Postdoc to explore whether financial tools can be developed for application in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors

Description

The College of the Environment fosters existing and new collaborations between outstanding faculty, staff and students who are engaged in the study of: the solar system and Earth’s dynamic land, water and atmosphere; the development and application of environmental engineering and technological advances; and the impact of policy and human actions on the environment, and the management of natural resources.

The School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) is dedicated to sustaining healthy marine and freshwater environments. Our school comprises one of the largest and most diverse academic aquatic and fisheries sciences programs in the United States. Our faculty conduct innovative research from the organism to the ecosystem scale, and are recognized leaders in aquatic biology, sustainable fisheries management, and aquatic resource conservation.

The School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences values the strengths and professional experience that students, faculty, and staff bring to our community. We are committed to providing excellent education to all of our students, regardless of their race, gender, class, nationality, physical ability, religion, age, or sexual orientation. We are proud of the different roles that our students, staff, and faculty play in the community of the School and in the College of the Environment. We recognize that science is richer, and the SAFS community is more vibrant when a diverse group of people participate in the SAFS community.

The School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (SAFS) at the University of Washington seeks to hire a Postdoctoral Scholar to be supervised by Dr. Christopher Anderson and Dr. André Punt.  The position is supported by an award from David and Lucile Packard Foundation and is part of an working group hosted by the  Ocean Modelling Forum.

The research will be co-supervised by Dr. Christopher Anderson and Dr. André Punt.  The research conducted in Dr. Anderson’s lab focuses on understanding how the incentives presented by different forms of fishery management affect fleetwide economic and social outcomes, and especially how fisheries can support sustainable livelihoods and communities. The Punt lab is dedicated to the development and testing of methods for assessing the past and current status of fish, invertebrate and marine mammal populations. Members use these assessments as the basis for forecasts that evaluate which methods for managing these populations will best achieve the goals established by society for those populations.

Coastal communities around the world are facing climate shocks that impact income, livelihoods, and food-security, which can ultimately define their long-term prosperity. Many coastal communities are already economically depressed, and climate shocks like extreme marine heatwaves can be detrimental to the economic viability of many fishing and aquaculture operations. A major difference between food producers at sea and those inland, is the availability and use of financial risk management tools. For example, financial instruments such as insurance help farmers manage climate shocks such as drought. Why then are similar risk management tools not available to coastal communities so that they can protect themselves from marine climate shocks. The goal of this project is to find out why, and to then design financial tools specifically for coastal communities whose economic productivity is threatened by climate shocks like marine heatwaves.

The postdoctoral researcher will: 

·       Be a member of an international transdisciplinary group of researchers at the University of Washington, Oregon State University, and CSIRO (Australia) who work in the natural and social sciences as well as with industry partners.  This will involve travel to collaborate with the project team.

·       Conduct bio-economic analyses as identified by the group and postdoctoral researcher. Likely topics include:

o   Building a bio-economic model of a fishery that includes impacts of climate shocks, with which to examine the usefulness of various insurance scenarios.

o   Calculating financial risk (e.g., parametric insurance prices/payouts) for specific fisheries (e.g. Dungeness crab on the US west coast) and judge its viability.

o   Exploring how indemnity for a specific fishery will change in the coming decades under climate change, and how insurance can be used for climate adaptation in fisheries.