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GFS researcher has been awarded the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship

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Dr O’Connor – Looking at markets for conservation in Xishuangbanna, China

Global Food Studies (GFS) Researcher Dr Patrick O’Connor has been awarded the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship to undertake collaborative research in 2016 on ecosystem service markets at the Institute of Urban Environment, Xiamen, China.

His project “Exploring Barriers to Ecosystem Service Market Effectiveness” will combine the development of a conceptual model of barriers to ecosystem service development with analysis of 10 years of ecological, social and economic data from landscape-scale ecosystem service markets in Australia.

The empirical component of the research will provide the first synthesis of risk management behaviour of participants in auctions (markets) for the provision of ecological services from forests and woodlands. The conceptual model component will build on the empirical work to develop understanding of what barriers prevent the transfer of capital from urban resource consumers to regional/rural ecosystem service providers.

The project aims to further the science and economics of ecosystem service market design as well as informing policy about how barriers to market development can be overcome.

 

Dr O’Connor will spend up to 2 months in China in the second half of 2016. He will be working closely with his main collaborations Professor Shenghui Cui and Professor Yongguan Zhu at the Institute of Urban Environments in Xiamen, China.

Dr O’Connor has a background in research and consulting in natural resource management science and program evaluation. Patrick is also Managing Director of the consulting company O’Connor NRM. Dr O’Connor’s consulting and research work focusses on the design, creation, implementation and evaluation of markets for ecosystem services. He works on projects aimed at overcoming negative environmental externalities from agricultural production systems and has created markets for the conservation of soil and biodiversity and for carbon sequestration.

Dr O’Connor undertakes research on the design of novel contracts for land management, and toward understanding of price-setting behaviors of landholders supplying ecosystem services. He also works in program evaluation, designing and implementing evaluations to improve program decisions or demonstrate policy and program impact.

Dr O’Connor has an additional interest in the application of applied linguistics to scientific writing and is co-author of the successful book ‘Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps’ which sets out a genre-based approach to training scientists to write research papers. Dr O’Connor and his co-author Dr Margareth Cargill manages the Write Research website.

Congratulations Dr O’Connor on your achievement!

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