I am the Head of the School of Anthropology and Conservation and Professor of Conservation and Applied Resource Economics.

I seek to work with committed organisations and individuals to produce excellent, high impact original research.  My research interests are, in broad terms, related to biodiversity and forestry economics. Currently, I am especially focused on economic valuation of ecosystem services, incentive systems for ecosystem conservation, human-wildlife conflict, and conservation/land use planning and policy.

I am passionate about learning and teaching. I enjoy teaching economics and explaining its relevance to conserving biodiversity and the planet!  I teach on a wide range of modules in the School as part of our MSc programmes and I find it very rewarding to teach students from a wide variety of academic backgrounds and interests. I also travel overseas to deliver short courses in biodiversity economics which are specifically designed for students in those countries with no previous knowledge of economics.  

I believe in inter-disciplinarity! The complex challenges biodiversity conservation demands an interdisciplinary approach and I very much enjoy working with academics from other disciplines.

Recent Publications

MacMillan, D.C. and Han, J.H., 2011. Cetacean by-Catch in the Korean Peninsula—by Chance or by Design? Human Ecology 39: 757-768

Veríssimo, D, MacMillan, D.C. & Smith, R.J. (2011). Marketing diversity: a response to Joseph and colleagues. Conservation Letters, in press.

Verrissimo, D., MacMillan, D.C. and Smith, R.J. 2011 Toward a systematic approach for identifying conservation flagships. Conservation Letters 4: 1-8

MacMillan, D.C and Phillip, S. 2010. The role of economic incentives in resolving conservation conflicts: the case of wild deer management and habitat conservation. Human Ecology (38) 4: 485-494

MacMillan, D. C., Leitch, K, Wightman, A. and Higgins, P. 2010. The management and role of Highland sporting estates in the early 21st Century: the owner's view of a unique but contested form of land use. Scottish Geographical Journal 126 (1); 24-40

Full list of publications

Teaching

I am currently on study leave for 2011-2012 and will not be teaching or supervising any PGT student projects. On my return I shall only have limited teaching opportunities due to my Head of School responsibilities. 

In 2012-2013 I anticipate teaching:

• DI878 Social science perspectives on conservation (2 weeks)
• DI888 Economics of Biodiversity Conservation

I also teach intensive short courses in Biodiversity Economics that have been specially designed for professionals and PGT students overseas institutions.

Research

My research interests focus on understanding the economics of biodiversity conservation and land use decision-making. I am especially excited by the notion that biodiversity conservation will be able to pay for itself through the creation of new markets and/or complimentary livelihood strategies.

My own expertise lies in valuing ecosystem services and biodiversity, human-wildlife conflict studies, spatial conservation planning, illegal wildlife trade, and land reform. I have published over 100 articles including more than 50 refereed journal papers. My research has been cited in more than 1200 other publications and my current H Index is 20 (Google Scholar).

As an economist, I am especially focused on quantitative analysis and have expertise in a range of techniques including cost-benefit analysis, contingent valuation, choice experiments, linear programming and multi-variate statistics. However, in some situations, such as poaching and illegal logging reliable economic data is difficult to obtain hence I also deploy more qualitative approaches to enrich our understanding of these clandestine economic processes.

Current Research Projects

The Balanced Seas Project funded by Natural England (http://www.balancedseas.org/).

Market Based Scheme for Conservation in La Primavera Forest, Mexico funded by the Darwin Initiative in collaboration with University of Twente, Netherlands (http://darwin.defra.gov.uk/project/17027/)

I really enjoy supervising research being carried out by PhD and MSc students. 

Current PhD students:

• Abishek Harihar - landscape planning for tigers in North-West India (in association with the Wildlife Institute of India)
• Chloe Inskip - Human-tiger conflict in Sunderbans (in association with Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh)
• Dan Challender - Conservation of pangolins in South-East Asia (in association with TRAFFIC)
• Diogo Verrisimo - Design and implementation of flagship species and programmes
• Enrico de Minin - Conservation planning in the Maputaland-Pondland-Albany Biodiversity Hotspot (in association with the Ezemvelo KwaZulu Natal Wildlife Department)
• Nicky Abram - Landscape planning for biodiversity conservation in the Kinabatangan catchment area in Sabah, Borneo.
• Rajeev Raghavan - Using choice experiments to identify willingness to pay for endangered and illegally traded wild fish populations in south-western Ghats, India.
• Rehema Shoo - Using Choice Experiments to value alternative management options for Lake Natron National Park in Tanzania  
• Samia Saif - Tiger poaching in the Sunderbans (in association with the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh)

I have had the privilege of participating in various capacities and roles as advisor to national and regional government, NGOs and to Research Councils such as the ESRC.

Recent highlights include being invited to review the Swedish Government's Biodiversity Research programme together with other academics from around the world and being invited to give a plenary address to the Education Panel of the Guiyang Environmental Forum.

This year I have been invited to sit on the Academic Programme Committee for several major international conferences including Nottingham in September 2011 on Deer and People: Past, Present and Future, TEEB 2012 and the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists in Rome, July 2011.

I am a regular reviewer for a variety of journals in my field including Ecological Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, Human Ecology and Forestry.

Consultancies

I carried out consultancy assignments around the word for the past 15 years, primarily in south-east Asia but also the UK and Africa. Clients include the Asian Development Bank, UK and Scottish Governments, and DANIDA.

I enjoy the diversity of projects that consultancy exposes me too and the challenge of meeting client expectations under a tight schedule!

I have worked in many countries including Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Scotland.