2024 Rachel Carson Lecture by Scott Barrett

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.