Scott Barrett delivered lecture "Ocean Governance: Past, Present, Future" as one of the
2024 Rachel Carson Distinguished Anniversary Lecture Series on Sept 12.
Abstract: Before Silent Spring, Rachel
Carson wrote three remarkable books that, together, give both intimate
and sweeping portraits of the ocean, written in a poetic language that
conveys a sense of awe through understanding. Unlike Silent Spring,
these books aren't political. But the last of these was published in
1955, and Rachel Carson had clearly sensed by then that the natural
world was changing fast, and that we humans were the reason. My talk is
less about what we are doing to change the oceans than about what we are
doing to change what we are doing to the ocean. Our behavior is
mediated by institutions that we devise to change our own behavior. What
are these? Do they work? Can they be made to work better? My main focus
will be on the establishment of a kind of new property right, the
Exclusive Economic Zone. It will be about how this property right came
to be adopted, whether and how it helps fisheries conservation, and
whether a new change, such as a ban on high seas fishing, would help
today.
Scott Barrett is the Lenfest-Earth Institute
Professor of Natural Resource Economics at Columbia University, with
appointments in the School of International and Public Affairs and the
Earth Institute. He is also Centennial (Visiting) Professor at the
London School of Economics. His research shows how international
cooperation in managing the environment can be achieved by the strategic
design of treaties and related institutions. He lives in Brooklyn and
on Cape Cod. For his exceptional accomplishments, he has received many
prestigious awards and honors. For example, he has been awarded the Erik
Kempe Prize by the European Association of Environmental & Resource
Economists, the Publication of Enduring Quality Award by the
Association of Environmental & Resource Economists (AERE), and the
degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, by the University of Bath. He
is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of AERE. He
is also a Fellow and former chairman of the advisory board of the
Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics in the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences.