As part of CSF's Conservation Economics Initiative, we are developing an innovative online Coastal Conservation Economics course in partnership with Duke University. The 4-month distance-learning course will be launched in January 2015, and will include interactive lectures, video lessons, webinars, virtual office hours, readings, exercises and exams, with an expected time commitment of about 3 hours per week.

Expert faculty from Duke University, including Linwood Pendleton and Brian Murray from the Duke Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Jeff Vincent from the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment, are leading curriculum development with CSF, and will be teaching the various course modules.

The course will apply a problem-based model of teaching, exploring how market and institutional failures lead to coastal and marine environmental degradation, and the economic and policy tools that can help solve these failures. The course will also include a module focused on ecosystem services and how valuation of those services can influence on-the-ground decision making and development and conservation policies.

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Below are the planned modules in further detail, as well as a video about how economics can help solve marine conservation challenges:

Module One: Environmental Degradation, Institutional Failures And Economic Solutions

1. Introduction To Open Access And Institutional Failure
2. Economic Drivers Of Environmental Degradation
3. Solutions To Institutional Failures
4. Economic Tools For Conservation

Module Two: An Ecosystem Services Approach To Conservation: Managing The Economic Value Of Natural Capital

1. Ecosystem Services
2. Valuing Ecosystem Services
3. Incorporating Ecosystem Services Into Conservation Policy