Scottish Agricultural College (Scotland’s Rural University College) (SAC) Edinburgh, UK

The Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) was a higher education and research institution specialising in agriculture. It was formed in 1990 as a merger between three regional agricultural colleges. In 2012 it became part of Scotland's Rural University College. The work of the SAC in education and training, research and development and consultancy services, is continued by the SRUC. Although SAC’s involvement in fisheries economics is also long-standing, the focus on marine ecosystems and the ecosystem approach stems from work carried out for the UK government (Defra) for the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. The Bill was designed so as to apply an ecosystem approach, and its implementation under the requirements of UK Regulatory Impact Assessment guidelines required the substantiation of the costs of and benefits of the designation of marine protected areas, termed Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) in UK terminology.

Key Personnel

Corrine Baulcomb

Corinne Baulcomb is based in SRUC and works as a Marine Economics researcher and runs the MSc in Ecological Economics at the University of Edinburgh. She is primarily interested in interdisciplinary research efforts that strive to  bring elements of economics and marine science together in order to address both conservation and resource management conflicts. Specifically, she is interested in the application of the concept of ecosystem services, nonmarket valuation techniques, cost benefit analysis, systems modelling, and agent-based modelling to address these issues in an interdisciplinary context.