Gretchen Daily | |
---|---|
Born | Washington D.C., U.S. | October 19, 1964
Alma mater | Stanford University |
Known for | Natural capital Biogeography |
Awards | BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2019) Blue Planet Prize (2017) Volvo Environment Prize (2012) Fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow of the American Philosophical Society Heinz Award with special focus on Global Change (2010) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biology Conservation biology Natural capital Ecology Biogeography Ecological economics |
Institutions |
Gretchen C. Daily (born October 19, 1964) [1] is an American environmental scientist and tropical ecologist. She has contributed to understanding humanity's dependence and impacts on nature, and to advancing a systematic approach for valuing nature in policy, finance, management, and practice around the world. Daily is co-founder and faculty director of the Natural Capital Project, a global partnership that aims to mainstream the values of nature into decision-making of people, governments, investors, corporations, NGOs, and other institutions. Together with more than 300 partners worldwide, the Project is pioneering science, technology, and scalable demonstrations of inclusive, sustainable development.
Based at Stanford University, Daily is the Bing Professor of Environmental Science in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Daily is an elected fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, [2] the American Academy of Arts and Sciences [3] and the American Philosophical Society. [4] Daily is a former board member of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of The Nature Conservancy. [5]
Born in Washington, D.C., Daily was raised mostly in California and West Germany, where she graduated from high school in 1982. She then returned to California and earned her B.S. (1986), M.S (1987), and Ph.D. (1992) in biological sciences from Stanford University. [6]
In 1992, Daily was awarded the Winslow/Heinz Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group. [5] In 1995 Daily became the Bing Interdisciplinary Research Scientist in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. [5] During her time as a research scientist, Daily served as the editor of Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems, a foundational book that lays out the framework used widely today for understanding the benefits of nature to people, with numerous examples and ways of considering their value. The Heinz Foundation noted that Nature's Services "has served as a model for ecosystems regulation in several regions of the world and was a catalyst for the U.N.'s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment."
After 7 years as a research scientist, Daily was appointed as an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and as a senior fellow at the Institute of International Studies (both at Stanford University) in 2002. [5] In 2002, Daily published the book The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Katherine Ellison. [5] She has since published a dozen further books, including The Power of Trees (2012) and One Tree (2018) with Charles J. Katz, Green Growth that Works: Natural Capital Policy and Finance Mechanisms from Around the World (2019) with Lisa Mandle, Zhiyun Ouyang, and James Salzman, and Rural Livelihood and Environmental Sustainability in China (2020) with Jie Li, Shuzhuo Li, and Marcus Feldman.
In 2005, Daily was appointed as the Bing Professor of Environmental Science in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and was made the director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. [5] As of 2020, Daily serves in all three of these positions. [5] [6]
In 2005, Daily (the project leader from Stanford), along with partners at The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund, established the Natural Capital Project. The organization's stated goal is to "improve the well-being of people and our planet by motivating targeted investments in nature." [5] [7] In later years, the core partnership expanded to include the University of Minnesota, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Stockholm Resilience Center, together with over three hundred collaborating institutions. Its signature software, InVEST, is open source, co-developed with users, and now used in 185 countries to reveal the values of nature in specific decisions, and the risks and costs of its loss. As co-founder and Stanford faculty director [8] of the Natural Capital Project, Daily "serves as [the organization's] chief emissary to financial and government leaders." [9] In 2006, Daily became a member of the board of directors of The Nature Conservancy. Daily served as the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in Sustainability Studies at the University of Cambridge in 2013.
Daily's academic profile at the Center for Conservation Biology states that "Daily’s scientific research is on countryside biogeography and the future dynamics of biodiversity change." [10] In an interview, Daily remarked that "'Countryside biogeography' is a new conceptual framework for elucidating the fates of populations, species, and ecosystems in ‘countryside’ – the growing fraction of Earth's unbuilt land surface whose ecosystem qualities are strongly influenced by humanity." [11] To forecast what elements of nature will survive into the future, Daily studies the capacity of nature reserves and agricultural systems to sustain plants, animals, insects, and other organisms. [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]
Using findings from research done in countryside biogeography, Daily, and researchers like her, is attempting to determine what "species are most important and most merit protection" and "what is the scientific basis for deciding" the relative importance of species within a given ecosystem. [5] When asked "which species/systems most merit protection?" Daily responded that she is "actively attempting to link projected changes in biodiversity and ecosystems to changes in 'services' to humanity." She went on to cite "production of goods," "life-support processes," "life-fulfilling conditions" and "options (genetic diversity for future use)" as the services that ecosystems/species provide for people. To characterize the values of nature and the risks and costs of its loss, she advances the interdisciplinary science of ecosystem services, the benefits of nature to people. [17] [18]
As one of the co-founders of the Natural Capital Project, Daily employs her research practically by working "with private landowners, economists, lawyers, business people, and government agencies to incorporate environmental issues into business practice and public policy." [6]
In this book, together with Anne Howland Ehrlich and Paul R. Ehrlich, published in 1995 by Yale University Press, the authors look at the interaction between population and food supply and offer a strategy for balancing human numbers with nutritional needs. Their proposals include improving the status of women by giving them equal education, reducing racism and religious prejudice, reforming the agricultural system, and shrinking the growing gap between rich and poor. [19]
This generation faces a set of challenges unprecedented in their scope and severity and in the shortness of time left to resolve them. . . . The Stork and the Plow sets these out thoughtfully [and] accurately. . . . We can all hope this urgent message is carefully heeded.
— Henry W. Kendall, Nobel laureate and Julius A. Stratton Professor of Physics, MIT
Nature's Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems was published in 1997 by Island Press. Nature's Services starts off with an introduction from Daily titled "What are Ecosystem Services" and another introductory piece by Harold Mooney and Paul Ehrlich that seeks to detail the "fragmentary history" of ecosystem services. After the introductions, the book is split into four distinct sections that address different elements of ecosystem services.
The first section of the book address the economic issues involved in assigning value to ecosystem services in the first place. The next two sections outline different kinds of services that can be provided by nature, "Overarching Services" and "Services Supplied by Major Biomes." The overarching services section includes papers like "Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning" by David Tilman, [20] "Ecosystem Services Supplied by Soil" by Daily, Pamela Matson and Peter Vitousek [21] and "Services Provided by Pollinators" by Gary Nabhan and Stephen Buchmann [22] The "Services Provided by Major Biomes" section includes papers regarding topics like "Marine Ecosystems" by Charles Peterson and Jane Lubchenco [23] and "The World's Forests and their Ecosystem Services" by Norman Myers [24]
The last section of the book includes case studies which showcase different services that distinct ecosystems provide to people around the world. Examples include: "Water Quality Improvements by Wetlands" by Katherine Ewel [25] and "Ecosystem Services in a Modern Economy: Gunnison County, Colorado" by Andrew Wilcox and John Harte. [26] In the conclusion of the book, Daily remarks that the "core analyses presented in this book attempt to value ecosystems and their component species only insofar as they confer benefits, in the form of life-support goods and services, to human beings" but that this "focus does not in any way preclude making decisions on the basis of other values as well." [27]
In his review of the book, James Salzman concluded that Nature's Services, in contrast with efforts like the Endangered Species Act, "takes a different, potentially more effective tack, calling for explicit recognition of ecosystem services because of the direct, tangible benefits they provide. Such recognition could provide a more integrated and compelling basis for action than those suggested by a single-species or biodiversity protection for the simple reason that the impacts of those services on humans are more immediate and undeniably important." [28]
The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable was co-written by Daily and Katherine Ellison and was published in 2002 by Island Press. The book presents different cases studies where companies or governments were able to actually profit from their conservation efforts. One chapter describes how New York "decided to meet federal requirements to improve water quality with a less expensive, though more controversial, option of protecting watershed integrity through land purchases and development limits, rather than adopt the technological solution of a multibillion dollar treatment facility." [29] While another chapter offers "an assessment of plans to manage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by developing a worldwide system of carbon trading patterned on the U.S. experience with pollution." [29]
Kenneth Arrow remarked that Daily and Ellison "have delineated the new movement to make conservation of natural resources financially rewarding and illustrate in a lively and probing manner many cases of profitable activities that also preserve the biosphere." [29]
In his review of the book, Patrick Wilson stated that "The most notable contribution of The New Economy of Nature is its balanced message, optimistic and cautious." He goes on to say that the book "avoids the fallacy that the market is the solution to our environmental protection challenges and that, if allowed to operate free of government intervention, it can somehow make the policymaking choices less problematic and the tradeoffs less daunting" and that "it challenges elements of environmental orthodoxy that hold that the market, because of its short-term orientation and emphasis on profit over conservation, is an intrinsic threat to nature and the only solution is increased government oversight and financial commitment." [30]
Green Growth That Works: Natural Capital Policy and Finance Mechanisms from Around the World was published in 2019 by Island Press. [31]
Daily has received numerous prestigious awards and honors throughout her academic career, including the 21st Century Scientist Award (2000), The Sophie Prize (2008), The International Cosmos Prize (2009), The 16th Annual Heinz Award with special focus on global change, the Midori Prize (2010), the Volvo Environment Prize (2012), the Blue Planet Prize (2017), and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2020). [5] [32] [33] [34] [35] She has received the 2018 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Ecology and Conservation Biology, jointly with Georgina Mace for developing vital tools facilitating science-based policies “to combat species loss.” [36]
Daily has authored, coauthored and/or edited five books. Daily has published about 400 scientific and popular articles. [5] [6] [8] She has published articles in many prestigious journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , Nature and Science . [5]
Some of her most cited/influential publications:
Ecology is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history.
Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest, and cultural value. On Earth, it includes sunlight, atmosphere, water, land, all minerals along with all vegetation, and wildlife.
Biodiversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distributed evenly on Earth. It is greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than one-fifth of Earth's terrestrial area and contain about 50% of the world's species. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity for both marine and terrestrial taxa.
Natural capital is the world's stock of natural resources, which includes geology, soils, air, water and all living organisms. Some natural capital assets provide people with free goods and services, often called ecosystem services. All of these underpin our economy and society, and thus make human life possible.
Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home economics, among others.
Ecological economics, bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that physical (human-made) capital can substitute for natural capital.
Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management.
Paul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist known for his predictions and warnings about the consequences of population growth, including famine and resource depletion. Ehrlich is the Bing Professor Emeritus of Population Studies of the Department of Biology of Stanford University.
Insular biogeography or island biogeography is a field within biogeography that examines the factors that affect the species richness and diversification of isolated natural communities. The theory was originally developed to explain the pattern of the species–area relationship occurring in oceanic islands. Under either name it is now used in reference to any ecosystem that is isolated due to being surrounded by unlike ecosystems, and has been extended to mountain peaks, seamounts, oases, fragmented forests, and even natural habitats isolated by human land development. The field was started in the 1960s by the ecologists Robert H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson, who coined the term island biogeography in their inaugural contribution to Princeton's Monograph in Population Biology series, which attempted to predict the number of species that would exist on a newly created island.
Ecosystem valuation is an economic process which assigns a value to an ecosystem and/or its ecosystem services. By quantifying, for example, the human welfare benefits of a forest to reduce flooding and erosion while sequestering carbon, providing habitat for endangered species, and absorbing harmful chemicals, such monetization ideally provides a tool for policy-makers and conservationists to evaluate management impacts and compare a cost-benefit analysis of potential policies. However, such valuations are estimates, and involve the inherent quantitative uncertainty and philosophical debate of evaluating a range non-market costs and benefits.
Anne Howland Ehrlich is an American scientist and author who is best known for the predictions she made as a co-author of The Population Bomb with her colleague and husband, Paul R. Ehrlich. She has written or co-written more than thirty books on overpopulation and ecology, including The Stork and the Plow (1995), with Gretchen Daily, and The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (2008), among many other works. She also has written extensively on issues of public concern such as population control, environmental protection, and environmental consequences of nuclear war.
Ecology is a new science and considered as an important branch of biological science, having only become prominent during the second half of the 20th century. Ecological thought is derivative of established currents in philosophy, particularly from ethics and politics.
Reconciliation ecology is the branch of ecology which studies ways to encourage biodiversity in the human-dominated ecosystems of the anthropocene era. Michael Rosenzweig first articulated the concept in his book Win-Win Ecology, based on the theory that there is not enough area for all of earth's biodiversity to be saved within designated nature preserves. Therefore, humans should increase biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. By managing for biodiversity in ways that do not decrease human utility of the system, it is a "win-win" situation for both human use and native biodiversity. The science is based in the ecological foundation of human land-use trends and species-area relationships. It has many benefits beyond protection of biodiversity, and there are numerous examples of it around the globe. Aspects of reconciliation ecology can already be found in management legislation, but there are challenges in both public acceptance and ecological success of reconciliation attempts.
Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from healthy ecosystems. These ecosystems, when functioning well, offer such things as provision of food, natural pollination of crops, clean air and water, decomposition of wastes, or flood control. Ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories of services. There are provisioning services, such as the production of food and water. Regulating services, such as the control of climate and disease. Supporting services, such as nutrient cycles and oxygen production. And finally there are cultural services, such as spiritual and recreational benefits. Evaluations of ecosystem services may include assigning an economic value to them.
Ecosystem management is an approach to natural resource management that aims to ensure the long-term sustainability and persistence of an ecosystem's function and services while meeting socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs. Although indigenous communities have employed sustainable ecosystem management approaches implicitly for millennia, ecosystem management emerged explicitly as a formal concept in the 1990s from a growing appreciation of the complexity of ecosystems and of humans' reliance and influence on natural systems.
Katherine Jane Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown, is a British biologist, academic and life peer, who studies the relationship between long-term ecosystem dynamics and environmental change. She is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Biology and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford, and an adjunct professor in biology at the University of Bergen. In 2018 she was elected Principal of St Edmund Hall, and took up the position from 1 October. She held the Tasso Leventis Chair of Biodiversity at Oxford and was founding Director, now Associate Director, of the Biodiversity Institute Oxford. Willis was Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 2013 to 2018. Her nomination by the House of Lords Appointments Commission as a crossbench life peer was announced on 17 May 2022.
Nature-based solutions is the sustainable management and use of natural processes to tackle socio-environmental issues. These issues include for example climate change mitigation and adaptation, water security, and disaster risk reduction. The aim is that resilient ecosystems provide solutions for the benefit of both societies and biodiversity. The 2019 UN Climate Action Summit highlighted nature-based solutions as an effective method to combat climate change. For example, nature-based systems for climate change adaptation can include natural flood management, restoring natural coastal defences, and providing local cooling.
The Natural Capital Project (NatCap) is a partnership among 250 groups around the world that has developed a systematic approach to weighing nature’s benefits. By placing a value on nature in the context of resource allocation, NatCap is influencing policy, finance and management decisions worldwide.
Katherine Carter Ewel is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida's School of Forest Resources and Conservation. She is an ecosystem, forest, and wetlands ecologist who has worked in Florida for much of her career, focusing much of it on cypress swamps, pine plantations, and mangrove forests in the Pacific. Ewel served as the vice-president of the Society of Wetland Scientists in 2003, becoming president in 2004 and now since 2005, a past president. She has now retired and lives near Gainesville, Florida.
Kate A. Brauman is an American scientist who uses an interdisciplinary tool set to examine the interactions between land use change and water resources. Brauman is the lead scientist for the Global Water Initiative at University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment.