxes on productive items such as wages, income, and sales. They can also be used to pay dividends to the public. Green taxes create a market incentive for consumers and producers to choose a more environmentally clean product or service, thus fostering environmental accountability. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide detailed research materials and information to policymakers in Vermont in order to implement a green tax program for Vermont. Part of this project also includes development of a Vermont Common Assets Permanent Fund modeled after the Alaska Permanent Fund.
    Purpose: When market prices do not reflect environmental costs, polluting or depleting products are consumed in greater quantities due to under-pricing, and therefore society must pay for these external costs through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, health impacts, and other means. If prices include the true costs of products, many of these social costs can be avoided. Green taxes begin to include the true costs of depletion, land use, and pollution into the price of products, thereby correcting the imbalances in consumption that result otherwise. Under the current system of not including external costs into the price of products, we are left with the alternative of command-and-control regulations in order to deal with environmental problems. This results in a lack of respect for the market system, since it unfairly rewards polluters and depleters of resources. If prices more accurately reflected and paid for environmental costs, there would be much less need for command-and-control regulations, and the market system would have much greater respect with regards to the environment. Green taxes are a market based environmental solution which adds the cost of depletion, land use, and pollution into the price of products. Typically Green taxes are applied to energy, raw materials, land use, waste disposal, chemicals, air emissions, water emissions, etc. Additional revenue is often used to offset taxes on production, labor, wages, income, etc. which enhances the efficiency of the market economy by removing disincentives to productivity.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project-2007
    Our overall goal and expected result continues to be the implementation of globally successful market incentive mechanisms such as green taxes and common asset payments to achieve environmental sustainability, economic efficiency, and equity in Vermont. Our primary fourth year goal is to publish and present our finding in conferences, legislative testimony and other forums. We plan to continue research on quantifying common asset and green tax revenue available in Vermont, utilizing a cadre of 10-15 UVM students working on the project.
    Purpose: When market prices do not reflect environmental costs, polluting or depleting products are consumed in greater quantities due to under-pricing, and therefore society must pay for these external costs through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, health impacts, and other means. If prices include the true costs of products through green taxes or common asset payments, many of these social costs can be avoided. This provides a market-based solution that can help to address the economic imbalances in consumption that result otherwise.
    Under the current system of not including external costs into the price of products, we are left with the alternative of command-and-control regulations. This results in a lack of respect for the market system, since it unfairly rewards polluters and depleters of resources. If prices more accurately reflected environmental costs using green taxes and common asset payments, the market system would have much greater respect with regards to the environment.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project-2009
    The Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project researches, educates and disseminates information on recovery of unearned income from common assets such as the monetary system, speculation, land, minerals, spectrum and other resources. In addition we investigate green taxes on throughput including depletion, land use, and pollution, which are ignored by market economics. These sources of income are a better alternative to taxing productive activities such as income, wages, excise, sales and building construction that create disincentives to productivity. By taking the profit out of speculation in finance, land, and natural resources, investment is directed towards real production and real goods. Additionally, we investigate the feasibility of redirecting some income from common assets to citizens in the form of a dividend, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund annual dividend which contributes to Alaska’s standing as the state with the lowest level of wealth inequality in the U.S.
    Purpose: When market prices do not reflect environmental costs, polluting or depleting products are consumed in greater quantities, and society must pay for these costs through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, health impacts, and other means. Green taxes and common asset fees are market-based solutions that include the true costs of depletion, land use, and pollution into the price of products, thereby correcting imbalances in consumption that result. The fractional reserve monetary system which allows commercial banks to create 93% of the money with interest, inevitably requires an unsustainable infinite growth economy. We are investigating 100% reserve requirements and using seigniorage to serve the interests of the public. The financial meltdown has exposed how the use of money and land as speculative commodities resulted in near destruction of the free-market economy. Removing the financial incentives for speculation is one of our purposes.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Green Tax and Common Assets Project
    The Vermont Green Tax and Common Assets Project researches, educates and disseminates information on recovery of unearned income from common assets such as the monetary system, speculation, land, minerals, spectrum and other resources. In addition we investigate green taxes on throughput including depletion, land use, and pollution, which are ignored by market economics. These sources of income are a better alternative to taxing productive activities such as income, wages, excise, sales and building construction that create disincentives to productivity. By taking the profit out of speculation in finance, land, and natural resources, investment is directed towards real production and real goods. Additionally, we investigate the feasibility of redirecting some income from common assets to citizens in the form of a dividend, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund annual dividend which contributes to Alaska’s standing as the state with the lowest level of wealth inequality in the U.S.
    Purpose: When market prices do not reflect environmental costs, polluting or depleting products are consumed in greater quantities, and society must pay for these costs through taxation, regulation, lawsuits, health impacts, and other means. Green taxes and common asset fees are market-based solutions that include the true costs of depletion, land use, and pollution into the price of products, thereby correcting imbalances in consumption that result.
    The financial meltdown has exposed how the use of money and land as speculative commodities resulted in near destruction of the free-market economy. Removing the financial incentives for speculation and redirecting it to free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and other creation of real goods and services is one of our goals.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Howell Conservation Fund
    Catalyzing market-based solutions for Henderson Island’s “tragic plastics” to stop marine litter at the “root cause”
    The goals of this grant are as follows: Original goal #1: Provide initial support for a 2020 return site visit to Henderson Island to complete work that was started in 2019. Updated goal #1: Given impacts of the global pandemic, the team was unable to return to Henderson Island as planned. With approval of the Alex C. Walker Foundation, the grant goal has been changed to “conduct a site visit to Costa Rica to visit CRDC, the global up-cycler for Henderson Island tragic plastics.” Goal #2: Support efforts related to collaborations around “circular economy” solutions, including a solution for the plastic waste collected from Henderson Island. Goal #3: Advance public speaking engagements related to Henderson Island.
    Purpose: #1: investigate the causes of economic imbalances – the project focuses on the economic imbalance of “externalities” from plastic production and unaccounted for impacts on ecosystem services in the oceans. Additionally, the project focuses on the overall reduction of plastic production. Most plastic is made from petrochemicals, which negatively impact climate change – reducing plastic production overall (either through “source reduction” or “circular economy” solutions) ultimate lowers the climate change impacts.
    #4: explore and develop market-based solutions – the project is heavily focused on market-based solutions for plastics, including ways that ocean plastic pollution cleanups can become self-sustaining, rather than relying on philanthropic dollars to cover the “externalities” of pollution cleanup that plastic producers push to others in the supply chain of plastic consumption.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Human Arts Association
    PANDORA'S PROMISE
    PANDORA'S PROMISE will be a feature-length documentary about the history and development of nuclear power and the current debate surrounding its revival as a means of averting a climate catastrophe. The film will be structured around key interviews with leading environmentalists, energy experts and former anti-nuclear activists who have undergone (or are undergoing) a conversion to nuclear power as a necessary and vital component to our future alternative energy mix. The film aims to use the heated debate surrounding nuclear power as a vehicle for taking a realistic and comprehensive look at the worlds energy dilemma, for examining the true costs of our current addiction to fossil fuels, and relative merits of the alternatives from an economic, technological and environmental perspective.
    Purpose: One of the most often used arguments currently put forth against investments in nuclear power is the issue of cost. Opponents of nuclear power cite the need for government subsidies which would take away money from renewable energy projects. As this film will demonstrate, those arguments are largely based on outdated information. A hard look at the facts as they now stand demonstrates that nuclear power is actually economically more advantageous on a per kilowatt hour basis than wind and solar energy, as well as natural gas and can survive and thrive even without subsidies. It cannot however compete with coal unless and until the cost of coal pollution, including CO2 emissions, is factored into the cost of burning fossil fuels through some market based mechanism. Once the real market costs are applied across all forms of energy, then nuclear becomes a highly attractive energy source.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Institute for Justice
    Preventing law enforcement from profiting by taking private property
    Civil forfeiture, the power of law enforcement to seize property under the mere suspicion that it has been involved in a criminal activity, is one of the biggest threats to private property rights in the nation today. Owners caught up in civil forfeiture proceedings do not need to be convicted or even accused of a crime to lose their property, and they typically must prove their property’s innocence in court in order for it to be returned. In addition, law enforcement agencies often get to keep a portion or all of the proceeds from these seizures, providing them with incentives to pursue property rather than criminals. The Institute for Justice is working to end this abuse of private property rights in the courts of law and the court of public opinion.
    Purpose: Private property is one of this nation’s most cherished principles, but it is a principle under assault across the country by civil forfeiture law. Law enforcement agencies at the federal and state levels are allowed to keep some or all of their forfeiture proceeds for their own use and have an incentive to pursue forfeitures to boost their budgets. Once the police do seize a person’s property, it is very difficult for innocent owners to reclaim it and the costs involved often outweigh the value of the property, thereby discouraging individuals from standing up for their constitutional rights and enabling the government to obtain the items it seizes by default. Thus, civil forfeiture not only undermines the rights inherent in owning property, it also undermines the free market by eliminating due process legal protections for private property that are necessary for a properly functioning market-based system.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture is one of the greatest threats to private property rights in the nation today. It allows police and prosecutors to take property from individuals upon the mere allegation that a crime has been committed. In many states and at the federal level, law enforcement agencies get to keep the items and assets they take, incentivizing them to pursue property to bolster their budgets. Moreover, navigating the forfeiture process is difficult, meaning that many innocent owners are never able to reclaim their property and that law enforcement faces little accountability when it exercises this power. The use of civil forfeiture continues to grow and the Institute for Justice is deploying all of the tools in our strategic public interest arsenal to end this blatant abuse of private property rights.
    Purpose: Properly functioning free-market systems depend on robust legal protections for private property. Civil forfeiture, however, gives law enforcement broad and, in many cases, virtually unchecked power at the state and federal levels to take property from individuals without due process. This incentivizes police and prosecutors to shift priorities from the fair and impartial administration of justice to the pursuit of property and profit, undermining the protections for private property under the Constitution, and ultimately the free-market system.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Hands Off My Home!
    The Hands Off My Home campaign effects significant and substantial reforms of state and local eminent domain laws. While we are not a lobbying firm, we do provide a unique and principled perspective to legislators at every level of government on how to better protect the property rights of Americans. Launched in June 2005—just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal Constitution allows government to use its power of eminent domain to generate more tax revenue—we employ a strategic approach, using legislative counseling, grassroots organization, social science research, and media relations to increase protections for property owners nationwide.
    Purpose: Property ownership is the foundation of America’s free-enterprise system. A judicial standard that allows the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one individual to another is a grave threat to fundamental freedoms. But by drawing national attention to the abuse of eminent domain for private gain and by actively combating this practice, IJ and the Castle Coalition are helping to restore a critical component of America’s free-market system so that it can flourish as the Founders intended. Through our rallies, training and information sessions, data collection and research projects, as well as information dissemination on the dangerous consequences of public takings for private development, the Castle Coalition works to secure a legal standard where all are equal under the law and competition is free to thrive.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Taking Private Property for Law Enforcement Profit
    Civil asset forfeiture threatens the property rights of all Americans. These laws allow the police to seize your home, car, cash, or other property upon the mere suspicion that it has been used or involved in criminal activity. Civil forfeiture is a legal fiction that permits law enforcement to charge property with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken away only after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be convicted of any crime to lose their property. The Institute for Justice is challenging this abuse in court and the court of public opinion to take the profit out of civil forfeiture and protect innocent owners caught up in an upside-down legal process that violates fundamental constitutional protections.
    Purpose: The overriding goal for prosecutors and police should be fair and impartial administration of justice. Civil forfeiture law at the federal level and in more than 40 states, however, dangerously transforms law enforcement priorities away from this goal and instead toward the pursuit of property and profit. This undermines fundamental constitutional rights to property and due process.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Taking Private Property for Law Enforcement Profit
    Civil asset forfeiture threatens the property rights of all Americans. These laws allow the police to seize your home, car, cash, or other property upon the mere suspicion that it has been used or involved in criminal activity. Civil forfeiture is a legal fiction that permits law enforcement to charge property with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken away only after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be convicted of any crime to lose their property. The Institute for Justice is challenging this abuse in court and the court of public opinion to take the profit out of civil forfeiture and protect innocent owners caught up in an upside-down legal process that violates fundamental constitutional protections.
    Purpose: The overriding goal for prosecutors and police should be fair and impartial administration of justice. Civil forfeiture law at the federal level and in more than 40 states, however, dangerously transforms law enforcement priorities away from this goal and instead toward the pursuit of property and profit. This undermines fundamental constitutional rights to property and due process.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Hands Off My Home!
    Launched in 2005 in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's heartbreaking 5-4 decision in Kelo v. City of New London, the Hands Off My Home Campaign trains home and small business owners to defend their property from eminent domain abuse. As part of this campaign we assess and monitor the eminent domain situation in each state, draft model legislation, testify before legislative committees, review pending bills, generate media around legislation, and mobilize grassroots support.
    Purpose: The work of the Castle Coalition investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system and takes steps to stop that destruction through the targeted efforts of our staff and citizens across the country. Eminent domain abuse that allows the government to transfer property from one individual to another more wealthy or politically favored individual is a grave threat to property rights nationwide, and thus to the free-market system. Without the right to private property it would not be possible to sustain this system because ownership of a home, business, or even place of worship would become meaningless in the face of the abuse of government power.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Hands Off My Home!
    The Hands Off My Home campaign continued in 2007 to advocate state reform of eminent domain laws. Since the Kelo ruling, 42 states passed new laws aimed at curbing the abuse of eminent domain for private use—11 in 2007 alone.
    Purpose: The work of the Castle Coalition investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system and takes steps to stop that destruction through the targeted efforts of our staff and citizens across the country. Eminent domain abuse that allows the government to transfer property from one individual to another more wealthy or politically favored individual is a grave threat to property rights nationwide. Without the right to private property it would not be possible to sustain the free-market system because ownership of a home, business, or even place of worship would become meaningless in the face of the abuse of government power. The Hands Off My Home campaign promotes market-based solutions to this national epidemic by working to effect change at the federal and state levels, thereby protecting and preserving the system that makes possible the incredible prosperity we have today.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Hands Off My Home!
    Since the Kelo decision in 2005, the Hands Off My Home campaign, through our training, public education, and advocacy, has saved over 16,000 homes and businesses from eminent domain abuse. A key component of the campaign is to provide a unique and principled perspective to legislators at every level of government on how to better protect the property rights of Americans. To date, we have successfully advocated for reform in 43 states.
    Purpose: Owning property is at the heart of our free-enterprise system. At IJ, we have seen the horrible intersect between our economic liberty and property rights mission areas. A judicial standard that allows the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one individual to another is a grave threat to fundamental freedoms, but by turning the tide against the use of eminent domain for private gain, we have put America’s free-market system in a much better position to flourish as the Founders intended.Through our rallies, training and information sessions, data collection and research projects, and information dissemination on the dangerous consequences of public takings for private development, the Castle Coalition is also in a position to develop free-market solutions by providing foundations for a more even playing field where competition can flourish.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture is the ability of law enforcement to seize private property—such as homes, cars, and cash—on the mere suspicion that it was involved in a crime with no conviction or arrest required. The Institute for Justice works to counter this unconstitutional practice through litigation, strategic research, legislative reform, and communications.
    Purpose: Property rights sit at the foundation of a free society. But across the country, governments violate property rights through the practice of civil forfeiture. Through civil forfeiture, property owners can permanently lose their property without being charged or convicted of a crime, a violation of Americans’ constitutional rights.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to take property on the mere allegation it was involved in a crime, and the Institute for Justice is using all of the tools in our public interest arsenal to end this practice. Our work will reinvigorate constitutional protections for private property and limit government power.
    Purpose: Property rights are the foundation of the free-market system. Civil forfeiture, however, undermines the rule of law by giving law enforcement at all levels of government broad power to take property from individuals who haven’t committed any wrongdoing. Moreover, police and prosecutors often get to keep at least some of the proceeds from civil forfeiture for themselves, which incentivizes them to pursue innocent owners at the expense of legitimate law enforcement priorities. The Institute for Justice’s civil forfeiture initiative is reinvigorating the property rights protections enshrined in the Constitution and ensuring that all Americans have the due process legal protections they need to participate in a vibrant free-market system.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Restraining Unlawful Private Pipeline Condemnations
    Increasingly, private corporations are using government power to take private property in order to construct pipelines to move commodities like oil or natural gas. Many of these projects, properly understood, are illegal—either because of the private nature of the pipeline project itself, or because the project provides landowners with insufficient due process protections. Nonetheless, courts and legislatures more or less ignore these legal problems and allow private companies to steamroll property owners. The Institute for Justice proposes to help change that by filing amicus curiae briefs in strategically selected cases and engaging in limited and targeted educational efforts surrounding proposed changes to laws governing pipeline condemnations.
    Purpose: Property rights are fundamental to the free-market system. But increasingly, those rights are being undermined by condemnations for private pipelines, which frequently receive far less judicial scrutiny than other takings of private property.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture is the ability of law enforcement to seize homes, cars, cash, and other property on the mere suspicion that it was involved in a crime—no conviction or arrest required. The Institute for Justice works to counter this unconstitutional practice through path-breaking litigation, strategic research, legislative reform, and award-winning communications.
    Purpose: Property rights are the foundation of all our rights in a free society. But across the country, governments violate property rights through the practice of civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture laws allow cash, cars, homes, and other property to be seized when the property is merely suspected of being involved with criminal activity. Under these laws, property owners can permanently lose their property without even being charged or convicted of a crime—a gross violation of people’s fundamental constitutional rights.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture is the ability of law enforcement to seize homes, cars, cash, and other property on the mere suspicion that it was involved in a crime—no conviction or arrest required. The Institute for Justice is working to counter this unconstitutional practice through path-breaking litigation, strategic research, legislative reform, and award-winning communications.
    Purpose: Property rights are the foundation of all our rights in a free society. But across the country, governments violate property rights through the practice of civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture laws allow cash, cars, homes, and other property to be seized when the property is merely suspected of being involved with criminal activity. Under these laws, property owners can permanently lose their property without even being charged or convicted of a crime—a gross violation of people’s fundamental constitutional rights.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture represents one of the most serious assaults on property rights in the nation today, and the Institute for Justice is using all of the tools in our public interest arsenal to end this unconscionable and unconstitutional practice. We file lawsuits in key jurisdictions to convince courts to enforce legal protections for private property and vindicate the principle that no one should ever lose their property without first being convicted of a crime. Our award-winning communications team leverages our clients’ stories in the media, while our strategic research team produces innovative social science research that strengthens our arguments in court and the court of public opinion. Additionally, we work with non-traditional allies to generate grassroots momentum for reform.
    Purpose: Property rights are the foundation of the free-market system. Civil forfeiture, however, undermines the rule of law by giving law enforcement at all levels of government broad power to take property from individuals who haven’t committed any wrongdoing. Moreover, police and prosecutors often get to keep at least some of the proceeds from civil forfeiture for themselves, which incentivizes them to pursue innocent owners at the expense of legitimate law enforcement priorities. The Institute for Justice’s civil forfeiture initiative is reinvigorating the property rights protections enshrined in the Constitution and ensuring that all Americans have the due process legal protections they need to participate in a vibrant free-market system.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Strengthening Protections for Private Property Rights
    Civil forfeiture is one of the greatest threats to property rights in the nation today. It allows the government to take cars, cash, buildings, and other property on the mere allegation that it was involved in a crime—no arrest or conviction necessary. What’s more, police and prosecutors often get to keep some, if not all, of the property they take, giving them a perverse incentive to pursue the property of innocent owners at the expense of legitimate law enforcement priorities. The Institute for Justice is tackling this problem head-on through litigation, strategic research, communications, and outreach. We are working to strengthen legal protections for private property, elevate this issue to national prominence, and ensure that no American can lose his or her property without first being convicted of a crime.
    Purpose: Legal protections for private property are a vital part of the free-market system and give individuals the freedom necessary to build peaceful and prosperous communities. Civil forfeiture, however, undermines the rule of law by giving law enforcement at all levels of government the broad power to take property from individuals who haven’t committed any crime. Often, police and prosecutors get to keep at least some of the proceeds from civil forfeiture, and this incentivizes them to shift priorities from the fair and impartial administration of justice to the pursuit of property and profit. The Institute for Justice’s efforts to fight civil forfeiture in court and the court of public opinion are reinvigorating the property rights protections enshrined in the Constitution and ensuring that all Americans can participate in a vibrant free-market system.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to take property on the mere allegation it was involved in a crime, and the Institute for Justice is using all of the tools in our public interest arsenal to end this practice. Our work will reinvigorate constitutional protections for private property and limit government power.
    Purpose: Property rights are the foundation of the free-market system. Civil forfeiture, however, undermines the rule of law by giving law enforcement at all levels of government broad power to take property from individuals who haven’t committed any wrongdoing. Moreover, police and prosecutors often get to keep at least some of the proceeds from civil forfeiture for themselves, which incentivizes them to pursue innocent owners at the expense of legitimate law enforcement priorities. The Institute for Justice’s civil forfeiture initiative is reinvigorating the property rights protections enshrined in the Constitution and ensuring that all Americans have the due process legal protections they need to participate in a vibrant free-market system.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Restraining Unlawful Private Pipeline Condemnations
    Increasingly, private corporations are using government power to take private property in order to construct pipelines to move commodities like oil or natural gas. Many of these projects, properly understood, are illegal—either because of the private nature of the pipeline project itself, or because the project provides landowners with insufficient due-process protections. Nonetheless, courts and legislatures more or less ignore these legal problems and allow private companies to steamroll property owners. The Institute for Justice proposes to help change that by filing amicus curiae briefs in strategically selected cases and engaging in limited and targeted educational efforts surrounding proposed changes to laws governing pipeline condemnations. We envision this project as a pilot program that would allow us to gauge the effectiveness of these tactics in combating the threat pipeline projects can pose to property rights.
    Purpose: Property rights are fundamental to the free-market system. But increasingly, those rights are being undermined by condemnations for private pipelines, which frequently receive far less judicial scrutiny than other takings of private property.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Ending Civil Forfeiture and Protecting Private Property
    Civil forfeiture is the ability of law enforcement to seize homes, cars, cash, and other property on the mere suspicion that it was involved in a crime—no conviction or arrest required. What’s worse, civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to keep forfeited property or the proceeds for its own use. The Institute for Justice is working to counter this unconstitutional practice through path-breaking litigation, strategic research, legislative reform, and award-winning communications.
    Purpose: Property rights are the foundation of all our rights in a free society. But across the country, governments violate property rights through the practice of civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture laws allow cash, cars, homes, and other property to be seized when the property is merely suspected of being involved with criminal activity. Under these laws, property owners can permanently lose their property without even being charged or convicted of a crime—a gross violation of people’s fundamental constitutional rights.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    •   Institute for Policy Studies
    Genuine Progress Project - Climate Risk Bonds
    The Genuine Progress Project, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, was working to shift the economic system’s defining ethos from externalizing costs to embracing responsibility. Due to a changing political landscape, we are redirecting our efforts to develop Climate Risk Bonds, an innovative financing mechanism for natural disaster response and adaptation investments.
    Purpose: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has over the years become synonymous with economic well-being. But the GDP was never designed for this purpose, and makes no distinctions between transactions that add to well-being and those that diminish it. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is one of the first alternatives to the GDP to be vetted by the scientific community and now used regularly by a variety of state and non-state actors worldwide. This project is exploring and helping to operationalize the implementation of the GPI in the state of Maryland and other states in order to move the state-- and, eventually, the national-- economy toward greater sustainability.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Genuine Progress Project
    The “Genuine Progress Project” is working to shift the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland's economic system's defining ethic from externalizing costs to embracing responsibility, and its primary purpose from growing individual financial fortunes for a few to building living community wealth to enhance the health and well-being of everyone. This project has the potential to serve as a model for other cities and states to justify correcting for market failures--such as climate change--by making the economic case for action using the Genuine Progress Indicator.
    Purpose: Gross Domestic Product or GDP has over the years become synonymous with economic well-being. But the GDP was never designed for this purpose, and makes no distinctions between transactions that add to well-being and those that diminish it. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is one of the first alternatives to the GDP to be vetted by the scientific community and now used regularly by a variety of state and non-state actors worldwide. This project is exploring and helping to operationalize the implementation of the GPI in the state of Maryland and other states in order to move the state-- and, eventually, the national-- economy toward greater sustainability.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Climate Risk Bonds
    Climate risk bonds are tools national, state, and local governments can use to internalize the social costs of carbon emissions at the point of extraction, thereby making a crucial contribution to the climate fight. Before any new oil, gas, or coal projects are approved, fossil fuel companies should be required to post climate risk bonds, which can be set at an amount determined by the life cycle emissions of any new well or mine together with the social cost of carbon. An additional environmental bond could be imposed for, say, water contamination or earthquake damages, a risk of oil or gas “fracking” now being borne by the host communities. This bond would be structured in a parallel way: Require the company to pay, up front, for the anticipated property damages, just as they would for the costs of climate havoc. Should no damages take place during the period of extraction, the company would be eligible for a reimbursement of the posted bond.
    Purpose: The fossil fuel industry is among the most profitable industries on the planet. Yet that profit has come at great expense--to the planet and its people. By beginning to internalize the very real costs the fossil fuel industry is externalizing on the people and the planet, we can begin to correct the economic imbalances that currently favor the continued and unrestrained exploitation of fossil fuels. Climate change has been called the "greatest market failure of all time"--and rightly so. To correct this market failure we need to use a variety of tools, including climate risk bonds, to ensure this market failure is as short-lived as possible. Climate risk bonds and other environmental bonds are tools we can use, right now, in our communities, to begin to level the playing field in favor of clean energy and speed the transition to a just and sustainable economic paradigm, while sending a clear market signal that says, “The polluter must pay and pay up-front.”
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Karuna Center for Peacebuilding
    Pricing Carbon Initiative
    The Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will continue to assist Pricing Carbon Initiative in building consensus around bipartisan policies and legislative solutions that price carbon, as it has in 2011, 2014 and 2015. Together we will continue to design, organize and facilitate dialogues with an expanding network of influential decision makes, support action-oriented initiatives, develop systems sharing and disseminating information.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI's network share a growing belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climate/social cost of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. The ongoing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues help PCI become more effective at conveying these concepts and building consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups, as it garners widespread support from important decision makers, policy makers and key sectors of the public at large
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Seeking Consensus on Viable Bipartisan Options for Pricing Carbon Emissions
    The Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will assist the Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) in its efforts to build consensus around viable bipartisan policies and legislative solutions that price carbon emissions. Together, they will organize, host and facilitate a 3-day strategic planning retreat in October 2014 for key PCI participants, which include stakeholders and policy experts, representing diverse organizations and constituencies. They will evaluate PCI’s regularly scheduled dialogues, which have be in place for three years, and strategize on how to maximize their value.
    Purpose: Market-driven solutions are central to the mission of this project. The premise behind the proposed activities is that market-based solutions to climate disruption are not only more effective than other policy options, but also uniquely conducive to citizen input and cooperation so long as potential hardships to American households and businesses are adequately addressed. For the last three years, the work of the Pricing Carbon Initiative has focused on garnering widespread support for pricing carbon and building consensus among organizations and interest groups. The National Dialogue initiative outlined in this proposal would build support and consensus among the broader public toward the goal of enacting carbon pricing as a market-based approach to mitigating climate disruption.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Building Support in 2018 for Carbon Pricing
    In 2018, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will continue to assist the Pricing Carbon Initiative, as it has done in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, in building consensus around policies and bipartisan legislative solutions that price carbon. Together we will continue to design, organize and facilitate dialogues with an expanding network of influential decision makers, support action-oriented initiatives, and develop systems for sharing and disseminating information.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI network share a steadfast belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climatic and social costs of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. Their ongoing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues continue to build consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Building Support in 2017 for Pricing Carbon
    The Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will continue to assist the Pricing Carbon Initiative, as it has in 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2016, in building consensus around policies and bipartisan legislative solutions that price carbon. Together we will continue to design, organize and facilitate dialogues with an expanding network of influential decision makers, support action-oriented initiatives, and develop systems for sharing and disseminating information.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI network share a growing belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climate/social cost of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. The ongoing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues continue to build consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Building Support in 2017 for Pricing Carbon, Part B
    In the second half of 2017, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will continue to assist the Pricing Carbon Initiative, as it has done in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, and in the first half of 2017, in building consensus around policies and bipartisan legislative solutions that price carbon. Together we will continue to design, organize and facilitate dialogues with an expanding network of influential decision makers, support action-oriented initiatives, and develop systems for sharing and disseminating information.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI network share a growing belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climatic and social costs of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. Their ongoing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues continue to build consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Building Support in 2019 for Carbon Pricing
    In 2019, the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding will continue to assist the Pricing Carbon Initiative, as it has done in 2011 and 2014 through 2018, in building consensus around policies and bipartisan legislative solutions that price carbon. Together, we will continue to design, organize and facilitate dialogues with an expanding network of influential decision makers; support action-oriented initiatives; and develop systems for sharing and disseminating information.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI network share a steadfast belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climatic and social costs of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. PCI’s ongoing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues continue to build consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Loon Preservation Committee
    Lead Fishing Tackle Buyback Program
    The Loon Preservation Committee (LPC)’s science-based approach to conservation has more than tripled New Hampshire’s threatened loon population over the past 40 years; however, the population remains far below its historical abundance, and loons remain at risk from human activities. Lead poisoning from ingested fishing tackle is the leading cause of adult loon mortality in New Hampshire, accounting for 152 adult loon deaths (44% of documented deaths) between 1989 and 2017. LPC is seeking to reduce the use of lead tackle by establishing additional incentives and opportunities for disposal and expanded education about alternatives. In May of 2018 LPC launched a market-based pilot buyback program to remove lead tackle from circulation. If awarded, funds from the Alex C. Walker Foundation will allow LPC to add buyback program locations on Squam Lake and Ossipee Lake, increase its marketing efforts to reach anglers, and cover staff and consultant time to maximize program impact.
    Purpose: Legislative efforts supported by LPC resulted in restrictions on the sale and use of lead fishing tackle in New Hampshire; however, loon deaths continue from lead tackle currently in use. LPC is seeking to reduce use of lead tackle by establishing market-based incentives for disposal and expanded education about alternatives.
    Funds from the Alex C. Walker Foundation would expand LPC’s Pilot Lead Tackle Buyback Program to improve accessibility to the program for anglers and give LPC a broader presence in the angling community. Providing staff and consultant time for coordination with retailers, advertising, and other facets of the pilot would ensure that shops have a positive experience and receive adequate value exchange in the form of promotion and customer traffic. This market-based initiative is designed to reduce poisoning of loons by building lasting conservation partnerships with anglers—who can help with education—as well as collecting lead tackle.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   MDI Biological Laboratory
    Increasing the Crowdsourcing Capacity of Anecdata.org
    We plan to build out the capacity of Anecdata.org, a free online data portal that we created for collecting and sharing crowdsourced environmental data, to meet the growing needs of numerous organizations that are collecting information and observations on the environment, especially as it relates to climate change. Anecdata already has many valuable features including mapping, photo up loading and archiving, and data visualization through graphing. In this project, we will add video upload functionality, a searchable video archive, and development of a general-purpose mobile app to serve the needs of project participants collecting information during field events or on the fly. These added features will greatly expand the utility of Anecdata.org, especially for those who are documenting changes over time. In addition, we plan to implement a commercialization strategy by which we can generate revenue to support the continued development of Anecdata.org as a free site for all users.
    Purpose: Investigate Causes of Economic Imbalances: Economic imbalances exist where climate change and other environmental problems affect human health, safety, and livelihoods. Anecdata.org is an online tool to help individuals and organizations create projects, and collect, share, and visualize data in order to mitigate problems, effect change, and address economic imbalances in communities. Explore and Develop Market-Based Solutions: Anecdata.org will help organizations explore and develop market-based solutions to problems like sea level rise, ocean acidification, and coastal flooding. The Anecdata software has applications beyond collecting environmental data and can be used to crowdsource information in public health or economics, for example, on emerging diseases or costs associated with climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Adding New Features on Anecdata.org to Promote Civic Action
    We plan to build out the capacity of Anecdata.org, a free online data portal that we created for collecting and sharing crowdsourced environmental data, to meet the growing needs of numerous organizations that are collecting information and observations on the environment, especially as it relates to climate change. Anecdata already has many valuable features including mapping, photo up loading and archiving, and data visualization through graphing. In preparation for adding communication and civic action tools to promote a “Data to Action” ethos among project participants, we conducted a needs analysis of multiple King Tides and other Sea Rise projects in the US.
    Purpose: Investigate Causes of Economic Imbalances: Economic imbalances exist where climate change and other environmental problems affect human health, safety, and livelihoods. Anecdata.org is an online tool to help individuals and organizations create projects, and collect, share, and visualize data in order to mitigate problems, effect change, and address economic imbalances in communities. Explore and Develop Market-Based Solutions: Anecdata.org will help organizations explore and develop market-based solutions to problems like sea level rise, ocean acidification, and coastal flooding. The Anecdata software has applications beyond collecting environmental data and can be used to crowdsource information in public health or economics, for example, on emerging diseases or costs associated with climate change.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Creating Economic Tools to Address Debris & Plastic Pollution in Vietnam
    To prepare for building out the capacity of Anecdata.org to meet the growing needs of citizen science projects around the world, we are adding a language translation feature. Anecdata already has many valuable features including mapping, photo uploading, and data visualization. After the language translation feature is in place, we will add civic action tools to promote civic action among project participants from around the world. The focus of this project will be on debris in coastal cities of Vietnam. The new tools will enable Vietnamese speakers to participate in citizen science projects to clean up debris and instantly see the economic benefit of their actions. Armed with this information, citizens may be able to get local governments to take action to help eliminate sources of debris that might ultimately end up in the marine environment.
    Purpose: Investigate Causes of Economic Imbalances: Economic imbalances exist where plastic pollution and other environmental problems affect human health, safety, and livelihoods. Anecdata.org is an online tool to help individuals and organizations create projects, and collect, share, and visualize data in order to mitigate problems, effect change, and address economic imbalances in communities. Explore and Develop Market-Based Solutions: Anecdata.org will help organizations explore and develop market-based solutions to problems like plastic pollution in coastal areas, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and coastal flooding. The Anecdata platform has applications beyond collecting environmental data and can be used to crowdsource information in public health or economics, for example, on emerging diseases or economic impact of marine debris.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Creating Decision Support Tools Based on Ecosystem Services & Values
    The purpose of this project is to solicit stakeholder input in the creation of a computer-based decision support tool that will help people around the bay balance ecological, social and economic considerations when participating in regulatory, marine management and land use decisions that affect the bay. We will reach out to our Frenchman Bay Partners (FBP) and other stakeholders who have not yet engaged in the FBP process, including members of the business and real estate community. We will ask them to help identify the ecosystem services provided by Frenchman Bay and assign value to them. By helping to identify and determine values for ecosystem services, stakeholders will be invested in the decision support tool and be likely to use it to make decisions. Understanding the value of these services and the ecological processes that produce them is critical for ensuring the ecological and economic sustainability of the bay and the communities it supports.
    Purpose: Investigate Causes of Economic Imbalances: Economic imbalances exist in Frenchman Bay where eelgrass habitat has been lost, mudflats are closed due to pollution, benthic (bottom) habitats have been disrupted, and fish runs have been impeded. An important step toward correcting imbalances is engaging stakeholders in identifying ecosystem services and their values and in discussing market-based systems to efficiently sustain these values. Explore and Develop Market-Based Solutions: We plan to create an ecosystem services values (ESV) decision support tool for Frenchman Bay with stakeholder input and involvement. We will target diverse stakeholders, including those who have and have not previously been engaged in our bay planning process. For example, we will work to include those in the business and real estate communities, so that they will have investment in the ESV tool and be likely to use it to make decisions.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Using Conservation Action Planning to Create Stable Local Economies
    MDIBL has played a leadership role in engaging stakeholders around Frenchman Bay in conservation action planning, leading to the formation of a new group called the Frenchman Bay Partners and a plan for conserving habitats and species important to local marine livelihoods. We have engaged local harvesters and have educated them about the importance of conserving and restoring essential habitat. Eight municipalities have joined our group and are helping us make important links between working waterfront issues and the future of marine livelihoods. We are now poised to work collaboratively with these groups and others to address threats to habitats and species. In doing so, we will tip the balance toward a more ecologically and economically sustainable bay. We plan to expand our stakeholder base to include local businesses. We believe that this level of community engagement will open new and creative avenues of financial support for the on-going work of the Frenchman Bay Partners.
    Purpose: Investigate Causes of Economic Imbalances: MDIBL has been working with local partners to identify threats to economically important habitats and species on Frenchman Bay. In addressing these threats we will be addressing both ecologic as well as economic imbalances. The most recent economic data for the Frenchman Bay area puts the value of marine resources at $7,339,569. This value is less than what it could be. Economic imbalances exist where eelgrass habitat has been lost, mudflats are closed due to pollution, benthic habitats have been disrupted, and fish runs have been impeded. Explore and Develop Market-Based Solutions: Frenchman Bay Partners have created a focused conservation action plan. We have partners with the skills and local authority to make positive changes. It will take considerable financial resources however. The key to success will be including business partners who can help us find creative avenues for funding our bay restoration and conservation work.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Supplement: Protection for eelgrass beds: Overcoming Economic Imbalances through Marine Conservation Agreements and Community Involvement in Frenchman Bay and the Gulf of Maine
    The supplement amount was be used for outreach and education. After several meetings funded by the Alex C. Walker Foundation and Maine Coastal Program, Frenchman Bay Stakeholders decided to form a partnership~~The mission of the Frenchman Bay Partners is to ensure that the Frenchman Bay area is ecologically, economically and socially healthy and resilient in the face of future challenges. To that end, the FBP is creating an adaptive management plan for the bay. In order for the Frenchman Bay Plan to be a useful tool in managing bay resources, there has to be a lot of local buy-in. We have created a website that links to all partner websites, produced outreach materials for town officials, new partners, and the public, and hosted focus groups to garner feedback on the Frenchman Bay Plan. We are continuing our outreach to new partners through one-on-one interviews and a new Facebook page, and an e-newsletter.
    Purpose: We are requesting funds to create outreach and education materials for our Frenchman Bay Partnership (FBP). The FBP is creating an adaptive management plan for Frenchman Bay which will help to address economic imbalances caused by threats to habitats and species.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
    • Protection for Eelgrass Beds: Overcoming Economic Imbalances through Marine Conservation Agreements and Community Involvement in Frenchman Bay and the Gulf of Maine
    Eelgrass beds along the coast of Maine provide vital ecosystem services, yet their coverage has declined in recent years. In areas with good water quality, this decline may be due primarily to commercial dragging. Working collaboratively with community partners, including a commercial mussel grower, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Bar Harbor, Maine, has been restoring eelgrass beds in Frenchman Bay since 2007 while conducting research on restoration methods and the ecological value of restored eelgrass. Since there is no formal way to establish restoration areas in Maine, informal marine conservation agreements with local mussel harvesters make eelgrass restoration possible. MDIBL is now partnering with multiple stakeholders from the Frenchman Bay area to create a Conservation Action Plan for the bay. As an outcome of the plan, stakeholders will take responsibility for protecting the habitats that sustain the fisheries on which the local economy depends.
    Purpose: Economic activity has led to the degradation of eelgrass beds in the Gulf of Maine and resulted in economic imbalances. MDIBL is investigating the causes of this imbalance through scientific research into the ecological role of eelgrass. We have also dramatically increased communication among Frenchman Bay stakeholders, including the fishing and mussel dragging communities. Discussion among the stakeholders and the dissemination of research findings through stakeholder meetings, community education and activism, and the media is leading to an increased awareness of these economic imbalances and the importance of eelgrass to all fisheries. Decisions about protected areas are ultimately market-based. Scientists and other participants at stakeholder meetings consider research data and maps and suggest various areas; the exact location and boundaries of protected areas are determined by the draggers themselves, based on their knowledge of which areas are most profitable for them.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Expanding Eelgrass Conservation in Frenchman Bay: Exploring Market-Based Solutions and New Partnerships
    The purpose of this project is to expand the eelgrass restoration project in Frenchman Bay (see map). We will use improved methods and formalize our conservation agreements with mussel harvesters to protect both restoration sites and areas from which we derive transplants. Eelgrass was identified by Frenchman Bay Partners as one of four conservation targets during a bay planning process in 2011. The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) has played a leadership role in the Frenchman Bay Partners since its inception, using our eelgrass restoration effort as a model for the types of collaborative projects that are possible in Frenchman Bay. Having learned about market-based strategies for coral reef restoration at a workshop in Key Largo earlier this year, MDIBL would like to bring one of the workshop participants to Mt. Desert Island to meet with the Frenchman Bay Partners and explore how a market-based approach might help conserve and protect habitats in Frenchman Bay.
    Purpose: MDIBL continues to research the ecological role of restored eelgrass. Eelgrass in upper Frenchman Bay is used as a substrate for juvenile mussels. As wild mussel harvesters continue to impact existing and potential eelgrass habitat by indiscriminate dragging, they negatively affect their own resource and affect the availability of mussel seed for both bottom mussel aquaculture and rope aquaculture industries in the bay. By engaging these harvesters as stakeholders in the future of Frenchman Bay and educating them about the importance of conserving and restoring essential habitat, we will tip the balance toward a more ecologically and economically sustainable bay. Tundi Agardy from Sound Seas has agreed to visit Mt. Desert Island and share with local stakeholders what she has learned in other areas and explore with us the viability of market based solutions to conservation in Frenchman Bay.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Decision Support Tools to Protect Valued Ecosystem Services
    The purpose of this project is to solicit additional stakeholder input in refining our newly created Ecosystem Services Value (ESV) decision support tool that will help people around the bay balance ecological, social and economic considerations when participating in marine management and land use decisions that may impact the bay. We plan to create an online version of the decision support tool development process and reach out to stakeholders who have not yet provided input into the model. Additional input will strengthen the ESV tool and generate more buy in to the model. Then, we will develop one case study to test the efficacy of the decision support tool. By contributing input into the model and seeing how it is applied in a community context, people will be more likely to use the tool for decision making in the future.
    Purpose: Investigate Causes of Economic Imbalances: Economic imbalances exist in Frenchman Bay where eelgrass habitat has been lost, mudflats are closed due to pollution, benthic (bottom) habitats have been disrupted, and fish runs have been impeded. An important step toward correcting imbalances is engaging stakeholders in identifying ecosystem services and their values and in discussing market-based systems to efficiently sustain these values.

    Explore and Develop Market-Based Solutions: We plan to solicit additional input into an Ecosystem Services Values (ESV) decision support tool for Frenchman Bay. We will target diverse stakeholders who have not previously been involved with Frenchman Bay Partners, in particular, those who benefit most from the bay’s ecosystem services, so that they will have investment in the ESV tool and be likely to use it to make decisions. We will pilot the tool with one community planning project that is likely to result in conservation actions.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Ocean Acidification Mitigation in Eelgrass Beds in Frenchman Bay
    Ocean acidification is of concern in the state of Maine, as it has the potential to negatively impact economically important marine resources such as softshell clams and mussels with 2013 landings values of $16,915,005 and $2,340,965, respectively. Maine has responded to the growing threat of ocean acidification by creating the nation’s first Ocean Acidification Task Force. The task force released a report in 2015 with several major goals. One of the goals is to “Increase Maine’s Capacity to Mitigate, Remediate, and Adapt to Impacts of Ocean Acidification” with recommendations to “preserve, enhance, and manage a sustainable harvest of kelp, rockweed, and native algae...and preserve and enhance eelgrass beds.” There are no available data for the state of Maine on carbon sequestration rates of eelgrass or its impacts on ocean pH. We plan to collect this information in 2016; our findings may help to inform decision making at the state level regarding conservation of eelgrass beds.
    Purpose: Investigate Causes of Economic Imbalances: Economic imbalances exist in Frenchman Bay and elsewhere in the state of Maine where the impacts of ocean acidification have the potential to destroy a nearly seventeen-million-dollar softshell clam industry and over two-million-dollar blue mussel industry. Explore and Develop Market-Based Solutions: We plan to collect carbon sequestration and pH data that may help to build the case for protection of eelgrass in Maine. If we are able to effectively connect the dots between eelgrass carbon sequestration rates, mitigation of ocean acidification, and healthy softshell clam populations, we may be able to conserve eelgrass areas that provide a plethora of other highly valued ecosystem services such as nursery habitat, nutrient uptake, sediment stabilization, and absorption of wave energy.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Securing Protection for Eelgrass Beds: Overcoming Economic Imbalances through Submerged Land Leases in Frenchman’s Bay and the Gulf of Maine
    Eelgrass beds in the subtidal zone along the Atlantic coastline provide vital but undervalued ecosystem services, yet their coverage has declined precipitously over the past twenty years. In areas with good water quality, this decline may be due primarily to dragging by commercial mussel harvesters. Working collaboratively with local community groups and a commercial mussel grower, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL) in Bar Harbor, Maine, has been restoring an eelgrass bed in a pilot project over the past three years while conducting scientific research on restoration techniques and the ecological value of eelgrass. MDIBL is now partnering with The Nature Conservancy to create a model for establishing conservation agreements based on a process that explores and develops market-based solutions in collaboration with local fishing communities and regulatory agencies.
    Purpose: Economic activity has led to the degradation of eelgrass beds in the Gulf of Maine and resulted in economic imbalances. One species is being harvested and sold at the expense of the important but undervalued ecosystem services eelgrass provides to other species and water quality. MDIBL will investigate the causes of this imbalance through scientific research into the ecological role of eelgrass. Partnering with The Nature Conservancy, we will also investigate the role of current marine policies in perpetuating these economic imbalances. In collaboration with The Nature Conservancy, policy makers, other marine non-profits and the fishing community, we will seek an equitable means of establishing submerged land leases for research and conservation purposes. Market-based solutions are an effective way to create the necessary buy-in from those who use a resource, and such solutions will be explored and developed to the fullest extent possible.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Monteverde Conservation League & Children's Eternal Rainforest
    Emergency Funds to Conserve the Children’s Eternal Rainforest, Costa Rica
    Costa Rica has a payment for ecosystem services program that helps support The Children’s Eternal Rainforest. This 22,600-hectare reserve plays a critical role in conserving Costa Rica’s biodiversity. It provides water for communities and hydroelectricity and is the center of a block of protected areas that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to the region annually. Other important income for protecting the CER comes from visitation by ecotourists and students. A $51,500 grant from the Walker Foundation in 1993 helped fund the construction of the San Gerardo Field Station with the goal of generating ecotourism revenue. However, the economic crisis caused by the COVID19 pandemic has triggered a sudden, complete lack of tourist-derived income, putting the very existence of the CER at risk. We request $50,000 in emergency funding to ensure the survival of the CER until our market-based revenue sources stabilize and new sources of income can be developed.
    Purpose: The Children's Eternal Rainforest is an essential component of what creates a market-based economy centered on ecotourism and academic groups. Reciprocally, part of that economic activity helps to make the CER sustainable (in normal, non-pandemic times), and in turn, as a direct result, protect one the world's biodiversity hotspots, provide water for hundreds of communities and farms downstream, as well as for about a half dozen hydroelectricity projects that produce roughly a third to half Costa Rica's electricity, depending on the season. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted local, national, and international economies, significant reducing income from ecotourism in Costa Rica, while also reducing government support for conservation activities.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Maximizing ecosystem services and biodiversity protection for future land acquisitions of the Children’s Eternal Rainforest (Bosque Eterno de los Niños, “BEN”)
    This project will use Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques to analyze future land purchases for the Children’s Eternal Rainforest (BEN) that maximize environmental and societal benefits. Currently, BEN and other protected areas in the Tilarán Mountains exist as islands of habitat, resulting in fragmentation that threatens the long-term survival of many species. The project will identify the lands surrounding BEN with the highest conservation and ecosystem services provisioning values. We anticipate this will include forested land; land with disproportionately high species diversity; poorly protected life zones; and areas with steep slopes that erode easily. Once these areas have been identified, we will develop a long-term protection plan with the combined goals of maximizing biodiversity protection, physically connecting BEN to other protected areas, increasing ecosystem services locally and globally, and increasing the sustainability of the ecotourism market.
    Purpose: The BEN creates a market-based economy centered on ecotourism and education by attracting numerous tourists and student groups. The BEN is the centerpiece of a protected area connecting Monteverde and La Fortuna, locations that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Tourism has important direct and indirect economic effects on communities and is a great example of how biodiversity protection improves people's lives. With almost every family in some way associated with the ecotourism economy (some indirect, but many direct), support for conservation is strong. Since the BEN also protects soil, regulates water supply, and improves air quality, the ecosystem services extend well beyond its physical boundaries, providing benefits to hydroelectric generation, agriculture, and general quality of life. Improving biodiversity protection and ecosystem services for the future will help ensure a strong conservation-based economy and continue to improve the communities of the region.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   National Wildlife Federation
    Wildlife Conflict Resolution Program 2020
    The National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Wildlife Conflict Resolution program (WCR) resolves conflicts between wildlife and livestock through the market-based approach of compensating ranchers for retiring high conflict grazing leases on federal land. In addition to helping restore populations of threatened wildlife, removing grazing from large acreages is a key strategy to restoring healthy, ecological functional landscapes. Thanks to over a decade of funding from the Walker Foundation, the WCR team has retired over 75 grazing allotments totaling over 1.5 million acres, 85% of which are in the Northern Rockies. In an effort to export this success to other large landscapes, in 2017 NWF launched the WCR Southern Rockies, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin state of Colorado program. Since that time, we have retired over 150,000 acres of grazing allotments in this new geography. Last year, a generous grant from the Walker Foundation provided essential staff support for this work.
    Purpose: Acute conflicts between livestock and wildlife on public lands have existed for decades. In the most common approach to resolve these conflicts, conservation NGOs have litigated with the goal of forcing the federal agencies to cancel high conflict grazing allotments. As an alternative, NWF developed a market-based approach that recognizes the economic value of grazing allotment permits and offers compensation to ranchers for waiving those permits. Conservation NGOs are not allowed to acquire grazing permits for the sole use of conservation or other words, if an NGOs acquires a permit, it is required to stock it with livestock. Instead of acquiring grazing permits, NWF recognizes the value of a grazing permit and offers market-rate based compensation for that permit to the rancher in exchange for waiving the permit. We then receive assurances from the land management agency (usually the US Forest Service of the Bureau of Land Management) that the allotment will not be restocked.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Wildlife Conflict Resolution Program 2021
    The National Wildlife Federation’s (NWF) Wildlife Conflict Resolution program (WCR) resolves conflicts between wildlife and livestock through the market-based approach of compensating ranchers for retiring high conflict grazing leases on federal land. In addition to helping restore populations of threatened wildlife, removing grazing from large acreages is a key strategy to restoring healthy, ecological functional landscapes. Thanks to over a decade of funding from the Walker Foundation, the WCR team has retired over 75 grazing allotments totaling over 1.5 million acres. Over 85% of these acres are in the Northern Rockies and has been credited as a significant element in a multi-decade effort to restore the ecological integrity of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. In 2017 NWF launched the WCR Southern Rockies, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin state of Colorado program and a new element of our work in the coming year will be to support the reintroduction of wolves to the state.
    Purpose: Intractable conflicts between livestock and wildlife on public lands has existed for decades. In the past, NGO's has used litigation as a way to force the land management agencies to close high conflict grazing allotments. Beginning in 2001, NWF began using a market-based approach that recognized the economic value of grazing permits and offer to compensate ranchers for waiving their permit. We then receive assurances for from the agency that the allotment will not be restocked with livestock.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Wildlife Conflict Resolution and Western Waters Program 2022/2023
    The NWF Wildlife Conflict Resolution program resolves conflicts between wildlife and livestock through the market-based approach of compensating ranchers for retiring high conflict grazing leases on federal land. Thanks to over a decade of funding from the Walker Foundation,we have retired over 75 grazing allotments totaling over 1.6 million acres. In 2017 NWF launched the WCR Southern Rockies, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin program and in the coming year we will pilot a new strategy in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah that we are describing as "AUM buy-downs." We are also launching the Western Waters Program that will largely focus on restoration of Colorado River Basin watersheds using beaver analog structures also known as Low Tech Process Restoration. This work will seek to institutionalize LTPBR in the Bureau of Land Management and to prioritize the retirement of grazing allotments that significantly impact downstream water quantity and quality.
    Purpose: Beginning in 2001, NWF began using a market-based approach that recognized the economic value of grazing permits and offer to compensate ranchers for waiving their permit. We then receive assurances for from the agency that the allotment will not be restocked with livestock. In an effort to constantly innovate, we will adapt our allotment retirement model in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by testing what we are calling "AUM buy-downs." In addition, with the launch of the Western Waters Program, we will scale-up a key natural infrastructure river restoration strategy in the Colorado Basin. Although much of the work will be focused on an effort to institutionalize LTPBR tools in BLM to increase water storage and habitat restoration, the program will expand the market-based strategies used by the WCR program to reduce grazing pressure in areas that will most benefit aquatic and riparian habitat restoration as well as water storage, downstream flows and water quality.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Wildlife Conflict Resolution Program 2019
    The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) resolves conflicts between wildlife and livestock through the market-based approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring wildlife populations has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 70 grazing allotments, totaling approximately 1.3 million acres. This approach establishes an important national model for resolving chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock. Following the success of the program in the Northern Rockies, in 2017 NWF decided to expand the scope of the project to the Southern Rockies, the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah.
    Purpose: As a matter of law, wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands. As a result the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up. NWF's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market- based solution for resolving these conflicts.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Wildlife Conflict Resolution Project (Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge)
    The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring wildlife populations has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 30 grazing allotments in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling more than half a million acres. More recently, NWF experimented with an auction concept to retire grazing permits on the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR). NWF has now retired 60,000 acres of important wildlife habitat on the CMR. This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
    Purpose: Because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands, the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up.
    NWF's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market-based solution for resolving these conflicts. To the extent ranchers typically use the payments provided to them by NWF to secure new grazing in an area without wildlife conflicts, this approach provides benefits for both parties.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • 2008 Wildlife Conflict Resolution Project/Dunoir Grazing Allotment
    NWF resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring populations of large predators, such as wolves and grizzlies, has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 30 grazing allotments in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling more than half a million acres. This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
    Purpose: Because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands, the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach works because it recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up.
    The National Wildlife Federation's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market-based solution for resolving these conflicts. To the extent ranchers typically use the payments provided to them by NWF to secure new grazing in an area without wildlife conflicts, this approach provides benefits for both parties.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Grazing Retirement Auction on the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge
    The National Wildlife Federation resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring populations of large predators, such as wolves and grizzlies, has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 30 grazing allotments in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling more than half a million acres. More recently, NWF has experimented with an auction concept to retire grazing permits on the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
    Purpose: Because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands, the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up.
    NWF's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market-based solution for resolving these conflicts. To the extent ranchers typically use the payments provided to them by NWF to secure new grazing in an area without wildlife conflicts, this approach provides benefits for both parties.
    Our current project on the C.M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge employs an auction approach in an effort to make our grazing retirements more efficient and less costly.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Wildlife Conflict Resolution Project (Bacon Creek/Fish Creek grazing allotments)
    In coordination with federal land managers, NWF negotiates with livestock producers to retire livestock grazing allotments on public lands that experience chronic conflict with wildlife, especially wolves and grizzly bears. This market approach recognizes the economic value of livestock grazing permits and fairly compensates producers for retiring their leases. It also addresses the economic imbalance that exists because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands. This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
    Purpose: Because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands, the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach works because it recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up. The National Wildlife Federation's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market-based solution for resolving these conflicts. To the extent ranchers typically use the payments provided to them by NWF to secure new grazing in an area without wildlife conflicts, this approach provides benefits for both parties.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Grazing Retirement Project
    Our goal is to promote the conservation of wolves, grizzly bears, bison, bighorn sheep and other wildlife in the Yellowstone Ecosystem by eliminating chronic conflicts with domestic livestock. We will accomplish this by providing livestock permittees with an incentive payment in exchange for their agreement to permanently retire grazing allotments.
    Purpose: Conservation groups have been attempting to change grazing patterns on public lands for the last several decades. The standard approach has been to pressure land management agencies to make administrative decisions to close grazing allotments that experience chronic conflict with wildlife. While that has sometimes succeeded, by and large it has been a failed strategy. We believe it fails because conservation groups have failed to recognize that grazing permits have economic value. When the government cancels a valid permit without compensation, it can cause economic hardship to the livestock producer. Our approach recognizes that grazing permits have economic value. We pay the grazing permittees the market value of the permits in exchange for their agreement to sign a waiver giving up their grazing priveleges. Concurrently we work with the land management agency to ensure the allotments are permanently retired.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Wildlife Conflict Resolution Project 2015
    The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring wildlife populations has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 37 grazing allotments in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling approximately 650,000 acres. NWF has also retired nearly 65,000 acres of important wildlife habitat on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR). In addition, NWF has launched a bighorn sheep campaign, focused on retiring grazing allotments (largely ID, MT and WY) where disease conflicts have occured between domestic sheep and wild sheep. We believe this approach establishes an important new national model for resolving chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
    Purpose: Because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands, the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up. NWF's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market-based solution for resolving these conflicts. To the extent ranchers typically use the payments provided to them by NWF to secure new grazing in an area without wildlife conflicts, this approach provides benefits for both parties.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • National Wildlife Federation Wildlife Conflict Resolution Project 2013-14
    The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring wildlife populations has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 34 grazing allotments in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling approximately 600,000 acres. NWF has also retired nearly 65,000 acres of important wildlife habitat on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR). This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
    Purpose: Because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands, the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up. NWF's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market-based solution for resolving these conflicts. To the extent ranchers typically use the payments provided to them by NWF to secure new grazing in an area without wildlife conflicts, this approach provides benefits for both parties.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • NWF Wildlife Conflict Resolution 2011-2012
    The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) resolves conflict between wildlife and livestock through the market approach of compensating ranchers for retiring problematic grazing leases on federal land. Restoring wildlife populations has been linked to recovering healthy, functioning ecosystems in the Northern Rockies. Thanks to the Walker Foundation and other funders, NWF has been able to retire 33 grazing allotments (and the 34th pending) in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, totaling nearly 600,000 acres. NWF has also retired nearly 65,000 acres of important wildlife habitat on the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR). This approach establishes an important new national model for resolving chronic conflicts between wildlife and livestock.
    Purpose: Because wildlife conservation interests are not allowed to compete with livestock producers for grazing leases on public lands, the market system is constrained from finding an appropriate balance between the need for livestock grazing and the need for wildlife. Our approach recognizes the economic value of grazing permits and compensates livestock producers fairly for giving them up. NWF's approach of paying ranchers to retire grazing leases where there is chronic conflict between livestock and wildlife provides a market-based solution for resolving these conflicts. To the extent ranchers typically use the payments provided to them by NWF to secure new grazing in an area without wildlife conflicts, this approach provides benefits for both parties.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   National Wildlife Federation - Alaska Office
    Prince William Sound Project: Building an Economic Foundation for Lasting Public Stewardship
    Tourism is both the best economic hope for Prince William Sound's residents and the greatest threat to its environment and quality of life. While tourism is likely to be the growth industry of the future, environmental policies do not force tourism operators to bear the costs of their use of Prince William Sound's environment and the market does not reward businesses that operate sustainably. Consequently, there is an economic imbalance that is eroding the environmental health of Prince William Sound and the quality of life of its communities. This project seeks to make sustainable tourism practices more profitable while demonstrating the connection between protecting the environment and a healthy economy.
    Purpose: While sustainable tourism practices are often expensive, tourism operators generally receive little financial reward for their efforts to protect the environment and quality of life in local communities. Although many visitors are willing to pay more to patronize truly sustainable businesses, the vast majority of visitors do not have enough information to confidently identify sustainable operators or to recognize sustainable practices.
    This project attempts to address the problem by educating the public about sustainable tourism, developing a regional infrastructure supporting sustainable practices, building a healthy and accountable sustainable tourism industry, marketing sustainable tourism to potential visitors to Prince William Sound, and encouraging public lands management that favors sustainable tourism practices.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Sustainable Tourism Certification Project - Prince William Sound
    Tourism is both the best economic hope for Prince William Sound residents and the greatest threat to the Prince William Sound environment and the quality of life of Prince William Sound communities. Unfortunately, current environmental regulations do not force tourism operators to bear the costs of their use of the Sound environment, and the market does not reward businesses that operate sustainably. The resulting economic imbalance is eroding the environmental health of Prince William Sound and the quality of life of Prince William Sound communities. This project creates a sustainable tourism operator certification and accompanying marketing infrastructure to encourage sustainable tourism and to build a powerful local constituency with a strong economic stake in protecting the Prince William Sound environment. Ultimately, it should be a model for certification nation-wide.
    Purpose: Tourism will be the future driver of the Prince William Sound economy, but the tourism market does not reward sustainable operations. It is our premise that the market does not reward sustainable tourism operators because most travellers lack information from trusted sources about who is operating sustainably. This project attempts to use a market-based solution to overcome that information gap by creating and marketing a sustainable tourism certification to increase demand for certified tourism vendors. The certification should protect Prince William Sound by increasing the number of tourism vendors who operate sustainably and, ultimately, by creating a larger and more economically powerful constituency with an interest in enacting regulations that prevent other operators and industries from unsustainably exploiting the environment.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Niskanen Center
    Defending Against Eminent Domain Abuse and Nuisance by Fossil Fuel Industry
    Lawyers representing affected Texas landowners asked us to assist in litigation strategy against the proposed Kinder Morgan Permian Highway Pipeline ("PHP"), 430-miles from the Waha, Texas, area to the Gulf Coast and Mexico markets. We are now working on three separate, but extremely intertwined, cases: a state court case against the Texas Railroad Commission on the grounds that PHP is not a "public use" under the Texas Constitution's Takings Clause, along with federal and state Due Process claims based on the lack of any state oversight for pipeline siting; a case against the Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and possibly other federal agencies in federal court for their failure to require NEPA analysis for PHP; and a case against Kinder Morgan and possibly FERC in federal court arguing that PHP is not an intrastate pipeline subject only to the Texas regulatory regime, but an interstate pipeline subject to FERC's jurisdiction.
    Purpose: A victory on the public use and/or Due Process claims, or a decision holding that PHP is an interstate pipeline, would not only stop PHP, but have huge ramifications for every intrastate pipeline in Texas. These are the two of the three cases in which Niskanen would appear publicly as counsel; we would not appear as counsel in the NEPA case as that raises only environmental issues outside of Niskanen's interests.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Defending against eminent domain abuse by fossil fuel industries
    Pipeline companies are taking property from landowners by using eminent domain authority. Our goal is to litigate cases where favorable decisions could then be used as the basis of challenging pipelines across the country, including cases to establish that pipelines supplying LNG export facilities do not have eminent domain authority; challenging FERC’s practice of delegating its constitutional and statutory obligations to provide notice to landowners that a pipeline wants to take their property; challenging FERC’s authority to approve a pipeline before the pipeline has obtained other required federal approvals; challenging the industry practice of dubbing pipelines "intrastate" in order to avoid the more rigorous NGA review and permitting scheme; requiring pipelines that abandon a project to return land taken to property owners or at least restore it to its pre-construction state; and challenging the ability of pipelines to take possession of property before they pay for it.
    Purpose: Eminent domain is an infringement of private property rights and a subsidy for oil and gas industries; both of these are characteristics that undermine free market principles. It is also an example of the huge disparity in the relative bargaining positions of pipeline companies and landowners. Pipeline companies have vast resources, and build pipelines where the land is cheap, which means where the people are poor, and eminent domain gives the pipelines the virtually unfettered ability to dictate terms to landowners. We are working all three branches of government to address these problems. We are litigating multiple cases to get courts to remedy the problems that are susceptible to judicial resolution. We have drafted amendments to the NGA that would eliminate these problems, and have launched an advocacy campaign to educate Members of Congress regarding the principled issues in play that should compel those that care about property rights to support reforms.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Niskanen Center Carbon Tax Advocacy Campaign
    The Niskanen Center is aware of the Walker Foundation’s support of the Center for Sustainable Economy’s research on the market impacts of ocean acidification and the incorporation of those impacts into the social cost of carbon. Niskanen will consult with CSE staff as they perform research, review and provide feedback on work products, and assist with personal outreach and the communication of results with our network in Washington. This project will investigate whether the preferred market solution advocated by the Niskanen Center, namely a carbon tax, is also an effective remedy for the effects of ocean acidification.
    Purpose: • In addressing the myriad issues associated with climate change, Niskanen has a strong bias towards market oriented, as opposed to regulatory, solutions. This project will investigage whether the preferred market solution advocated by the Niskanen Center, namely a carbon tax, is also an effective remedy for the effects of ocean acidification.
    • Niskanen is a natural partner for the CSE—and for Walker—because it already has an effective and successful media outreach effort. Niskanen staff has been able to place related articles in a wide array of prestigious newspapers, journals, and blogs.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Climate Litigation Initiative
    The explosion in U.S. shale gas and shale oil has caused an unprecedented building spree of oil and gas pipelines. Because Niskanen has a strong commitment to free market principles and the protection of property rights, it is perfectly situated to lead legal efforts to fight use of eminent domain by pipeline companies.
    Purpose: At Niskanen Center, we are convinced that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, and that it poses significant risk. While we acknowledge that global warming can produce a wide range of possible outcomes—from modest to catastrophic—we believe that any reasonable risk management response points toward rapid decarbonization. Accordingly, we educate policy actors about climate science and directly confront climate skeptics while also promoting ambitious, market-oriented policy responses to climate change.
    Niskanen is perfectly positioned to engage in this legal work because many libertarians and hardline conservatives have long argued that disputes surrounding pollution are often best handled via common law tort liability than via legislation and regulation (which leaves individual rights and property rights hostage to political considerations regarding the public good).
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Niskanen Center’s Climate Policy and Litigation Initiatives
    Compelling government responses to climate risks and defending property rights from fossil-fuel infrastructure eminent-domain claims.
    Purpose: Investigate the causes of economic imbalances, particularly in relation to ecosystem services, climate change, energy security, and other environmental matters.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
    • Climate Common Law Nuisance Litigation Campaign and Eminent Domain Litigation to Prevent Abuse
    We are co-counsel representing several municipalities in the first such case to be brought in a "purple state" (Boulder County and San Miguel County, along with the city of Boulder). This is the first case where the impacts beyond sea-level rise, e.g., drought, wildfires, flooding from extreme precipitation, etc., will be front and center.
    Purpose: Damages from climate change are driven by industrial emission, and the products manufactured by the oil industry are the source of much of those emissions. The costs are imposed on people around the globe, and those damages will only get larger and more severe over time. Climate change-related litigation risks have the potential to act as both a material driver, and consequence, of the energy transition. Climate litigation risks are material for potential defendants. First, claims have a direct impact on earnings and liabilities. Thus, risk exposure should factor into discount rates, and as a key driver in ratings metrics or outlooks. Also, regulatory scrutiny can cause significant reputational damage, loss of political/social capital, market exclusions and restriction of insurances, and provide a platform for subsequent private damages settlements. Finally, emerging claims patterns can drive industry-wide strategic pivots as regulators tighten rules and disclosure requirements.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Major statutory and constitutional claims against natural gas pipelines
    Pipeline companies are taking property from landowners by using eminent domain authority granted by either state law for intrastate pipelines or the federal Natural Gas Act (NGA) for interstate ones.
    Purpose: A victory on the public use and/or Due Process claims we are litigating, or a decision holding that a pipeline is an interstate not intrastate pipeline, would not only stop such a pipeline, but have huge ramifications for every intrastate pipeline in selected state.
    We have drafted model legislation to amend the NGA that would eliminate the worst of the problems. We launched an advocacy campaign aimed at educating Members on Capitol Hill regarding the principled issues in play that should compel those that care about property rights to support reforming the NGA, and in the course of that have presented two panel briefings (one House and one Senate) for Hill staff.
    We're looking to remedy some problems by asking FERC to change its eminent domain regulatory regime.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    • Defending against eminent domain abuse by fossil fuel industries
    The explosion in U.S. shale gas and shale oil has caused an unprecedented building spree of oil and gas pipelines. Our concern is that massive investment in pipeline infrastructure may become the largest impediment to transitioning to renewable power. One of the ways to prevent this is by curtailing the ability of pipeline companies to use eminent domain to take property. Because Niskanen has a strong commitment to free market principles and the protection of property rights, it is perfectly situated to lead such legal efforts, and we believe it is extremely important for courts to hear from a pro-market, right-of-center organization that focuses on property rights issues around pipelines, and not exclusively on their environmental impacts.
    Purpose: A victory on the public use and/or Due Process claims we are litigating, or a decision holding that a pipeline is an interstate not intrastate pipeline, would not only stop such a pipeline, but have huge ramifications for every intrastate pipeline in selected state.
    We have drafted model legislation to amend the NGA that would eliminate the worst of the problems. We launched an advocacy campaign aimed at educating Members on Capitol Hill regarding the principled issues in play that should compel those that care about property rights to support reforming the NGA, and in the course of that have presented two panel briefings (one House and one Senate) for Hill staff.
    We are looking to remedy some problems by asking FERC to change its eminent domain regulatory regime.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Modeling the Impact of Carbon Tax Revenue Recycling
    A carbon price, or tax, is an essential part of a market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By pursuing original research on novel implementations of carbon pricing revenue swaps and reporting the results, our work will address the following goals of the Walker Foundation: "explore and develop market-based solutions" and "disseminate information on the results and findings."
    Purpose: With support of the Walker Foundation, the Niskanen Center will commission a new study, to be done with external collaborators, to study how tax reform coinciding with the levying of a carbon tax price can meet new fiscal policy objectives that have trans-partisan support. Examples include expansion of the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. Similar tax reforms have successfully been used to compensate for the regressivity of motor fuel excise taxes and could be implemented again in the coming years alongside a carbon tax. The study will assess both how carbon tax revenue could be used to expand these targeted benefits and how those targeted benefits would modify the distributional and economic impact of the carbon tax, in a way that previous studies have assessed the impacts of policies like carbon dividends or reductions in payroll tax rates.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   OneReef
    A Market-Based Private Revenue Stream to Support Coral Reefs
    Working with Richard Thaler and the University of Chicago, we will set the stage to pilot and test a new market-based model for generating private revenues to support coral reefs. The new private stream is needed to co-finance long-term agreements under an emerging public-private partnership in Palau.
    Purpose: An economic imbalance occurs because many people value the existence of coral reefs but as yet do not exercise those values by contributing to beneficial management and protection. Ultimately, we will leverage the corporate and finance sector to create a way for those who value the existence of reefs to contribute in ways that are beneficial to all parties. In essence, we will apply the user pays principle, extending it to "non-consumptive" use of coral reefs by those willing to contribute to continued existence of coral reefs.
  •   OneReef
    Negotiating a National-Scale Agreement for Palau
    OneReef is creating a portfolio of marine conservation agreements across Micronesia that provide services and co-financing needed by local stewards. As a next step toward scaling our model under an efficient finance plan, we will negotiate a national-scale agreement with the Republic of Palau. The agreement will allow us to consolidate our work under the Office of the President, and explicitly align our funding with public funds generated through tourism user fees. Politically, the agreement will allow us to institute greater financial leverage through explicit arrangements not only with local communities, but also with Palau's national government. In effect, it allows us to better utilize support from President Remengesau to raise private funds and capitalize working capital funds that can be used to create financial incentives for greater and more secure investment of public resources to maintain Palau's unique environment.
    Purpose: Coral reefs are among the biologically richest ecosystems on the planet; moreover, they are instrumental in attracting more than 125,000 tourists to Palau annually.
    Yet, none of the economic proceeds from the tourism sector in Palau are re-invested in management of coral reef ecosystems to ensure their capacity to continue attracting (and feeding) tourists, and provide economic benefits to the people of Palau.
    Palau has started to correct this imbalance by instituting a tourism user fee that by law must be re-invested in ways that support environmental management. However, communities who manage reefs still need greater access to technical support, and greater financial predictability and security.
    This is an important step toward building on this success by attracting and combining additional private funds under a master agreement that can be expanded over time to incorporate more communities and the growing global community who value healthy reefs.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • OneReef Ecosystem Finance Mechanism for Micronesia
    OneReef works to develop efficient, sustainable financing opportunities for Micronesian communities that want to protect their coral reefs. In the face of climate change, we work with private and public entities to capture “willingness to pay” (WTP) for conservation, and create long-term management partnerships with committed local communities to build scientific, enforcement, and community engagement programs to protect coral reefs. In Palau, we are creating a financing opportunity that leverages public funds, e.g. the “Green Fee,” with private philanthropy to support such long-term conservation projects. This financing model can provide benefits far into the future, and inspire nearby nations to create similar conservation structures to protect their valuable marine resources.
    Purpose: (1) Investigate the causes of economic imbalances
    The project specifically works with communities to create contracts that protect marine resources while mitigating the effects of climate change on coral reef habitats. OneReef will connect government “Green Fee” resources, which are explicitly designated for the protection of coral ecosystems, with communities that have demonstrated commitment but lack funding to sustainably leverage investments.
    (2) Explore and develop market-based solutions
    If successful, OneReef will establish a public private partnership solution to funding coral reef preservation, creating a self-sustaining source of funds for MCA development.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   OneReef
    Demonstrating the impact of OneReef’s Marine Conservation Agreements in the Pacific
    OneReef is putting an entrepreneurial solution in place that fosters climate change adaptation in places where immediate coral reef stressors can be brought under control. OneReef works with Pacific Islanders who own coral reefs and are committed to protecting and adaptively managing them, but do not have the necessary financial, technical, and scientific resources. We provide those resources in a way that rewards good performance, leverages multiple financing sources, and verifies outcomes.
    Purpose: (1) investigate the causes of economic imbalances, particularly in relation to ecosystem services, climate change, food production, and other environmental matters -The project specifically works with communities to create contracts that protect marine resources while mitigating the effects of climate change on coral reef habitats.
    (4) explore and develop market-based solutions -If successful, OneReef will establish a market-based solution to funding coral reef preservation, creating a self-sustaining source of funds for our activities.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Conservation Finance Mechanism for Coral Reef Preservation in Palau and the Pacific
    OneReef is putting an entrepreneurial solution in place that fosters climate change adaptation in places where immediate coral reef stressors can be brought under control. OneReef works with Pacific Islanders who own coral reefs. The project objective is to establish an endowment and a conservation investment offering which would fund operations long-term.
    Purpose: The project meets Walker Foundation’s principles of:
    (1) investigate the causes of economic imbalances, particularly in relation to ecosystem services, climate change, food production, and other environmental matters -The project specifically works with communities to create contracts that protect marine resources while mitigating the effects of climate change on coral reef habitats (4) explore and develop market-based solutions -If successful, OneReef will establish a market-based solution to funding coral reef preservation, creating a self-sustaining source of funds for our activities
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   OneReef
    Ecosystem Finance Mechanism for Micronesia
    We will continue to develop an efficient and diversified long-term funding mechanism that aligns multiple funding sources, creates financial reserves, and services OneReef’s Marine Conservation Agreements (MCAs) for 20 years or more.
    Purpose: Enabling Palau's state investment in MCAs is directly aligned with the Walker Foundation’s goals:
    Goal 1: The project specifically works with communities to create contracts that protect marine resources while mitigating the effects of climate change on coral reef habitats. OneReef will connect state resources, including tourism "Green fees" which are explicitly designated for the protection of coral ecosystems, with communities that have demonstrated commitment but lack funding to sustainably leverage investments.
    Goal 4: If successful, OneReef will establish a market-based solution to funding coral reef preservation, creating a self-sustaining source of funds for MCA development that leverages state investments and global funders.
    Goal 5: OneReef continues to develop new communication channels and synthesize and add to existing marketing collateral (e.g. images, clips, newsletters) which contribute to the dissemination of project information and results
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • OneReef Ecosystem Finance Mechanism for Micronesia
    OneReef works to develop efficient, sustainable financing opportunities for Micronesian communities that want to protect their coral reefs. Many small-island nations are threatened by the combined impacts of climate change and human activity, and OneReef works closely with committed local partners to build scientific, enforcement, and community engagement programs to protect their valuable reef ecosystems. In Palau, we are creating a financing opportunity that leverages public funds, via the “Green Fee,” with private philanthropy to support long-term conservation projects. This model can provide benefits far into the future, and inspire other Pacific Island nations to create similar conservation structures to protect their valuable marine resources.
    Purpose: (1) investigate the causes of economic imbalances, particularly in relation to ecosystem services, climate change, food production, and other environmental matters
    -The project specifically works with communities to create contracts that protect marine resources while mitigating the effects of climate change on coral reef habitats. OneReef will connect government “Green Fee” resources, which are explicitly designated for the protection of coral ecosystems, with communities that have demonstrated commitment but lack funding to sustainably leverage investments from global supporters.
    (4) explore and develop market-based solutions
    -If successful, OneReef will establish a market-based solution to funding coral reef preservation, creating a self-sustaining source of funds for marine conservation agreement (MCA) development.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Open Space Institute, Inc.
    Citizen Climate Cost Project
    The Citizen Climate Cost Project (CCCP) consists of a high school teaching module that includes an interactive game on the economics of climate change, complementary classroom lesson materials, and an experiential exercise requiring students to go out into their communities and collect stories and data from individuals who have been personally and financially impacted by climate-related events. Students will then synthesize classroom learning and field interviews into a data rich and emotionally affecting capstone video project that will be part of an inter-high school competition.
    The CCCP aims to produce three primary products: 1) a replicable high school teaching module on climate change costs; 2) short videos showing how climate change is personally impacting American communities that can be shared on social media; and 3) the first open access and “bottom up” database on local climate change costs. The project will start with a pilot in three New Jersey high schools.
    Purpose: The project focuses on collecting data on the economic costs of climate change, which impact the productivity and functioning of the market economy in multiple ways. For example, some climate impacts include (but are by no means limited to): damaged natural, social, and physical capital stocks (and therefore economic productivity and growth); straining local, state, and federal budgets in disaster relief; contributing to potential civil unrest and social dislocation (e.g. through increased food prices, displaced workers, migration); supply chain interferences (e.g. transportation disruptions from extreme weather events, water shortages); significant health care costs (e.g. death and injury from extreme weather events, spread of infectious disease); unpriced carbon externalities that artificially subsidize high polluting energy sources over low or zero emission sources.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Climate Cost Data and Documentary Project
    The Climate Cost Project is a data and documentary project to help uncover, understand, and visualize the costs of climate change to American communities. It accomplishes this through the Witnessing Change Video Competition and the Climate Impact Census. The project’s goal is to focus attention toward the local and the present, with multimedia testimony and imagery that illustrate how climate change is already shaping the lives of Americans, and crowd sourced data on economic costs. The project sheds a light on the climate changes that are happing in the United States now, and aims to motivate communities to take positive action to build resilience and mitigate the effects of climate change.
    Purpose: The project focuses on getting estimates for externalities of carbon pollution through collecting data on the economic costs of climate change. These costs impact the productivity and functioning of the market economy in multiple ways, including damages to natural, social, and physical capital stocks; strains on local, state, and federal budgets through disaster relief needs; potential civil unrest and social dislocation (e.g. through increased food prices, displaced workers, migration); supply chain interferences; and health care costs. These un-priced carbon externalities artificially subsidize high polluting energy sources. In terms of exploring and developing market-based solutions to climate change, estimates of climate costs gathered through this project can be used both in research and advocacy to inform appropriate carbon tax levels, which are currently considered to be significantly underestimated by most experts.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Climate Cost Project
    The Climate Cost Project (CCP) consists of a high school teaching module that includes an interactive game on the economics of climate change, complementary classroom lesson materials, and an experiential exercise requiring students to go out into their communities and collect stories and data from individuals who have been personally and financially impacted by climate-related events. Students will then synthesize classroom learning and field interviews into a capstone video project that will be part of an inter-high school competition. The CCP aims to produce three primary products: 1) a replicable high school teaching module on climate change costs; 2) short videos showing how climate change is personally impacting American communities that can be shared on social media; and 3) the first open access and “bottom up” documentation of local climate change costs.
    Purpose: The project focuses on educating students and the public at large about externalities and the social costs of carbon, and collecting data on the economic costs of climate change. These costs impact the productivity and functioning of the market economy in multiple ways. For example, some climate impacts include (but are by no means limited to): damaging natural, social, and physical capital stocks (and therefore economic productivity and growth); straining local, state, and federal budgets in disaster relief; contributing to potential civil unrest and social dislocation (e.g. through increased food prices, displaced workers, migration); supply chain interferences (e.g. transportation disruptions from extreme weather events, water shortages); significant health care costs (e.g. death and injury from extreme weather events, spread of infectious disease); unpriced carbon externalities that artificially subsidize high polluting energy sources over low or zero emission sources.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Oregon Water Trust
    2005 - 2006 Water Rights Acquisition Program
    The Water Rights Acquisition Program increases stream flows for fish conservation, water quality improvements, or recreational use by purchasing, leasing or in other ways acquiring water rights (permits to take water from a stream) from voluntary sellers, mainly farmers, ranchers and private landowners. Our cooperative, free-market approach to water conservation balances the environmental needs of salmon (and other threatened fish species) with the economic needs of farmers and irrigators, and in doing so helps rural communities maintain their resource-focused industries while building local support for river and stream stewardship.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Our Children's Trust
    Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    We support a network of youth, scientists, and experts from multiple disciplines, to bring about macro governmental action at the federal, state, local and global domestic levels that drives systemic market incentives and public policy and places our society on a scientific prescription for atmospheric health and climate stability.
    Purpose: Our work will secure governmental responsibility to implement systemic science-based climate recovery policy at all levels of government. Such policy will drive and foster development of market based solutions to the global atmospheric and climate crisis by securing a necessary realignment of government policy such that financing, taxing, incentive and related government policies favor the economics of and innovation in the area of atmospheric and climate recovery solutions as opposed to the current favoring of atmospheric and climate disruptive practices.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Our Children's Trust: Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    We support a network of youth, scientists, economists and experts from multiple disciplines, to bring about macro governmental action at the federal, state, local and global domestic levels that drives systemic market incentives and public policy to place our society on a scientific prescription for atmospheric health and climate stability.
    Purpose: We explore and advocate for market approaches that promote a sustainable economy and rebalance economics in relation to ecosystem services, climate change, energy security, food production, ocean acidification and other environmental matters.
    Economic imbalances that favor carbon intensive products and that perpetuate environmental degradation continue to dominate our economies. We work toward legal requirements that will drive economic and governmental policy to realign those imbalances toward a sustainable economy and the stabilization of our climate system.
    We seek a judicially mandated, systemic national climate recovery plan that contains market based policies including: realignment of tax incentives and subsidies away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy; establishment of a carbon fee system reflecting the true costs of carbon; allocation of R&D funding to develop the market readiness and economic viability of new and existing technologies.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Our Children's Trust: Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    We support a network of youth, scientists, economists and experts from multiple disciplines, to bring about macro governmental action at the federal, state, local and global domestic levels that drives systemic market incentives and public policy to place our society on a scientific prescription for atmospheric health, climate stability and ocean de-acidification.
    Purpose: We advocate for market approaches that promote a sustainable economy and for economic rebalancing relating to climate change, energy security, food production and other environmental matters.
    Economic imbalances that favor carbon intensive goods and services and perpetuate environmental degradation continue to dominate our economy. Our work secures legal requirements that will drive economic, market-based and governmental policy solutions to realign those imbalances and result in the stabilization of our climate system and de-acidification of our oceans.
    We seek a court ordered systemic, national, science-based climate recovery plan that would include: realignment of tax incentives/subsidies away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy; establishment of a carbon fee system reflecting the honest pricing of carbon; allocation of R&D funding toward innovation to develop market readiness and economic viability of new and existing climate stabilizing technologies; etc.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    We support a network of youth, lawyers and top scientists, economists and experts from around the world in multiple disciplines, to bring about systemic governmental action at the federal, state, and global domestic levels that drives systemic market incentives and public policy to place our society on a scientific prescription for atmospheric health, climate stability and ocean de-acidification.
    Purpose: We explore and advocate for market approaches that promote a sustainable economy as they relate to climate change, energy security, food production and other environmental matters.
    Economic imbalances that favor carbon intensive goods and services continue to dominate our economy. We seek legal requirements to drive economic, market-based and governmental policy solutions that realign those imbalances toward a sustainable economy and stabilization of our climate system.
    We seek a court ordered systemic, national, science-based climate recovery plan that we envision will include critical market based policies including: realignment of tax incentives and subsidies away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy; establishment of a carbon fee system reflecting the true costs of carbon intensive goods and services; allocation of R&D funding toward innovation that develops the market readiness and economic viability of new and existing climate stabilizing technologies; etc.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    Our Children’s Trust (OCT) is a non-profit public interest law firm representing youth around the globe in constitutional, public trust, and human rights legal actions to secure their binding legal rights to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate. This legal work – all guided by constitutional, public trust, human rights laws and the laws of nature – aims to secure systemic climate mitigation planning and remedies at federal, state, and global levels. We seek legally-binding, country and statewide science-based Climate Recovery Plans that will return atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to below 350 parts per million (ppm) by the year 2100: the scientific prescription necessary for a safe climate system.
    Purpose: We support a network of youth, scientists, economists and experts from multiple disciplines, to bring about macro governmental action at the federal, state, and global domestic levels that drives systemic market incentives and public policy to place our society on a scientific prescription for atmospheric health, climate stability and ocean de-acidification.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    We provide strategic legal services to youth from a wide array of backgrounds through a global legal campaign to secure the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate for all present and future generations. We support these young people with legal representation and targeted media, education, and public engagement efforts to support the legal actions. Our legal work – grounded in constitutional, public trust, human rights laws and the laws of nature – aims to secure systemic and science-based climate recovery planning and policies at federal, state, and global levels, including science-based Climate Recovery Plans that will reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations to below 350 parts per million before the year 2100: the scientific prescription for climate stabilization.
    Purpose: We support a network of youth, scientists, economists and experts from multiple disciplines, to bring about macro governmental action at the federal, state, and global domestic levels that drives systemic market incentives and public policy to place our society on a scientific prescription for atmospheric health, climate stability and ocean de-acidification.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    We provide strategic legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. We work to protect the Earth’s climate system for present and future generations by representing these young people in global legal efforts to secure the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate. We support these youth in the third branch of government in a strategic legal campaign that includes targeted media, education, and public engagement work to support the legal actions. Our legal work – guided by constitutional, public trust, human rights laws and the laws of nature – aims to ensure systemic and science-based climate recovery planning and remedies at federal, state, and global levels. specifically in the form of systemic science-based Climate Recovery Plans and policies that will reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations to below 350 parts per million before the year 2100: the scientific prescription for climate stabilization.
    Purpose: We support a network of youth, scientists, economists and experts from multiple disciplines, to bring about macro governmental action at the federal, state, and global domestic levels that drives systemic market incentives and public policy to place our society on a scientific prescription for atmospheric health, climate stability and ocean de-acidification.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Atmospheric Trust Campaign
    Our Children’s Trust is the only 501(c)(3) non-profit public interest law firm in the world providing science-based legal services exclusively to children to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. Our legal work – grounded in constitutional, public trust, and human rights laws, as well as in the laws of nature – aims to stop government actions that contribute to the worsening of the climate crisis, as these actions also violate innumerable rights that depend fundamentally on a habitable planet (rights to life, liberty, property, personal security, religious freedom, etc.). We work to protect Earth’s climate for present and future generations by representing and supporting young people in global legal efforts to secure legally binding judicial declarations that will return atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to below 350 parts per million (ppm) by the year 2100: the scientific prescription for a safe climate.
    Purpose: We are exploring and advocating for market approaches and other policies that will promote a sustainable economy and economic balance relating to ecosystem services, climate change, energy security, food production and other environmental issues.
    Economic imbalances that favor carbon intensive goods and services and perpetuate environmental degradation continue to dominate our economy. Our work will lead to court orders that require governments to realign those imbalances toward a sustainable economy, in accordance with scientific prescriptions to stabilize our climate system and de-acidify our oceans. We advocate for legal mandates that will drive market-based and related policy solutions of the sort referenced in preceding sections.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Partnership For Responsible Growth
    Coal Country Just Transition Listening Sessions
    The Partnership will work with Adele Morris at Brookings Institution to schedule field-based listening sessions with community development and economic transition leaders in coal-reliant communities; will consult with her on her research and policy analysis; and submit a second proposal in January 2019 to undertake additional sessions. The goal is to inform the provisions of carbon tax legislation that could provide funding for assistance to these workers and communities.
    Purpose: This project will allow us to conduct further research and analysis on: 1. Economic imbalances such as unemployment and recessions resulting, in part, from technologicai change. 2. Investigates the ability of the market system to foster sustainabililty. 3. Explores how best to use a quintessential market-based solution (carbon pricing) that by failing to price externalities undermines the market system 4. Develops a market-based system to help those in distress and to fortify market credibility.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   PERC (Partnering with ED and Reason)
    Moving Forward with Rights-Based Fisheries
    This project entails a unique partnership in which PERC, Environmental Defense-Austin TX office and the Reason Public Policy Institute are applying their individual strengths to bring about positive change in ocean fisheries management through rights-based fishing. Toward this goal, the partners held three seminars for U.S. federal policy makers and produced three educational booklets covering different aspects of individual fishing quotas (IFQs) conducted site visits and a workshop on innovative strategies for managing shrimp fisheries in North America; provided technical support for applying IFQs to the red snapper fishery; carried out a feasibility study of applying rights-based management to the Galapagos' sea cucumber fishery; and carried out initial plans to explore the integration of island community tenure systems with marine reserves.
    Purpose: The project investigates the causes of economic imbalances in marine fisheries in which too many fishers enter a fishery to engage in a wasteful race for fish and ultimately catch unsustainable amounts of fish. In addition, it explores and develops free market solutions to these imbalances by building on the economic successes that market oriented approaches such as individual fishing quotas, harvest cooperatives, and territorial fishing rights have as an alternative to the traditional fisheries management approach.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • New Initiatives for Rights-based Fishing.
    The project evaluates and disseminates the potential benefits of applying rights-based fishing to economically and environmentally troubled marine fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. It also provides planning support for their application. Project efforts are directed at correcting current economic imbalances by applying market-based approaches. This is a collaborative effort involving the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), Reason Public Policy Institute, and Environmental Defense (ED). Note: Total project approved is $60,000 with $25,000 paid in Feb, 2007 to project partner Environmental Defense.
    Purpose: This project develops strategies, conducts economic analyses, and provides planning support for the application of market-based management alternatives in troubled commercial and recreational fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. These areas of support were applied in the use of IFQs and other market-based, catch share strategies in the commercial multi-species grouper fishery, the commercial shrimp fishery, and the recreational spiny lobster and stone crab fisheries.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Predator Conservation Alliance
    Wildlife Friendly Certification Project
    Predator Conservation Alliance's Wildlife Friendly Certification Project is exploring and developing market-based solutions that conserve and protect endangered wildlife around the world. The grant from the Walker Foundation supported an international Wildlife Friendly Summit held in Jacksonville, Florida, that brought together business leaders, entrepreneurs and wildlife biologists to investigate markets for wildlife-friendly products, and discuss ways to overcome perverse economic incentives and build fees for ecosystem services into the cost of producing goods. A report from this summit will be generated by the end of March.
    Purpose: This project meets the goals of the Walker Foundation by exploring and developing market-based solutions for economic imbalances that have caused the decline of wildlife species. Agricultural business activities commonly operate with perverse economic incentives that inadvertently cause damage to the very ecosystem services which enable agriculture and vibrant economic systems to thrive. Economists have identified the failure to account for the benefits of ecosystem services in a monetary system. To address this problem, Predator Conservation Alliance is participating in an eco-labeling venture that aims to harness market forces to support the dual goals of wildlife conservation and sustainable human economies. We seek to build upon our embryonic work in administering our Predator Friendly certification by creating larger economies of scale for Predator Friendly products through collaborating with other conservation groups who are engaged in similar and related facets of trade in ecologically sustainable products. Our vision requires cost-effective, credible, and nimble certification procedures; an education campaign targeted at consumers; and efficient distribution and marketing support for conscientious producers.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Pricing Carbon Initiative Inc.
    Building Grasstops Support in 2021/2022 for Carbon Pricing
    In 2021-22, the Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) will continue with its efforts, launched in 2011, to build support, by fostering understanding and cooperation between a wide range of organizations and opinion leaders, for bipartisan carbon pricing solutions designed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During the current pandemic, PCI is conducting the ongoing Pricing Carbon Dialogues in a virtual mode. Given how well this is working, the virtual meetings will likely continue even after our in-person meetings resume. PCI will also continue to organize related efforts designed to engage and encourage additional support, cooperation and participation.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI network share a steadfast belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climatic and social costs of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. PCI’s ongoing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues continue to build consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Building Grasstops Support for Carbon Pricing in 2020/2021
    In 2020-21, the Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) will continue with its efforts, launched in 2011, to build support, by fostering understanding and cooperation between a wide range of organizations and opinion leaders, for bipartisan carbon pricing solutions designed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During the current pandemic, PCI is conducting the ongoing Pricing Carbon Dialogues in a virtual mode. Given how well this is working, the virtual meetings will likely continue even after our in-person meetings resume. PCI will also continue to organize related efforts designed to engage and encourage additional support, cooperation and participation.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI network share a steadfast belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climatic and social costs of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. PCI’s ongoing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues continue to build consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Building Grasstops Support in 2022/2023 for Carbon Pricing
    In 2022-23, the Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) will continue with its efforts, launched in 2011, to build support, by fostering understanding and cooperation between a wide range of organizations and opinion leaders, for bipartisan carbon pricing solutions designed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During the ongoing pandemic, PCI is conducting the ongoing Pricing Carbon Dialogues in a virtual mode. Given how well this is working, the virtual meetings will likely continue even after our in-person meetings resume. PCI will also continue to organize related efforts designed to engage and encourage additional support, cooperation and participation. [This application, submitted earlier this year, is being resubmitted with updates for the October 1, 2022 grant cycle.
    Purpose: Participants in the PCI network share a steadfast belief that correcting the price distortion that excludes the climatic and social costs of fossil fuels from their pricing is more timely and urgent than ever. Market-driven solutions are central to PCI's mission. PCI’s continuing bi-partisan, multi-stakeholder dialogues continue to build consensus across party lines and with ideologically diverse interest groups.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Property and Environment Research Center (PERC)
    Market Approaches to Coral Reef Restoration: Investigating the Viability
    The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) held a two-day workshop in Key Largo, FL on the viability of a market for coral reef restoration in the Florida Keys. The purpose of this event was to explore how voluntary agreements between reef users, conservationists, government, and private businesses might improve the stewardship and restoration of Florida’s coral reefs.
    Purpose: This project meets the purpose of the foundation by investigating the causes of economic imbalances, particularly in relation to ecosystem services, climate change, energy security, food production, and other environmental matters.
    Natural ecosystems provide a range of social benefits, from water filtration and pollination, to carbon sequestration and wildlife habitat. These ecological services generate enormous economic benefits and are often provided for free. Hence, many ecosystem services are what economists call “public goods.” Public goods are not traded in commercial markets and no one can be excluded from using them.
    This means charging for their consumption can be challenging. This has led some scholars to conclude that environmental resources are unmarketable. PERC scholars and practitioners have concluded the opposite and developed case studies demonstrating that the public goods problem can be overcome by identifying and charging discrete groups of buyers.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Reason Foundation
    Reform of Air Traffic Control System
    Conducted projects to build support for reform: 1) continued educational outreach to private pilots and environmental organizations; 2) a study to assess the feasibility of applying net-centric ATC technology to improving airport capacity, drawing on the expertise of industry professionals, technology experts and environmental groups.
    Purpose: The project plan has selected two airports (San Francisco and the New York City airports) with serious capacity problems but great difficulty in expanding the airport.We drafted a report outlining how various NGATS technologies could be applied to each of the candidate airports to expand functional capacity (landings and takeoffs per hour) without expanding the airport’s footprint. Following technical peer review of the draft report by aviation professionals (including senior people at each of the participating airports), a presentation will be developed to explain the concept. With advice from the airport management at each location, contact will be made with leaders of the more reasonable groups opposing airport expansion.The final step will be to incorporate the results of interaction with opposition groups into a revised report, which will be published in Reason’s ongoing series of transportation policy studies.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Recognizing the True Value of Greening Multi-family Affordable Housing: A Case Study and National Model
    Recognizing the True Value of Greening Multi-family Affordable Housing: A Case Study and National Model
    Through a case study approach, this project is a behind-the-scenes look at the decision making process and economics involved in the design and construction of a green, multi-family affordable housing project. We will use the case study to correct a market perception that green approaches cost more and are often inappropriate for affordable housing.
    Purpose: With our partner Tellus Institute, we will assess the long-term economics of the project, including initial capital costs as well as long-term operating costs from the perspectives of the developer, owners, and residents. Using a life-cycle costing approach, we will assess project economics in present value terms. Building on GreenHOME's previous work, the qualitative case study will focus both on the people and the process and include enough detail to enable our target audience to identify with the people and their circumstances. One of the key barriers to transforming the practices of the affordable housing industry and the professionals involved is the perception that green buildings cost more than conventional buildings and that they have unproven benefits. Given the real budgetary and regulatory constraints developers of affordable housing face, it is essential that we address this issue. To properly consider the economics of a green building (or any building) requires a life-cycle costing approach that assesses not only the initial design and construction costs, but also the operational and maintenance costs over the life of the building. Our partner Tellus Institute, a non-profit environmental research and consulting organization that has been working on this issue over the past two years, will lead this analysis. Founded in 1976, Tellus has an interdisciplinary staff of 25 professionals. Tellus is a partner in the Green CDCs Initiative in the Boston area, an effort to accelerate the implementation of affordable housing and economic development projects by CDCs that incorporate green design and sustainable development techniques in distressed communities. As part of the Initiative, Tellus recently coauthored a major report on the costs and benefits of green affordable housing, including approximately 15 case studies. A major limitation of this report is that all the data for the case studies was developed after the projects were completed. Thus, it was challenging to get reliable data, it was often in very different and incompatible formats, and there were frequent data gaps. By developing a data collection template at the outset of AHC’s Westover Apartment project, we hope to guide project developers and managers and avoid these shortcomings.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Redwood Forest Foundation Inc.
    Making Working Community Forests Work: Leveraging Private Capital
    “Making Working Community Forests Work” project will complete the sale of a conservation easement on the 50,000-acre Usal Redwood Forest; this will prohibit fragmentation and development, require FSC certification, and assure sustainable harvesting. The easement sale and an associated fee sale are crucial to servicing the existing loan from the Bank of America. The project explores, develops and demonstrates market-based solutions for economically and ecologically sustainable timberland financing, ownership and management. RFFI will demonstrate a free-market solution-leveraging the existing private investment by attracting supplemental public funds. Our work has become highly visible; this allows for efficient dissemination of information on the results and findings to help others replicate this innovative model of natural resource management that simultaneously places value on ecology, economy and social equity.
    Purpose: Negotiating the sale of a conservation easement requires that we investigate and document the underlying causes of economic imbalances that drive the ownership and management of timberlands. We will explore and develop the following market-based solutions: (1) identify and assign value to specific ecosystem services associated with the conservation of redwood forest timberland, its watersheds and biological community; (2) sell a conservation easement on Usal Redwood Forest to complement private financing; (3) complete the fee sale of a 955 acre parcel to Save the Redwoods League; (4) demonstrate and disseminate a replicable model.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Resources First Foundation
    Resources First Foundation - Project Title: Chestnut Database
    The American Chestnut Foundation's mission is to "restore the American chestnut tree to the forests of Eastern North America by breeding a blight resistant timber type tree." The American chestnut once comprised a quarter of the eastern hardwood forest from Maine to Georgia, providing a valuable economic resource. An accidentally imported chestnut blight decimated the trees, with devastating results to Appalachian communities and economies. Building an online database will accelerate the tree breeding program. TACF and RFF received a grant from the Walker Foundation to build an online tree breeding database for restoration of the American chestnut. The grant demonstrates the potential for the application of biotechnology to restoring damaged economies and ecosystems.
    Purpose: Building an online database will accelerate the rate at which information regarding the blight resistant chestnut and corresponding orchards may be exchanged. The American chestnut tree used to be a highly valuable economic resource in the Eastern forests of the U.S. in timber and nuts. The proposed project intends to assist in the restoration of the American chestnut, and promote its economic viability based on its rot resistant character and the fact that it does not require chemical treatment. In accordance with the Alex C. Walker foundation's mission, this project attempts to promote the future economic prosperity of the Eastern forest through ecological sustainability. The fundamental premise of RFF's websites is empowering individuals and creating a community-based market to address environmental problems. By building the interactive database for TACF and linking and platforming their data and tree availability on our PLN site we position TACF nationwide in the marketplace for chestnut planting and restoration. Having already established the Private Landowner Network and thus a regular user base, and with a large number of TACF members being private landowners, the union of these two interests is a natural fit for this market sector. PLN is designed to connect private landowners to the services they need to reach for their conservation goals, including connecting to service providers, land trusts, tax and estate planners, and state and federal grant and cost share assistance programs. The proposed project will bring The American Chestnut Foundation into this market community. Resources First Foundation seeks to promote the engagement of the private landowner community as the best stewards of the land. This orientation promotes economic sustainability, especially in rural areas so dependent on their natural resources (agriculture, forestry, tourism, etc.) for their sustenance.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Salmon-Safe Inc.
    Salmon-Safe Applegate 2006
    Salmon-Safe Applegate is an innovative free market conservation initiative engaging southern Oregon’s agricultural sector in environmental sustainability while building high value local markets for the region’s agricultural products. The project is a collaborative effort with farmers, a watershed council, and other local stakeholders to protect water quality, wildlife, and riparian habitat in an ecologically important tributary to the Rogue River.
    Purpose: As a free-market conservation initiative with national applicability, Safe Applegate specifically addresses the key market-based purpose of the Alex Walker Foundation. The project is a collaborative effort with Applegate River Watershed Council, rural landowners, and other local stakeholders to create market incentives for habitat conservation while delivering economic benefits back to landowners. Regulatory agencies and farmers have long faced the challenge of implementing water quality management plans and watershed restoration plans in the context of historically low fish populations and drought conditions. With more than 30 farms transitioning to Salmon-Safe practices, the project has provided a tangible example of the power of market-based conservation to encourage stewardship on private lands. The project also has investigated both the economic and ecological impacts of market-based conservation.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Salmon-Safe Applegate 2007
    Salmon-Safe Applegate is the expansion of an innovative free market conservation initiative engaging southern Oregon's agricultural sector in protecting water quality and imperiled wild salmon. With the support of the Walker Foundation, the project expanded into adjacent Rogue River tributaries with the goal of building high value local markets for the region's agricultural products
    Purpose: Farmers in southwestern Oregon face intensifying regulatory scrunity with the collapse of native salmon populations and long-term water shortages in the region. Salmon-Safe Applegate provides market incentives for Rogue Valley farmers to assist in the implementation of fish-friendly farming practices. During this expansion phase of the project, Salmon-Safe and our local partners are focused on building consumer demand for Salmon-Safe certified farm products and delivering marketplace benefits to participating landowners.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Salmon-Safe Communities: Developing a Market-Based Conservation Initiative for Large-Scale Residential Development
    Salmon-Safe received seed funding to develop Salmon-Safe Communities, the nation’s first certification program linking large-scale residential development to the protection of urban water quality & the preservation of an endangered species. The project leveraged Walker Foundation’s earlier investments in Salmon-Safe by extending our innovative market-based program to the residential building sector.
    Purpose: Like our Walker Foundation-funded agricultural work in southern Oregon, Salmon-Safe Communities explores & develops market-based incentives as an alternative to relying on new regulatory mandates to protect imperiled Pacific Coast wild salmon. Salmon-Safe has a 10-year track record of success in helping to build high value markets for ecologically sustainable farm products. We anticipate that Salmon-Safe Communities will deliver similar marketplace benefits to landowners that invest in fish-friendly site design & development.
    As a measure of Salmon-Safe's stature as an alternative to new regulatory measures, Salmon-Safe certification was formally recognized by the 2006 federal "Shared Strategy" response to the endangered species listing of Puget Sound salmon as the primary voluntary incentive for private agricultural landowners.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Salmon-Safe Golf: Developing a Market-based Initiative for Ecologically Sustainable Golf Course Development & Management
    Salmon-Safe Golf is the nation’s first certification program linking golf course design and development to the protection of urban water quality and the preservation of an endangered species. The project leverages the Walker Foundation’s earlier investments in Salmon-Safe by extending Salmon-Safe’s innovative market-based program to the West Coast golf industry. The project met all of its startup milestones, including building partnerships with the Pacific Northwest and national golf industry to influence industry practices and successfully piloting the project with golf courses still in design as well as established sites. Like Salmon-Safe Communities, the ecologically sustainable residential development initiative that Walker funded for 2008, Salmon-Safe will be entirely funded by fees to developers beyond this startup phase.
    Purpose: Like our other Walker Foundation-funded work, Salmon-Safe Golf explores and develops market-based incentives as an alternative to relying on new regulatory mandates to protect imperiled Pacific Coast wild salmon. Salmon-Safe has a dozen-year track record of success in helping to build high value markets for ecologically sustainable farm products. We anticipate that Salmon-Safe Golf will deliver similar marketplace benefits to developers that invest in fish-friendly site design and management. As a measure of Salmon-Safe's stature as an alternative to new regulatory measures, Salmon-Safe certification was formally incorporated by NOAA Fisheries in the 2007 federal "Shared Strategy" recovery plan for endangered Puget Sound salmon as the primary voluntary incentive for private landowners. Likewise, EPA recognizes Salmon-Safe urban industrial and manufacturing landowners for its "Performance Track" beyond compliance incentive program.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   San Diego Watermen's Association
    San Diego Watermen's Association Fishery Study and Dockside Meeting. (C/O Sand County Foundation as fiduciary)
    Like most fisheries nationwide, the California Sea Urchin Fishery is regulated in a way that discourages fishermen from cooperating to conserve stocks or improve the quality of their product. The grant partners, including the Walker Foundation, funded a study conducted by fishermen of the San Diego Watermen’s Association to collect population data needed for improved management. The grant also funded meetings to report results of the study, and to solicit input from fishermen and experts on ways to improve the fishery. As a result, the San Diego Watermen’s Association is proposing a pilot program to show that both economic and conservation benefits will result by changing management from open access to ecosystem management based on area specific harvest rights.
    Purpose: There exists an economic imbalance in the way California near-shore fisheries are managed. The top down management system does not allow for data collection or management at the scale of each port. It is based on a precautionary management system with the intended purpose of allowing fishing without depleting stocks. However, the current single species management approach is inflexible, discourages innovation, and provides no incentive for conservation. We propose to change this to a knowledge-based management system that gives fishermen the exclusive right to harvest a particular area. This approach will reward fishermen who are good stewards of the marine environment. It will encourage flexibility and innovation. There also exists an imbalance between the producer and the processor with the producer having the role of a field hand. We propose to seek improved market paths and to change the producer from someone who delivers a commodity to a producer of high-value seafood. For example, by keeping their catch alive and selling a high-quality product, both fishermen and consumers will benefit. Conservation and stewardship will benefit from long-term business changes that add value to the harvest and “pull” the management reforms with market demand. We believe that it will eventually be necessary to establish cooperative, ecosystem management in order to achieve the following: 1. conserve the resource and 2. provide diversification in order to produce adequate income for the fishing community during periods when environmental conditions result in lower than average harvests for certain species. By cooperating in science-based monitoring, fishermen will have an incentive to be stewards of the marine environment. It will also be desirable to redesign working harbors as the centers of fishing activity and commerce. Profits from healthy fisheries can be used to upgrade infrastructure and facilities for the supply, offloading, transporting and marketing of live and fresh seafood. Marketing would be expanded to include direct sales to processors, wholesalers, retailers and the public. San Diego fisherman Peter Halmay observed that in Southern Chile, where urchin fishermen have secure harvest rights, the fishing fleet is well managed and has become a tourist attraction.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Society for Conservation Biology
    Urban Forests: Valuing and Protecting Their Many Services
    The loss of mature canopy and valuable natural green space in urban and suburban areas risks undermining sustainability even in jurisdictions that are attempting to implement “smart growth” policies. The Urban Forests project of the Society for Conservation Biology in 2013 aligned local action to protect urban forests through new incentives in the Montgomery County, Maryland zoning code and other laws with a push to properly value natural capital and its many services in measures of economic performance. The County’s Planning Board has directed its staff to explore a “model” sustainability option for the Bethesda Sector Planning process being undertaken for 2014 and to work with the Project on the plan. At the 2013 International Congress for Conservation Biology in Baltimore, Maryland, the Project held a symposium on ecosystem valuation tools and measures of performance such as Maryland's Genuine Progress Indicator.
    Purpose: This project of the Society for Conservation Biology will shine the light on the failure of market signals and conventional measures of economic progress to fully value the ecosystem services such as stormwater protection, air and water purification, and carbon capture that urban forests and other forms of natural capital provide to our economy.
    The project will also advance market-based solutions based on such valuation, such as improved easement and tradable development rights programs to locally protect urban forests, and improvements at a programmatic and macroeconomic scale to cost-benefit analysis tools and measures of economic progress.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Sustainable Harvest International
    Development of Economic Incentives and Environmental Markets to Promote Sustainable Land-Use Practices in the Tropics
    This project will build upon SHI’s work in crop commercialization and the development of markets to create economic incentives for rural farmers to preserve tropical forests. SHI will identify potential buyers of farmers’ goods and services and build the capacity of its Panama affiliate to benefit from biodiversity offsets or other payments for ecosystem services. The emphasis on market development for organic produce will also reduce wasteful spending on chemical pesticides and create additional market-based incentives for farmers to protect globally significant ecosystems.
    Purpose: The degradation of forest ecosystems is due, in large part, to economic incentives that make forest destruction more profitable than forest preservation. With no economic value evident to the rural communities that rely on forests for their survival, it is necessary to help subsistence farming communities access economic incentives to preserve forests.
    SHI-Panama will interview local stakeholders to assess the feasibility and potential for environmental markets, including the issues related to economic imbalances. There is a great opportunity to expand profitable markets with SHI-Panama and to identify other lucrative markets that will create economic incentives for farmers to preserve tropical ecosystems. This grant will also help SHI-Panama to build its capacity for data collection, which is a crucial component to have in place for eligibility to receive ecosystem services payments.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Implementation of biointensive farming practices in the tropics to investigate the economic impacts related to increased farm yields, natural resource preservation and climate stabilization.
    Food insecurity not only threatens vulnerable populations, but puts economic security and international stability at risk. In response to the global farming crisis, Sustainable Harvest International will provide training and technical assistance to 50 rural farming families in Panama for one year, while studying the economic impacts of biointensive farming practices related to increased income, natural resource preservation and climate stabilization.
    Purpose: SHI’s development efforts have a focus on helping rural households earn income from local and global food markets. The implementation and investigation of biointensive farming techniques will help rural enterprises develop their entrepreneurial capacities in order to compete in markets at all levels.
    Economic imbalances are addressed with SHI participants by providing education on supply and demand, pricing, quality standards and other issues related to market dynamics. Since most entrepreneurial activities in rural areas are based on agricultural products, farm families may broaden their income strategies by including value-added products. Therefore market-oriented diversification occurs both on and off the farms.
    In order to further promote food security and economic stability, this grant will also allow SHI to examine the ecological services provided by SHI participants and how they might benefit from the local and global markets for these services.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Brookings Institution
    Brookings-AEI-IMF Joint Work on a U.S. Carbon Tax in the Context of Broader Tax Reform
    The Brookings Carbon Tax Initiative will analyze the potential role of a carbon tax within broader tax reform in the United States, both to reduce the federal budget deficit and to finance reductions in other taxes. It will summarize evidence on how an effectively structured price on carbon can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Additionally, it will explore important design features of a carbon tax, including its price trajectory and possible linkages to deficit reduction, changes in command-and-control regulation of greenhouse gases, and options for concomitant reforms of taxes on labor and capital income. The Initiative will involve new analysis of the likely distributional effects of a carbon tax embedded in fundamental tax reforms, including by income class, region, and industry.
    Purpose: This grant will contribute directly to the Walker Foundation’s purposes: • It investigates policies to address the market failure associated with climate changes. • It investigates solutions to foster a more sustainable economy, both fiscally and environmentally. • It explores how to incorporate the costs of environmental damage into prices and economic incentives, an inherently market-based approach, in lieu of command and control pollution regulation. • It focuses on the communication of the results and findings to policymakers, stakeholders, and the public.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Brookings Work on A U.S. Carbon Tax in the Context of Broader Tax Reform
    This project is part of the Brookings Carbon Tax Initiative and builds on earlier work supported by the Walker Foundation. In this project, Brookings scholars will analyze different ways to design a U.S. carbon tax in the context of fiscal reform. This work will involve new economic modeling with the G-Cubed model of the global economy, and it will explore a variety of carbon tax scenarios to elucidate the tradeoffs across different important design elements. In particular, the scholars will examine different carbon tax price levels and trajectories and different ways for the government to use the revenue, including reducing other taxes. The scenarios will investigate revenue-neutral approaches and the implications of advanced clean energy technology (including nuclear).
    Purpose: • This project investigates policies to address the market failure associated with climate changes. • This project investigates solutions to foster a more sustainable economy, both fiscally and environmentally. • This project explores how to incorporate the costs of environmental damage into prices and economic incentives, an inherently market-based approach, in lieu of command and control pollution regulation. • This project focuses on the communication of the results and findings to policymakers, stakeholders, and the public.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Analysis of how monetary policy can affect the macroeconomic outcomes of a U.S. carbon tax
    In this project, Brookings scholars will explore the interaction of monetary policy and changes in carbon taxes in influencing the macroeconomic outcomes in the United States. A significant carbon tax will change the relative prices of different fuels in accordance with their carbon intensity. Depending on how the revenue from the tax is used, it may also increase overall consumer price levels.
    Purpose: Our project will directly serve these objectives by exploring how monetary policies can affect the impacts of market-based solutions to climate change. Our work will offer recommendations to guide monetary authorities on how best to respond to potential broader price increases that can result from policies, like a carbon tax, that price greenhouse gas emissions, and it will offer recommendations to fiscal authorities on how the outcomes of a carbon tax could be affected by the response of monetary authorities. This work could thus inform the design of a carbon tax in the United States and other major economies. We will communicate the results to policymakers, stakeholders, and the public through our policy brief on the topic, as well as through meetings, presentations, and related research and scholarly publications.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Transition Assistance for Coal Workers and Their Communities
    This grant will help support an initiative by the Brookings Climate and Energy Economics Project on designing a tax on carbon in the U.S. within the context of broader tax reforms and measures to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Initiative will further the substantive discussion of climate policy in the United States. Findings will be communicated to policymakers and stakeholders through written policy briefs, private communications, and public events. Brookings scholars will also collaborate with scholars at other academic and policy research institutions to maximize their productivity and impact.
    Purpose: This grant will contribute directly to the Walker Foundation’s purposes:
    -It investigates policies to address the market failure associated with climate changes. -It investigates solutions to foster a more sustainable economy, both fiscally and environmentally. -It explores how to incorporate the costs of environmental damage into prices and economic incentives, an inherently market-based approach, in lieu of command and control pollution regulation. -It focuses on the communication of the results and findings to policymakers, stakeholders, and the public.
    We are pleased to have received support from the Alex C. Walker Foundation for our work exploring a variety of issues surrounding the design and implementation of a carbon tax.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • A comparison of a Carbon Tax to other Regulatory Approaches to control Carbon Pollution from electric power plants
    In this project, Brookings scholars will use the G-Cubed model of the global economy to compare a U.S. carbon tax with approaches the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could take in regulating carbon pollution from the power sector. Different pollution control policies, even if they achieve the same cumulative emissions goal, could have importantly different effects on the composition of the energy sector and overall economic outcomes. This project will analyze alternative policy options with an eye to informing the development of EPA rules and comparing the outcomes of carbon pricing to regulatory approaches.
    Purpose: This grant will contribute directly to the Walker Foundation’s purposes:
    • It investigates policies to address the market failure associated with climate changes. • It investigates solutions to foster a more sustainable economy, both fiscally and environmentally. • It explores how to incorporate the costs of environmental damage into prices and economic incentives, an inherently market-based approach, in lieu of command and control pollution regulation. • It focuses on the communication of the results and findings to policymakers, stakeholders, and the public.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Analysis of how a U.S. Carbon Tax could affect patterns of trade, investment & emissions internationally
    In this project, Brookings scholars will use the G-Cubed model of the global economy to examine how a U.S. carbon tax could affect U.S. exports and imports in different sectors. It will explore how U.S. climate policies drive emissions and economic activity in other countries via global market forces. Further, we will analyze the economic and environmental outcomes of approaches, such as border carbon adjustments, that could limit erosion of U.S. competitiveness and emissions leakage abroad.
    Purpose: This grant will help support an initiative by the Brookings Climate and Energy Economics Project on designing a tax on carbon in the U.S. within the context of broader tax reforms and measures to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. This specific grant will support new research and analysis on the potential outcomes of different policy approaches.
    The Initiative will further the substantive discussion of climate policy in the United States. Findings will be communicated to policymakers and stakeholders through written policy briefs, private communications, and public events. Brookings scholars will also collaborate with scholars at other academic and policy research institutions to maximize their productivity and impact.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Garrison Institute
    Green Summit on Carbon Emissions Pricing
    The “Green Summit on Carbon Pricing” was a meeting of some 50 environmental leaders and advocates convened this summer (2011). An impetus for the Summit is the failure of the previous (111th) Congress to pass climate legislation at a time when there appeared to be a public mandate for such action. The broader impetus is the public confusion and political stasis caused by ongoing division in the environmental community over which carbon-pricing mechanism should be the foundation stone for the legislation. This division makes it more difficult for any market mechanism — be it cap-and-trade, cap-and-dividend, or a carbon tax — to gain political traction in Washington. While we do not expect the Summit to resolve this division overnight, we believe it can help the U.S. green movement advocate for effective carbon pricing policy and climate action with greater clarity, unity and impact.
    Purpose: Investigate causes: The absence of a price on carbon emissions threatens the Earth's climate system on which the American and World economies depend. The Green Summit will air differences and, it is hoped, begin a process of resolution among environmental leaders on the vital question of which carbon-pricing mechanism is best suited -- institutionally, financially and politically -- to fix this absence and correct the resulting market distortions.
    Explore solutions: Pricing solutions stand apart from approaches employing government regulations. The irony is that dissension within the environmental community over the choice of a pricing mechanism is leading policy-makers to resort to the distinctly second-best regulatory approach. The objective of the Green Summit is to strengthen the hand of proponents of market-based solutions and make it more likely that one or other market approach will be enshrined in U.S. legislation and policy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Heritage Foundation
    Getting Spending and Taxes under Control
    Thanks to excessive long-term spending obligations, the U.S. Federal Government’s budget is projected to swell to nearly 50 percent of the economy by 2050. To prevent such a drastic rise in federal spending, The Heritage Foundation seeks to show Americans the full picture of the federal budget – including long-term obligations from entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – in order to generate public pressure for spending control. We’ll work to change the public’s view of entitlements and intergenerational obligations in the context of the long-term budget crisis, so that Americans embrace the need for structural changes to curb spending. In addition, we’ll strive to convince Americans that raising taxes harms growth and jobs and is not the solution to uncontrolled spending. Finally, we’ll work to change the congressional dynamics of entitlement reform to one of bipartisan support for serious restructuring and control of entitlements.
    Purpose: Heritage has devoted a significant amount of energy to investigating the causes tending to impair the free-market system. According to our research, the cost projections for entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security show that America is on track for an economic “train wreck” that will devastate our economy. According to Heritage research, numerous surveys and several focus groups, most Americans are open to the idea of increasing taxes in order to solve the problem of entitlement promises. That's why we launched our Fiscal Wake-Up Tour, in order to not only bring the entitlement problem to the fore, but also to educate the public about conservative policy solutions. Economists the world over have shown that lowering taxes stimulates economic activity and can actually bring in higher levels of revenue. To fix America’s budget problems, Heritage is urging that we adopt a market-based solution that reforms costly entitlement programs and cuts federal spending.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Heritage Foundation
    Curbing Spending by Reframing the Politics of Entitlements
    The U.S. Federal Government’s budget is projected to swell to nearly 50 percent of the economy by 2050, so The Heritage Foundation is seeking to show Americans the full picture of the federal budget – including long-term obligations from entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – in order to generate public pressure for spending control. We’re working to change the public’s view of entitlements and intergenerational obligations in the context of the long-term budget crisis, so that Americans accept the need for structural changes to curb spending, especially those changes which don't raise taxes. Finally, we’re working to change the congressional dynamics of entitlement reform to one of bipartisan support for serious restructuring and control of entitlements.
    Purpose: The Heritage Foundation has devoted a significant amount of energy to investigating the causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system. According to our research, the cost projections for entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security show that America is on track for an economic “train wreck” that will devastate our economy. According to Heritage Foundation research, numerous surveys and several focus groups, most Americans are open to the idea of increasing taxes in order to solve the problem of entitlement promises.
    We know, however, that raising taxes – which we’re opposed to on principle – does not necessarily increase government revenue. In fact, economists the world over have shown that lowering taxes stimulates economic activity and can actually bring in higher levels of revenue. To fix America’s budget problems, Heritage is urging that we adopt a market-based solution that reforms costly entitlement programs and cuts federal spending.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Heritage Foundation
    Heritage Foundation - 2006 Priority Issues
    The Heritage Foundation formulates and promotes conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. In the past year, we have advanced this mission in many ways. Two covered in this report are 1) convincing lawmakers to see the value of “dynamic scoring” of tax proposals, and 2) helping to build a market-based health care system throughout the nation, starting with individual states.
    Purpose: Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system. Last year, Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis, led by William Beach, achieved its most noteworthy victory to date for “dynamic scoring,” which takes into account economic behaviors that result from lowering or raising taxes. As a result of years of effort on Heritage’s part, Congress’ Joint Committee for Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office finally began performing dynamic scoring analyses of tax bills under consideration. Previously lawmakers were making decisions incorrectly assuming that tax cuts hurt revenue, and that tax hikes helped revenue and did not negatively impact the economy. Dynamic scoring provides accurate estimates of economic response to tax cuts and hikes. Having overcome this barrier with Congress, Heritage continues to educate the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis. With Congress now using dynamic scoring analyses, along with the administration, there is still work to do to educate all branches of government to use dynamic scoring in the most appropriate ways. For example, dynamic scoring is now merely “one of the ways” the government scores tax legislation, rather than replacing static scoring as the official government method. Then again, dynamic scoring is not needed on every tax proposal; only on ones that affect a larger proportion of the U.S. economy. The challenge remains to continually educate the public that static scoring is a major obstacle to good tax policy, and more than a decade of Heritage’s efforts in this regard is now bearing fruit. Explore and develop market-based solutions. For more than three decades, The Heritage Foundation has been a driving force behind comprehensive reform of our nation’s health care system based on consumer choice and free market competition. Too much government intervention, too much regulation, and too much interference with consumer choice and the delivery of health services by medical professionals have turned our health system into a special interest- driven behemoth that imposes greater and greater costs on individuals and families, while closing off their options to more affordable health care. In the last few years The Heritage Foundation has diligently promoted health insurance reform in the states, and we are now beginning to see spectacular results. Specifically we have focused on restructuring health insurance markets to create personal, portable health insurance coverage that has all the tax benefits and advantages of employer group coverage. We also have been working to redirect money that is currently going to subsidize hospitals for providing free care to people without health insurance, to premium support or vouchers so these people can have coverage. This year we saw a major breakthrough in Massachusetts, where Governor Mitt Romney unveiled a comprehensive health care reform plan, based specifically on Heritage policy recommendations. The health insurance exchange (called the “connector”), which Heritage Center for Health Policy Studies experts helped craft, would enable individuals and families who work for small businesses to buy private affordable health insurance coverage. They would own it, and take it with them from job to job without losing the generous federal tax breaks that accrue for employer-based health insurance. Heritage created this version of the health insurance exchange to get around current obstacles in the restrictive federal tax treatment of health insurance. People earning too little to afford private health insurance, and making too much to qualify for Medicaid, would be eligible for state subsidies to help them purchase private insurance. It was a compromise proposal, and it has sparked intense interest around the country. Naturally, the expertise of the Heritage staff has been in high demand, particularly among state legislators and policy groups. We are currently advising the governor’s staff on policy issues involved in the implementation of the program, which is already serving as a reform model for other states throughout the nation, such as Maryland, Louisiana, New York and South Dakota. We are also providing analysis of the final legislation in numerous briefings and media interviews.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Nature Conservancy
    Implementing Ecosystem Valuation as a Global Conservation and Economic Development Strategy
    Tourism to protected areas including World Heritage Sites is a significant contributor to economic development. However, policy decisions to protect the natural capital upon which the industry depends, tend not to reflect this. Consequently opportunities to maximize tourism's contribution to conservation and poverty alleviation are being lost. This project is working with park systems to quantify tourism's value and make policy recommendtaions for more effective market-based strategies to achieve financial sustainability.
    Purpose: Tourism and recreation is an ecosystem service which, due to inappropriate or non existent pricing mechanisms is creating economic imbalances and undermines the functioning of the free-market system. By implementing ecosystem valuation and market-based mechanisms at sites in a broad international alliance with partners including Bank of America, UNESCO, and others, this project promotes an enabling environment for free-market solutions to these imbalances so that conservation, community and business benefits result.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Implementing Ecosystem Valuation as a Global Conservation and Economic Development Strategy
    Tourism and recreation, freshwater and fisheries are examples of ecosystem services which, due to inappropriate or non-existent pricing mechanisms are eroding the natural capital on which they depend. The resulting economic imbalance in the monetary system undermines the functioning of the free-market system such that the long-term provision of these essential societal services and the well-being of the people who depend upon them is threatened. This project proposes to address this economic imbalance by carrying out studies to place an economic value on ecosystem services and to develop market-based mechanisms and policy recommendations to facilitate the establishment of environmentally and financially sustainable pricing practices for ecosystem services at park systems in some of the most ecologically important regions of the world.
    Purpose: The studies carried out in Ecuador, Peru and across South America have established a new approach to account financially for the economic value of the tourism and recereation function of ecosystem services provided by natural capital in protected areas. This directly addresses the prevailing economic imbalances associated with natural resource management. It is now impacting policy making in those countries and contributing measurably to the development of market-based approaches to managing tourism and recreation as governments realise the potential and importance of developing tourism concession frameworks, facilitating private investment and an expansion of the free market system to include parks and the management of natural capital.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Implementing Ecosystem Valuation as a Global Conservation and Economic Development Strategy
    In Colombia, a third of the population gets drinking water from protected areas. Some municipalities there and elsewhere in Latin America, are beginning to realize that investing in watershed protection is less expensive than mitigating the problems that result from watershed degradation. Recognizing the opportunity to capitalize upon this cost-benefit analysis to enhance freshwater conservation, the Conservancy has developed, tested and implemented a plan that incorporates financing watershed conservation and protection through water trust funds capitalized by user fees and private contributions. Buttressed by our longstanding protected-areas and ecotourism work in the region, these strategies are preserving freshwater for people while simultaneously conserving critical habitat. We seek to create 2 new Funds, in Ecuador and Colombia.
    Purpose: Purpose(s):
    The purposes of the objectives for which we seek the Foundation’s support are to:
    1. develop ecosystem services models that aim to counter economic imbalances and which are globally replicable,
    2. contribute to the global financial system through the fostering of sustainable local economies, and
    3. explore and develop market-based solutions.
    The two water funds outlined in this proposal are especially important models in the Conservancy’s water fund portfolio because of their roles in informing regional and global replication—the Cauca Valley for its incorporation of climate adaption methodology and the Ayampe watershed for helping determine how to establish water funds in impoverished regions.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Nature Conservancy - Indo-Pacific Division
    Market Forces and Fishery Management in Micronesia and Hawaii
    The Nature Conservancy will address the economic imbalance of island nations in Micronesia whose livelihoods and food sources are at risk from market forces, both internal and external, that are creating unsustainable fishing conditions while weakening traditional management systems. In response, we will work with Micronesian partners to assess the impact of internal and external market forces on traditional practices and marine resource sustainability; integrate rights-based and traditional management systems into combined approaches for Micronesia’s coastal fisheries; develop innovative sustainable financing options for coastal fisheries management; and lay the groundwork to roll out and refine these approaches across Micronesia within the framework of the Micronesia Challenge. If funding is approved to a second year, the project will be expand to Hawaii.
    Purpose: This project will address the economic imbalance caused by the erosion of traditional fisheries rights and management by working to change marine policy to support and reinforce traditional management systems, protect vital coastal fisheries for communities and build an innovative approach to fisheries management that can be applied in Micronesia and throughout the Pacific. It will also include market-based alternatives to overfishing through improved fisheries management that will benefit communities rather than outside fishing companies.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Ecological and Economic Assessment of Bumphead Parrotfish and Humphead Wrasse in Palau to develop market-based and culturally appropriate management options
    The Nature Conservancy will work with government and community partners, experts in fisheries and economics, to incorporate economic and market-based approaches into the co-management of key fisheries in the Republic of Palau and Pohnpei (Federated States of Micronesia). This project will allow us to begin to demonstrate practical options for improving fisheries co-management in Micronesia to address the current decline in coastal fisheries and the challenges with their effective management. We propose to assist with the establishment of fishers’ associations that promote user-rights and markets-based approaches; and help initiate development of economic and market-based tools and approaches. This project is part of a longer-term initiative to demonstrate integrated coastal fisheries co-management that incorporates EAF principles, shows stakeholder involvement in management decisions, and applies cost effective harvest strategies based economic and market-based solutions.
    Purpose: The purpose of this project is to effectively incorporate economic, market-based, and traditional approaches into the co-management of bumphead parrotfish and humphead wrasse in Palau to demonstrate practical options for improving fisheries sustainability and resilience in Micronesia.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The New School
    International Conference on "The Bottom Line on Climate Change: Transitioning to Renewable Energy"
    The conference was hosted by The New School on September 22 and 23, 2011. It addressed open questions regarding the transition from high carbon intensive technology to low carbon intensive technology. A particular focus was on renewable energy sources. The workshop brought together high-profile experts from different countries and institutions who made predictions and policy recommendations regarding the potential market outcomes associated with different approaches to organizing the transitional stage.
    Purpose: The workshop addresses the question how the transition towards low-carbon intensive technology and "green energy" can effectively help reducing the emission of green house gases, produce sufficient energy supply and contribute to economic stability and employment. We seek to contribute to the debate on how the market economy can be brought on a path consistent with prosperity and sustainability. The workshop thus focuses on which economic environment is favorable for inducing entrepreneurs to invest in and adopt green technology and green energy. The pros and cons of public investments in green R&D, incentive structures such as carbon taxes and subsidies for low carbon-intensive technology will be discussed in the workshop. We will analyze the question of what weight should be given to different types of greenhouse gas free energy (such as solar, wind, ocean and nuclear power). Solutions shall be pointed out to policy makers.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • An International Conference on Environmental Economics
    The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen has been perceived as a failure, while the consequences of global warming continue to mount. The leading nations of the world, however, hesitate to commit themselves to climate change mitigation measures. Attempting to establish both the urgency of the issue and to help overcome the standoff in international negotiations, The New School hosted a high level international conference on the “Economics of Climate Change” on April 9 -10, 2010.
    Purpose: Our conference lines up well with the Foundation's support of research that connects ecosystem services to the mechanisms of free-market sustainability. Specifically, we will investigate the unresolved tensions between economic growth and environmental damage, which pose a threat to domestic and global markets.
    The Foundation has an admirable history of funding projects that reveal the intersection of environmental policy and economic impact in cities like Pittsburgh. We will examine this intersection from an international perspective by looking at the economic fortunes of other countries that have implemented emissions-curbing policies. Conference participants will tackle issues such as ecosystem valuation, the discounting of future environmental damages, and the market outcomes associated with different emissions policies.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    •   The Prometheus Institute
    Carbon Tax Project
    The Project’s goal is to inform and engage Americans in support of a carbon tax as the preferred market-friendly policy solution to the danger of catastrophic climate change. The Institute’s Carbon Tax Project responds both to the national need for market-friendly policy leadership on climate change, as well as the pressing need for policy organizations to more effectively engage the public in support of their ideas. Specifically, the Project will sponsor and promote research by eminent scholars to help develop an efficient and market-driven carbon tax policy, and will also help the policy proposal gain political, economic and popular legitimacy within the national climate change debate.
    Purpose: Currently, most of the advocacy on behalf of climate change legislation is unfortunately led by organizations with little concern for the effects of their proposals on free markets and economic growth. Proposals like mandatory limits on emissions and demands for radical changes in energy generation, automobile standards, transportation mechanisms and other private industries threaten to cause grave harm to America's dynamic free market system.
    Unless policy organizations respond with effective market-friendly proposals to help combat the future effects of catastrophic climate change, the Institute believes, the popular rush to legislate an ad hoc solution to global warming threats may irreparably harm the dynamic free market system of the United States. The Institute's Carbon Tax Project, unique among all policy organizations, seamlessly integrates carbon trading markets into comprehensive national climate change policy, among other dynamic, market-based features.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The R Street Institute
    R Street Climate Change Project
    R Street wants to convince conservatives that climate change is an important issue worthy of public policy action. To do this, we want to pursue two interlocking strategies: (1) An outreach campaign intended to convince Republicans and conservatives that good public policy related to climate change is not only consistent with conservative philosophy but will help to advance it. (2) A research program intended to develop a stronger evidentiary basis for conservative, market-oriented ways of confronting climate change. We are asking you, the Walker Foundation, for partial funding of both of these priorities.
    Purpose: Our project will meet all four of the purposes listed above. • It will investigate economic imbalances, in relation to the ways government subsidies both to coastal development and agricultural production flow primarily to wealthy farms, developers and property owners. • It will illustrate how an often overlooked segment of the global financial system – the system of property insurance, including the global reinsurance market – may be used to foster a more sustainable economy by parsing, mitigating and controlling risk, including environmental and climate risks. • It will illustrate that environmental degradation and poorly conceived public policies could damage the free market system • It will explore and develop market-based solutions to climate change, including the pricing of carbon emissions.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • R Street Carbon Tax and State Level Work
    R Street will continue work with the federal executive branch, Congress, state governments, conservative non-profits and others to develop and promote the idea that states willing to impose a carbon tax at a certain minimum level should be able to opt out of EPA greenhouse gas regulations. In particular, we’ll build on progress we have made in forwarding the idea of state-level carbon taxes in places like Oregon, Washington and Virginia. We will also work with members of Congress and executive branch policymakers to encourage an alternative to burdensome EPA regulations.
    Purpose: • It will investigate economic imbalances. In particular, it will investigate the ways current energy policy and proposed greenhouse gas regulations from the EPA create suboptimal economic outcomes. • It will explore and develop market-based solutions to climate change, by forwarding the idea of an opt-in state-level carbon tax as an alternative to EPA regulations. • It will help illustrate that environmental degradation and poorly conceived public policies, including the proposed EPA regulations, could damage the free-market system.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Planning for CBRA Expansion
    The purpose of this grant would be to develop an planning, outreach, and coalition building strategy to expand the use of protections like those provided by the Coastal Barrier Resources System. CBRA, signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1982, is a highly successful effort to forward environmental protection goals by reducing the size and scope of government. CBRA establishes “subsidy free zones” that withdraw a number of federal programs from environmentally sensitive areas. The results speak for themselves; CBRA has saved over $1 billion while protecting 1.3 million acres of sensitive land from development. It is an effective, market-based solution to the problems of increasing levels of coastal damage and sea level rise. We want to develop plans, engage in outreach, and build coalitions to double the size of CBRA and double the amount of money that it saves for taxpayers.
    Purpose: The proposal is a planning effort to expand the Coastal Barrier Resources System and the areas covered by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act. Because it solves conservation problems with market mechanism and smaller government, CBRA is, itself, a market-based solution to both conservation and climate change-adaptation goals. Our proposal will outline ways to expand and develop CBRA and the market-based solution it represents.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • State-level carbon taxes as an alternative to EPA regulation
    The R Street Institute will work with the federal executive branch, state governments, conservative non-profits and others to develop and promote the idea that states willing to impose a carbon tax at a certain minimum level should be able to opt out of EPA greenhouse gas regulations. We'll also work in particular states to determine what other taxes might be eliminated as part of a carbon tax swap.
    Purpose: Our grant proposal below meets three of the Walker Foundation's grant guidelines. • It will investigate economic imbalances. In particular, it will investigate the ways current energy policy and proposed greenhouse gas regulations from the EPA create sub-optimal economic outcomes. • It will explore and develop market-based solutions to climate change, by forwarding the idea of an opt-in state-level carbon tax as an alternative to EPA regulations. • It will help illustrate that environmental degradation and poorly conceived public policies, including the proposed EPA regulations, could damage the free-market system.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • R Street Institute, Market-Based Approaches to Greenhouse Gases, 2016-2017
    R Street will continue work with the federal executive branch, Congress, state governments, conservative nonprofits and others to develop and promote two ideas concurrently. The first: conservatives, in particular, need more exposure to better arguments in support of pollution pricing, particularly with respect to greenhouse gasses. The second: the legislative branch must act to create a market-friendly alternative to Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
    Purpose: The current regulatory regime with regard to greenhouse gases is a textbook example of economic imbalance: many emissions are not priced at all and others are priced arbitrarily by means of regulation. Greenhouse gases impose a significant externality and are what Ronald Reagan called a "destructive trespass." Pricing them appropriately in a way that reduces greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to restore economic balance. The solution we favor--pricing--is far more market-based than the alternative ways of restoring economic balance and we aim to develop it.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Science Council for Global Initiatives
    International IFR Development 2013
    SCGI's purpose is to provide technological and political frameworks that will result in policies leading to abundant energy and resources for all nations. Our primary effort is to get a commercial-scale version of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) built as quickly as possible in order that it might prove the concept and provide a standard design that can be deployed globally. This project requires the involvement of the leading experts in the field (who are already members of SCGI) and their engagement with world leaders and policymakers who can achieve the goal.
    Purpose: Introducing a new type of nuclear technology on a commercial scale is no small task. In order for a technology to be widely deployed it must not only be technically but economically viable. GE's PRISM reactor—the commercial version of the IFR—promises to meet the economic requirements necessary for widespread adoption. Perhaps just as crucially, however, the modular PRISM is perfectly suited to replace coal burners at coal-fired power plants that are spewing not just CO2 but a host of pollutants into the atmosphere. The PRISM modules will be able to do that by simply replacing the coal burner with a small underground reactor vessel.
    In addition to our activities with scientists and policymakers around the world, SCGI has sometimes augmented the efforts of GE-Hitachi by independently publicizing GEH's PRISM technology, as well as initiating contacts between GEH and foreign entities. Our independence from GEH is an important factor in our effectiveness.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • International IFR Development
    SCGI's purpose is to provide technological and political frameworks that will result in policies leading to abundant energy and resources for all nations. Our primary effort is to get a commercial-scale version of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) built as quickly as possible in order that it might prove the concept and provide a standard design that can be deployed globally. This project requires the involvement of the leading experts in the field (who are already members of SCGI) and their engagement with world leaders and policymakers who can achieve the goal.
    Purpose: The first couple years of SCGI's existence have involved developing political contacts and discussions that can accomplish the daunting task of introducing a new type of nuclear technology on a commercial scale. In order for a technology to be widely deployed it must not only be technically but economically viable. GE's PRISM reactor—the commercial version of the IFR—promises to meet the economic requirements necessary for widespread adoption. Perhaps just as crucially, however, the modular PRISM is perfectly suited to replace coal burners at coal-fired power plants that are spewing not just CO2 but a host of pollutants into the atmosphere. With China, India, and even Germany building new coal-fired plants, an economically viable way must be found to allow them to abandon the coal without a crippling loss due to stranded infrastructure that has yet to pay for itself. The PRISM modules will be able to do that by simply replacing the coal burner with a small underground reactor vessel.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The University of Rhode Island
    Emerging Strategies for Improving Fisheries Management
    Building upon the successful 2005 Fisheries workshop in Del Mar, CA, (supported by the Walker Fdn.) and arising from several important initiatives that emerged among the participants of that conference, the purpose of this workshop was to advance the cause of fisheries self-governance by assembling commercial fishermen in a 2007 workshop to discuss case studies of successful management, research and marketing.
    Purpose: The purpose of the grant addresses priority areas (1 and 4) to examine economic imbalances; explore and develop market based solutions, and engage end users to help stabilize the long term supply of seafood and healthy fish stocks.The timing of a second workshop is critical. First, new flexibility in national fisheries law is creating space for innovation and new opportunities for participants in the fishing industry to assume higher levels of management responsibility. Secondly, several of the fishermen-led monitoring and management projects discussed at Del Mar are coming to maturity. It is important to reinforce the messages of resource holder responsibility, market incentives, adaptive management, and independent review in this period of interpretation and adjustment to new the revised law.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   The Wilderness Society
    Delivering Ecosystem Services in the Southern Appalachians
    The undeveloped federal and private forest lands of the Southern Appalachians represent critical natural capital that supports water quality, flood control, recreation, and other ecosystem services for the communities and people of the region. Many of these values are often overlooked in planning for the management and stewardship of these lands and the consequence is a loss of that critical natural capital over time. This trend could be slowed or reversed by bringing information to federal land planning efforts and augmenting market-based incentives for building up, rather than using up, natural capital. The Wilderness Society will develop solid information about ecosystem service flows across western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee and put that information into action in the development of better national forest plans and, through collaboration with the Dogwood Alliance, enhanced markets for ecosystem services supplied by private lands.
    Purpose: Correcting Economic Imbalances: Economic imbalances affecting natural resources are often caused by a lack of information about value of natural assets to the economy. When such information is lacking, those assets are discounted or ignored in both market transactions and public decision making (which often relies on cost-benefit or similar analysis). Our project will develop information about the value of natural capital in the Southern Appalachians and bring that information to bear on land management decision-making.
    Exploring market-based solutions: As a side benefit of this project, we intend to share results with the Dogwood Alliance in order to identify opportunities for bundling and stacking water, recreation, or other services with the carbon sequestration services already covered by the Carbon Canopy program. This will provide better markets for forest landowners seeking to retain, but still realize financial benefits from, natural capital.
  • Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   University of California
    New Zealand Marine Fisheries Management Tour
    Twenty US fishing industry leaders completed a one week study tour to New Zealand in March 2006 to learn firsthand about that nation's 20 year experience with individual transferable quotas. The tour was organized by the California Sea Grant Extension Program. Study tour participants are conducting outreach programs to share what they learned and a tour website is under construction.
    Purpose: Individual transferable quota systems, such as New Zealand's, end the race for fish, provide incentives to individuals for conservation, and often add significant value to fisheries. This is in direct contrast to previous open access or limited entry systems which have lead to resource declines in many fisheries and the dissipation of profits in the race to catch fish. By observing in person a long running ITQ system in New Zealand, study tour participants were able to learn parts of that system that may or may not work or apply in their local fisheries. The project's purpose is to have the participants apply what they learned to the design of improved fishery managment systems in the US.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   Washington University
    Earmarking and the Political Economy of Agricultural Research
    We propose to investigate the political economy of agricultural research appropriations at a highly disaggregated level in order to address a number of critical issues regarding the allocation and merits of earmarked agricultural research.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
    •   WildEarth Guardians
    Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery & Grazing Permit Retirement In Greater Gila
    WildEarth Guardians received a $25,000 grant from the Alex C. Walker Foundation to protect the threatened wildlands and endangered wildlife of the Greater Gila Ecosystem through a market-based approach that retires high conflict cattle grazing allotments on national forest lands. In 2013 we signed an agreement with a New Mexico rancher on the Deep Creek Allotment of the Gila National Forest to retire a 30,000-acre allotment in the heart of the Greater Gila. On April 21, 2014 we financially compensated this rancher for relinquishing his 30,000-acre grazing allotment, which will now be administratively retired by the Gila National Forest. This successful pilot will be leveraged as we hope to sign several additional retirement agreements in the next 12 months. This administrative retirement and the additional ones we hope to complete this year will demonstrate the feasibility of this market-based approach to solving cattle grazing conflicts and furthering Mexican gray wolf conservation.
    Purpose: This project meets the Alex C. Walker Foundation’s purpose of exploring and developing market-based solutions. WildEarth Guardians has invested significant financial and intellectual resources over the past several years to promote a market-based solution to protect our environment by implementing a voluntary grazing permit retirement pilot project in a key wildlife/livestock conflict area on the Gila National Forest. This strategy has been used successfully in the Greater Yellowstone area and Oregon and we wish to demonstrate this approach can be used in the Greater Gila area, to the benefit of everyone involved. In the coming six months we believe we will successfully complete our pilot grazing permit retirement project, which will then be slightly modified and replicated across the Greater Gila.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    • Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Through Grazing Permit Retirement In Greater Gila
    WildEarth Guardians’ campaign protects the threatened wildlands and endangered wildlife of the Greater Gila Bioregion through a market-based approach that retires high conflict cattle grazing allotments on national forest lands. In April 2014 we compensated a rancher to relinquish his 28,000-acre grazing allotment, which has now been administratively closed by the Gila National Forest (announced in August). This success will be leveraged; we hoped to sign additional agreements over the past 12 months (we were close) and will sign new agreements in the next 12 months. Thanks to efforts building support in the ranching community and the political support of Congressional champions, a pilot program for permanent-grazing retirements was added to must pass federal legislation in 2014. Unfortunately, Congress stripped the pilot program language from the final bill in conference. Our administrative retirement and incremental progress demonstrates the feasibility of our market-based approach.
    Purpose: This project meets the Alex C. Walker Foundation’s purpose of exploring and developing market-based solutions. WildEarth Guardians has invested significant financial and intellectual resources over the past several years to promote a market-based solution to protect our environment by implementing a voluntary grazing permit retirement pilot project in a key wildlife/livestock conflict area on the Gila National Forest – this is happening in the coming weeks and we have multiple additional ranchers poised and ready to sign additional agreements. This strategy has been used successfully in the Greater Yellowstone area, Idaho, Oregon and we wish to demonstrate this approach is viable in the Greater Gila area, to the benefit of everyone involved. In 2014 we hope to retire 2-3 grazing allotments on up to 200,000 acres, which we hope to then leverage by replicating this on other allotments across the Greater Gila.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.
    •   World Wildlife Fund, Inc.
    Fishing Subsidies and the World Trade Organization
    World Wildlife Fund (WWF) actively worked with private sector partners in our pursuit of new disciplines on fisheries subsidies, including the United States’ most important seafood trade organization, the National Fisheries Institute. We also aligned our work with parallel efforts by a group of governments that favor new, more trade-friendly rules in this area.
    Purpose: Our project promotes binding new international rules to eliminate harmful fisheries subsidies. Many existing fisheries subsidies tend to impair free trade by causing distortions in the economics of fisheries production. These distortions simultaneously upset competitive relationships and contribute to the erosion of an economically vital natural resource base. The elimination of harmful fisheries subsidies would remove economic incentives for enterprises to pursue unprofitable fishing, and thus would allow market forces to act as a critical feedback mechanism in regulating the level of global fishing effort.
  • Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
  • Explores and develops market-based solutions.

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