FIU Continues Developing Environmental Finance and Risk Management Program

Unsplash aerial view of downtown Miami and Brickell

Elise Gregg / Staff Writer

Throughout the pandemic, FIU’s Institute of Environment has continued developing a new program that links “financial theory and innovations to environmental sciences” to addressing environmental change.

The overall goal of the Environmental Finance and Risk Management program is to put money into conservation, but in a way that is financially safe.

The program will ensure that the state of Florida is more resilient to future natural disasters, by administering proper funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (DEO).

PantherNOW spoke to FIU’s Environmental Finance Director, Professor Mario Loyola, and Center Director for the Institute of Environment, Professor Todd Crowl to discuss the creation of the program and its future. 

Loyola said FIU created the program for several reasons, one being the benefit of market solutions over government ones in addressing environmental problems. 

“The major difference between a government and the market is that the market has a self-correcting feature…a bad business model will fail, but a government program that has a design flaw doesn’t fail. It just continues,” Loyola said.

“In order to build a resilient South Florida…we need to think sort of broadly about who finances that,” Crowl said. 

Loyola compares trying to finance an environment like ours to a bank lending money without knowing who it’s lending to: the environmental risks are equally dangerous. 

In fact, some environmental risks unique to South Florida inspired the program.

“This program is more focused on the entire environment. There are serious environmental challenges in South Florida…that are exacerbated by climate change, but that at the root are problems [themselves],” Loyola said. “Most of those environmental challenges we face and sooner here in South Florida than almost anywhere else.”

Both the financial and environmental sides of this program are equally important and have all played roles in defining the program and its goals. 

“This is a complicated mathematics problem,” Crowl said, explaining that math, finance, and law all play a role in environmental resilience because they are required to know what conservation will ultimately cost. 

Just as South Florida is an ideal location for observing the relationships between finance and the environment, FIU is an ideal place to institute a program that focuses on these relationships.

Both Loyola and Crowl credit FIU’s location as a major asset for the program. 

“We already have a global reputation in sort of coastal wetland restoration,” Crowl said, “[and] Miami is either the second or third, most vulnerable city in the amount of assets,” giving FIU a strong vantage point to observe the program’s concepts in real life. 

Loyola said FIU’s academic programs are another valuable resource. 

“[FIU] has invested in…a really fantastic program in environmental science,” Loyola said. “That’s been a major focus of the school and it’s…one of the leading programs in the world.”

He added that because FIU has backing from the state, they will have the resources to be at the forefront of environmental research going forward.

Not only is this program part of the solution to South Florida’s dynamic environment and the financial risk attached to it, it’s meant to serve students at FIU as well. 

Loyola explained the purpose of the academic branch of the program would be to expand the knowledge and skills of students both financially and environmentally. 

Law, finance, and math students would be able to get a background in environmental science to understand the environment and data to “shape the work that they do,” while the program would also help environmental students get the background they need in law, mathematics, and finance. 

“That’s the purpose of the undergraduate program,” Loyola said, pointing out that as students build a career in this area, they’ll continually need knowledge that existing majors wouldn’t normally provide. 

“What we’re trying to do is to prepare students in the various fields…so that they can achieve those leadership goals and have [impact] much earlier in their career,” Loyola said. 

Loyola and Crowl said the program is unique, both within FIU and globally, saying that there were a few similar programs in Europe, but nowhere else. 

Although the program is not fully developed for students, Loyola and Crowl hope it will be soon. 

“I look at the environmental finance and risk management program as a sort of hierarchy,” Loyola said. “At the very base is the research element, then on top of that is the educational element.”

As the educational component expands, they hope to offer undergraduate certificates, and master’s and Ph.D. programs.

“We will be offering an undergraduate certificate, and an undergraduate program,” Loyola said, “not this year, but hopefully next year.”

Crowl said they also hope to create an undergraduate minor program that students from any college could take.

“I think we already have faculty from maybe 16 departments, so this has got to be a university wide program,” Crowl said. “We’ll get students involved right away.”