Arild Angelsen

I'm a professor in development and climate/environmental economics, doing critical and policy-relevant research. Because poverty and climate change are so important, research has to be extra critical. We simply cannot afford policies that don't work.

My main long term reseach interests are:
1. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+): I’m involved in several research activities on tropical deforestation and climate, including the Global Comparative Study of REDD+, coordinated by CIFOR (http://www.forestsclimatechange.org/). Currently I'm involved in work for the World Bank and FAO to estimate benefits and costs of REDD+.

2. Deforestation-free supply chains: I'm part of the BEDROCK project:'Building an evidence-base for deforestation-free landscapes: supporting equitable outcomes in and beyond commodity supply-chains' (2023-26). Reseach in Indonesia (soy), Cameroon (cocoa) and Brazil (soy), with a focus on (perceived) theories of change. https://bedrock-project.earth/

3. Field experiments on forest management: Since 2012, I have been involved (mainly through the supervision of a few very good PhD students) in framed field experiments on local management of tropical forests. We have tested the impact of different conservation policies and measures: community management (communication, peer punishment), different designs of Payment for Environmental Services (level of pay, individual vs. group pay, reference levels), and command and control. The countries include Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, Brazil, Peru and Indonesia.

4. Poverty and environment: I was the global coordinator of PEN, which was a tropics-wide research programme collecting detailed quarterly data from about 8 000 households in 334 villages in 24 developing countries on income, assets, forest uses, local institutions and more. A special issue of World Development (2014) contains the main results: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/world-development/vol/64/suppl/S1

I teach several courses at NMBU: Economics of sustainability (ECN306), Poverty and inequality (ECN352), Global Challanges (ECN350) and co-lecturing a course in Climate economics (ECN372). I am also programme director of two intersiciplinary, exciting Master programmes (Economics and Environmental Governance, and Global Economy and Politics).