Zaya Delgerjargal

Delgerzaya Delgerjargal is a Pre-doctoral Fellow in the Climate Impact Lab at EPIC. Her research focuses on quantifying the impact of climate change on the global agricultural sector. She earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and economics from University of Washington in 2019. As an undergraduate student, Delgerzaya studied nesting behaviors of the Mongolian ground jay—an endangered bird species in Mongolia, and for her senior capstone project, she worked with NOAA’s dynamic ensemble model to protect blue whales from ship strikes by predicting whale distributions 30 days in advance. She hopes to give better protection to the environment using economic tools, so that healthy environment and human society can coexist for many more generations.

“As an environmental studies major, I believe that the environment has its own intrinsic value, and therefore the right thing to do is to respect and protect it, popular economic perspectives notwithstanding. Sadly, however, many sustainable options aren’t available to those who want to give better protection to the environment. And to me, economics has been one powerful field of study that has the power to change the system from the top to the bottom by influencing decision makers through data and evidence. What the decision makers will make really depends on how true and good the story we are able to tell from the data. And that is what I am trying to contribute to as a predoctoral fellow in the Climate Impact Lab.”