The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center's video: Optimizing Policies Economically: Baltic Restoration Example

This lecture on Environmental Economics is for non-economists interested in socio-environmental science. It is one in a series of lectures by SESYNC visiting economists, Drs. Lisa Wainger and Doug Lipton. In this lecture, Dr. Lisa Wainger uses the example of a Baltic Sea restoration project to explain how to design optimal restoration using funds as efficiently as possible to get the results you want. She discusses goal-setting and establishing optimization while taking into account political realities and “fairness” constraints. Wainger highlights various survey methods, including willingness-to-pay, that can to get at the values people care about. She concludes by explaining that optimization modeling, coupled with legal and political flexibility, allows valuation to be used to examine approaches that would maximize net social benefits while saving costs.