Adam Daigneault – Mitchell Center Leadership Council
Associate Professor of Forest Policy and Economics
Adam Daigneaut is the director of the University of Maine School of Forest Resources and associate professor of Forest Policy and Economics. He has been a faculty fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions since 2018.
Daigneault studies the economics of communities that are highly dependent on natural resources, particularly those with industries that rely on forests, like paper mills and timber harvesting. To improve resource management policy, he examines the economic, social, and ecological changes that rural communities experience following these industrial transitions. He is head of the UMaine Forest Policy and Economics Lab, and his research informs environmental and land use policy to balance ecosystem use and preservation. He has also developed publicly-accessible online dashboards of resilience data for communities to use to inform their own management decisions. Beyond forests, Daigneault has worked with organizations like Maine Lakes to quantify the benefits of natural resources like Maine lakes.
Daigneault grew up in Lincolnville and Boothbay, and said that growing up on the coast of Maine not only exposed him to natural resources at a young age, but also the interplay of different human perspectives that use them, from locals to tourists. Before coming to UMaine, Daigneault was an economist for Landcare Research in New Zealand, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Daigneault was drawn to the Mitchell Center’s interdisciplinary mission, and the Mitchell Center has been instrumental in guiding him to collaborators and funding opportunities. As a member of the Mitchell Center Leadership Council, he hopes his perspective as an economist will help with the quantitative elements of being on the leadership council, such as when structuring incentives for grant applications, as well as planning for the future of the Mitchell Center. He says one of his goals is to attract the next cohort of sustainability leaders, and show early career researchers how they can incorporate sustainability into their work.
Daigneault is a member of the Maine Climate Council Science and Technical Subcommittee and Forest Carbon Subgroup, and his research has been used to inform the different metrics for the Maine Won’t Wait Climate Action Plan. He is also the policy chair of the Maine Division of the Society of American Foresters (MeSAF).