For his work exploring the design and evaluation of programs providing payment for ecosystem services, Dr. Youngho (Young) Kim has recently been announced as the recipient of the Wallace E. Oates Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award.
Currently a postdoctoral research fellow in Environmental Economics at the Department of Economics and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at the University of Oxford, Kim will join the UF/IFAS Food and Resource Economics Department as an Assistant Professor in August 2025.
The Wallace E. Oates Award
The Wallace E. Oates Award is given out on an annual basis by the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
Oates was a Distinguished University Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, where Kim himself received his Ph.D. in 2024.
“Receiving the Wallace E. Oates Award from the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists is an incredible honor,” Kim said. “It underscores the importance of nature-based solutions for climate change and highlights the importance of restoring natural infrastructure such as forests and wetlands to generate benefits for both ecosystems and the economy.”
Kim’s dissertation is titled “Essays on the Design and Evaluation of Payments for Ecosystem Services Programs.”
What are ecosystem services?
Ecosystem services are the benefits that nature provides to society, such as clean water, carbon storage, and flood mitigation.
“I find this topic interesting because these services are often undervalued in policy decisions, despite its importance in our life and the economy,” Kim said.
Payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs are those that arrange for payments to be made to landowners for the benefits provided by their land, encouraging environmentally friendly practices.
One example of this would be a conservation easement program such as the Florida Forest Legacy Program, where funding is provided to owners of forest land in the state to voluntarily restrict the amount of development on their land and reserve that area for forest preservation purposes.
According to Kim, these programs are a vital tool in encouraging the uptake of conservation practices at a higher level than would be done on a voluntary basis alone.
Plans for Future Research
As he moves forward in his career, Kim plans to continue to expand his work on the design of effective PES programs that will address climate change and biodiversity loss while also evaluating their socio-economic implications.
“I plan to explore how PES programs interact with emerging environmental markets, such as carbon and water quality trading,” Kim said. “I also plan to examine auction mechanisms that can improve the cost-effectiveness of ecosystem service procurement.”
For more information about Dr. Youngho Kim, please visit his faculty directory page at https://fred.ifas.ufl.edu/about/directory/youngho-young-kim-/
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