The Research Group on Environmental, Natural Resource and Applied Economics Studies (REES) is hosted at the Department of Economics, Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
REES was created in June of 2015 with the purpose of articulating the research agenda of environmental economists from Colombian Universities and enhancing the visibility of their research results.
Currently, REES consolidates a group of twenty two research fellows, out of which thirteen are affiliated to universities in Bogotá (Los Andes, Javeriana, Rosario), four are affiliated to universities in Medellín (National University (Medellín) and Antioquia University), and five are affilliated to universities outside Colombia (George Mason University (USA), Heriot – Watt University (Scotland), Göttingen University (Germany), University of Chile, University Loyola Andalucía (Spain)).
The vision of REES is to be recognized as one of the main research centers in Colombia that will be aligned with national and international needs on sustainable development and environment, being a mentoring group for:
- Learning in environmental and applied economics of bachelor, master and PhD students.
- Stimulating research ideas that become concrete, solid and robust policy-relevant research projects.
- Promoting the knowledge usage by other institutions of REES’s research results.
REES is hosted by CEDE (Center for Economic Development Studies) at the Department of Economics, Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia. The Department of Economics was one of the first units created in Universidad de Los Andes in 1948. The aim of REES is contributing with policy-relevant research in the following research lines: protection of natural resources, environmental governance, and impacts of consumption and production activities.