Luke Brander
Independent Expert on the valuation of ecosystem services
Luke Brander is an environmental economist with over 25 years’ experience in applied research. He is currently working freelance based in Amsterdam and holds part-time positions as a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Earth System Sciences (IESW), Leibniz Universität Hannover; a Guest Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; and a Short Term Consultant at the World Bank supporting the Global Program on Nature-based Solutions for Climate Resilience. Luke’s main research interests are the valuation of natural resources and environmental impacts; and the design of economic instruments to control environmental problems. He has worked on the valuation of ecosystem services provided by marine ecosystems, mangroves, coral reefs, wetlands, forests, grasslands, agricultural land and urban green space using primary valuation methods and through meta-analyses of the ecosystem valuation literature. On-going projects include a cost-benefit analysis of new transport infrastructure in Saba, Malaysia for WWF; the valuation of ecosystem services provided by vultures in Europe for the Vulture Conservation Foundation; curation of the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database (ESVD) jointly with the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD); and the development of value transfer functions for integration into macro-economic modelling for Wageningen Economic Research (WErC). Luke also contributed to the revision process of the UN Statistics System of Environmental-Economic Accounting – Ecosystem Accounts (SEEA-EA).