Stanford University

Natural Resources

Farming Finfish in Coastal Ecosystems and the Open Ocean: Assessing Options for Sustainability

If aquaculture is to play a responsible role in the future of seafood here at home, we must ensure that the "blue revolution" in ocean fish farming does not cause harm to the oceans and the marine life they support. The ratio of wild fisheries inputs to farmed fish output has fallen to 0.63 for the aquaculture sector as a whole but remains as high as 5.0 for Atlantic salmon.

Svend-Erik Skaaning

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(650) 724-2489
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Pre-doctoral Fellow 2005 - 2006

The working title of his PHD project is Democracy besides Elections: An Exploration into the Development and Causes of Respect for Civil Liberties in Latin American and Post-Communist Countries. The dissertation addresses the extent of civil liberty (freedom of: opinion and expression, assembly and association, religion, movement and residence as well as independent courts) in 20 Latin American and 28 post-communist countries. Apart from tracking the development of respect for civil liberties from the late 1970's till 2003, it also attempts to explain the present level of respect by examining different structural explanations, such as historical experience with liberty, ethno-religious composition, modernization and natural resources (primarily oil).

Skaaning has constructed his own dataset and index on civil liberties based on coding of the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices from 1977 to 2003, which he uses in his descriptive analysis of the development and as the dependent variable in the subsequent causal assessment. In this stage of the research, he both undertakes intraregional analyses, utilizing the fuzzy-set method and OLS-regression, and

interregional comparisons.

Skaaning received his B.A. (2000) and M.A. (2003) in Political Science from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, where he is also a PHD scholar in the final year. Parts of his MA degree were completed at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität (Heidelberg) and Freie Universität (Berlin).

Losing the Links Between Livestock and Land

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Global meat production is becoming increasingly industrialized, spatially concentrated, and geographically detached from the agricultural land base. This Policy Forum reviews the process of livestock industrialization and globalization, and its consequences for water, nitrogen, and species-rich habitats in meat- and feed-producing regions often vastly separated in space. It argues that pricing and other policy mechanisms which reflect social costs of resource use and ecological change are needed to re-couple livestock and land in producer countries, drawing on examples from Europe and the United States. It also argues that consumers can play an important role in setting a sustainable course.

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Science
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Rosamond L. Naylor
Henning Steinfeld
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Asian Melodrama: Does China's Development Threaten Southeast Asia's?

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China's rapid growth and increasingly close integration with world markets is transforming Northeast and Southeast Asian regional production and trade. Southeast Asia's relatively resource-abundant economies are expected to lose comparative advantage in low-skill, labor-intensive manufacturing activities while gaining comparative advantage in natural resource products. The latter shift will increase incentives to exploit and export the products of forestry, fisheries, and agriculture.

What are the implications for long-run growth and welfare, particularly in the poorest and least industrialized economies, including Indonesia and Vietnam? How will this trend interact with the other major phenomenon sweeping through Southeast Asia, i.e., decentralization? With reduced national authority and minimal local accountability, the potential for disastrous rates of resource exploitation is high. A race to liquidate natural resource assets, if sufficiently pronounced, could expose parts of the region to a new variant of the "natural resource curse" - the idea that resource-abundant economies grow more slowly than others.

Ian Coxhead is an economist and serves as director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His specialty is the economic development of Southeast Asia. His many publications on trade, development and the environment include The Open Economy and the Environment: Development, Trade and Resources in Asia (2003, with Sisira Jayasuriya). Prof. Coxhead's current research features the impacts of globalization, regional growth, and domestic policy reforms on the structures of production and employment, issues of poverty and the environment, and the exploitation of natural resources in Vietnam and the Philippines.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Ian Coxhead Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics University of Wisconsin, Madison
Seminars
Southeast Asia Program

Consequences of Increased Global Meat Consumption on the Global Environment: Trade in virtual water and nutrients

Meat production is projected to double by 2020 due to increased incomes, population growth, and rising per capita global consumption of meat. In order to meet this demand, industrialized animal production systems are proliferating and grain production for feed is expanding. These trends will have major consequences on the global environment-affecting the quality of the atmosphere, water, and soil due to nutrient overloads; impacting marine fisheries both locally and globally through fish meal use; and threatening human health, as, for example, through excessive use of antibiotics.

Globalization of Nitrogen Deposition: Consequences for Terrestial Ecosystems, The

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The sources and distribution of anthropogenic nitrogen (N), including N fertilization and N fixed during fossil-fuel combustion, are rapidly becoming globally distributed. Responses of terrestrial ecosystems to anthropogenic N inputs are likely to vary geographically. In the temperate zone, long-term N inputs can lead to increases in plant growth and also can result in over-enrichment with N, eventually leading to increased losses of N via solution leaching and trace-gas emissions, and in some cases, to changes in species composition and to ecosystem decline. However, not all ecosystems respond to N deposition similarly; their response depends on factors such as successional state, ecosystem type, N demand or retention capacity, land-use history, soils, topography, climate, and the rate, timing, and type of N deposition. We point to some of the conditions under which anthropogenic impacts can be significant, some of the factors that control variations in response, and some areas where uncertainty is large due to limited information.

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Pamela Matson
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Barton H. Thompson

Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Bldg.
473 Via Ortega, Rm 225
Stanford, CA 94305-4020

(650) 723-3402
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Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law
buzz.jpg JD

A leading expert in environmental and natural resources law and policy, Barton H. “Buzz” Thompson, Jr., JD/MBA ’76 (BA ’72), has contributed a large body of scholarship on environmental issues ranging from the future of endangered species and fisheries to the use of economic techniques for regulating the environment. He is the founding director of the law school’s Environmental and Natural Resources Program, Perry L. McCarty Director and senior fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment, and a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. In 2008, the Supreme Court appointed Professor Thompson to serve as the special master in Montana v. Wyoming (137 Original). Professor Thompson is chairman of the board of the Resources Legacy Fund and the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, a California trustee for The Nature Conservancy, and a board member of both the American Farmland Trust and the Sonoran Institute. He previously served as a member of the Science Advisory Board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1986, he was a partner at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles and a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law. He was a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist ’52 (BA ’48, MA ’48) of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Joseph T. Sneed of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Senior Fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and (by courtesy) the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Six Plus Two: Geopolitics, Natural Resources and the Future of Afghanistan

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The terrorist attacks on September 11 threw Afghanistan back into the international spotlight. This time, the events impacted not only Afghanistan's relationship with the United States and Russia, but also its relations with Pakistan. Dr. Amin Tarzi will work to put this change in relations between Afghanistan, her neighbors, the United States, and Russia into a perspective that will allow for a discussion on the current situation in the region and the future geopolitical role of Afghanistan. Amin Tarzi is a U.S. national of Afghan origins. His academic and professional expertise is in the history and politics of the Middle East and Central Asia, with a particular focus on the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, as well as Iran and Afghanistan. Dr. Tarzi has written extensively on topics related to the proliferation and politics of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, the politics of oil, the United States vis a vis the Arab world, and current affairs in Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan -- including the Taliban and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Dr. Amin Tarzi Senior Research Associate for the Middle East Speaker Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute for International Affairs
Seminars
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