Economics Department faculty member, Katrina Mullan, is currently developing new FEWS research projects at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE by its Spanish acronym) in Costa Rica. Professor Mullan is working with Roger Madrigal who is the director of Environment for Development-Central America, part of a network of environmental economics research groups in 11 developing countries. Together Mullan and Madrigal are studying how ecosystems and institutions interact to determine resilience to climate change in the context of decentralized management of drinking water by rural communities in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Guatemala. She is also collaborating with affiliated researchers Juan Robalino and Matias Piaggio on quantifying the causal effects of policies to protect tropical forests on water-related ecosystem services. These ecosystem services include mitigation of extreme events such as floods, droughts and landslides, and health benefits of improvements in water quality.
Mullan will be at CATIE until June 2020 during her sabbatical from UM. "While it's possible to collaborate remotely with people all over the world, it's so valuable to have the opportunity to interact face-to-face." she says.
