Catherine Kling Delivers 3rd Annual CEnREP Lecture

On March 27, Environmental Economist Catherine Kling delivered the third annual lecture hosted by the Center for Environmental and Resource Economic Policy (CEnREP) on the “Social Cost of Water Pollution.” Kling is a Tisch University Professor at Cornell University, Faculty Director of the Atkinson Center for Sustainability and member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Drawing an audience of about 100 people from across NC State and the broader community, Kling presented her latest interdisciplinary work on water pollution. She discussed a new model that combines the effect of agricultural nitrogen and nutrient deposition, hydrological modelling and economic assessment, to find the social damages from such deposition. 

One of her key insights was that although agriculture represents a large share of total nutrient deposition, it represents a much smaller source of damages because of its upstream location. The lecture sparked lively discussion and offered a compelling example of how economic research can inform environmental policy and sustainability efforts.

 For more information, visit https://cenrep.ncsu.edu/.