The founding father of the modern theory of resource conservation, John V. Krutilla, died of lung cancer at his home in McLean, Virginia on June 27. He was 81.
A central figure at RFF from 1955 through 1988, Krutilla was the first to identify undisturbed natural environments - wild rivers, wilderness, and other scenic resources - as natural assets. Krutilla's theories transformed environmental policy analysis. They not only provided a sound economic basis for including preservation benefits as legitimate components of the policy calculus, they also defined the research agenda for a generation of environmental economists.
That people not only value a clear view over the Grand Canyon, even when they may never visit it, but that these values can and should be counted; that legislation and policy now recognize people experience economic losses when fragile ecosystems are damaged; that the irreversible loss of any unique natural environment or species is acknowledged as a distinct and important type of public choice; that collectively we all think of resource conservation differently; all these are the results of work completed in the 1960's and 1970's by John Krutilla.
John Krutilla was one of RFF's founding fathers. His friends, family, and colleagues established the John V. Krutilla Memorial Fund, to ensure that his legacy of scholarship lives on. Additional contributions are welcomed. For more information on how to contribute to the Fund, please contact Barbara Bush, Director of Major Gifts, at 202-328-5030 or [email protected].
On October 3, 2007, RFF honored the legacy of John Krutilla with a special First Wednesday Seminar, "Reconsidering 'Conservation Reconsidered': A 40-Year Legacy."
In Conservation Reconsidered John Krutilla fundamentally altered the discussion about how to compare and make choices, private and public, about the varied uses for a river, a species, or any other natural resource.
In asserting that the economic values for undisturbed natural resources could and should be ascertained to inform our choices, Krutilla set in place much of the environmental economics research agenda for the past 35 years.
That history is reviewed in Conservation Reconsidered, The Economics of Natural Environments, and Our Understanding of Environmental Preferences by Nicholas Flores.
