Christopher Costello

About

Christopher Costello is the Research Director of the Environmental Markets Lab (emLab) and Co-Director of emLab's Ocean & Fisheries Program. He is also a Professor of Resource Economics at the Bren School. His research centers on natural resource economics, incomplete property rights, and decision making under uncertainty, with a particular focus on the value and effect of information on management decisions. Costello combines theoretical microeconomics with modeling and empirical analysis to inform policy on fisheries management, biological diversity, introduced species, industrial regulation, and marine policy. He has collaborated closely with national governments, international organizations, NGOs, and other partners worldwide to translate his research into practical actions across a diverse range of developed and developing countries. Currently, he serves as an advisor to California’s Governor Newsom on the Council of Economic Advisors and as a trustee of the Environmental Defense Fund and The Nature Conservancy (California). Christopher Costello holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Outside of his professional work, he enjoys hobbies such as cycling, gardening, woodworking, blacksmithing, beekeeping, and spending time with his family.

Research topics

• Fishery
• Biology
• Business
• Computer Science
• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Geography
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Security

Selected publications

• The future of food from the sea

  Nature · 2020 · 841 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  . As food from the sea represents only 17% of the current production of edible meat, we ask how much food we can expect the ocean to sustainably produce by 2050. Here we examine the main food-producing sectors in the ocean-wild fisheries, finfish mariculture and bivalve mariculture-to estimate 'sustainable supply curves' that account for ecological, economic, regulatory and technological constraints. We overlay these supply curves with demand scenarios to estimate future seafood production. We f…

  DOI

• Effective fisheries management instrumental in improving fish stock status

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 803 citations

  Marine fish stocks are an important part of the world food system and are particularly important for many of the poorest people of the world. Most existing analyses suggest overfishing is increasing, and there is widespread concern that fish stocks are decreasing throughout most of the world. We assembled trends in abundance and harvest rate of stocks that are scientifically assessed, constituting half of the reported global marine fish catch. For these stocks, on average, abundance is increasin…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food and climate

  Nature · 2021 · 750 citations

  DOI

• Satellites can reveal global extent of forced labor in the world’s fishing fleet

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 79 citations

  While forced labor in the world's fishing fleet has been widely documented, its extent remains unknown. No methods previously existed for remotely identifying individual fishing vessels potentially engaged in these abuses on a global scale. By combining expertise from human rights practitioners and satellite vessel monitoring data, we show that vessels reported to use forced labor behave in systematically different ways from other vessels. We exploit this insight by using machine learning to ide…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessing the population‐level conservation effects of marine protected areas

  Conservation Biology · 2021 · 58 citations

  Marine protected areas (MPAs) cover 3-7% of the world's ocean, and international organizations call for 30% coverage by 2030. Although numerous studies show that MPAs produce conservation benefits inside their borders, many MPAs are also justified on the grounds that they confer conservation benefits to the connected populations that span beyond their borders. A network of MPAs covering roughly 20% of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary was established in 2003, with a goal of providing…

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Nicolas Quérou

  Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement

  93 shared

• Agnès Tomini

  78 shared

• Steven D. Gaines

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  44 shared

• Matthew J. Kotchen

  Yale University

  24 shared

• Benjamin S. Halpern

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  21 shared

• Olivier Deschênes

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  17 shared

• Dominic P. Parker

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  17 shared

• Stephen Polasky

  University of Minnesota

  16 shared

Labs

• emLabPI

  Natural resource economics, incomplete property rights, decision making under uncertainty

Awards & honors

• Bren Researchers Named to 2020 Highly Cited List

Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara

• Sally MacIntyreh-88
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