CATIE, Costa Rica. EfD Central America welcomed students from across Latin American for its 19th edition of the course: Economic bases for the management and the valuation of environmental services, the course seeks to contribute to the understanding of the causes and effects of environmental degradation in the region. The main outcome for participants is to be capable of proposing economic solutions appropriate to the relevant social, cultural and political environment. Due to the importance of the issue of water in the national and global agenda, this year the course will emphasize on the development of schemes of payments for ecosystem services that seek to improve the availability and quality of water for human consumption.
EfD Center Director Roger Madrigal and fellow researchers Francisco Alpizar, Juan Robalino, Matías Piaggio and Chelsia Moraes conducted several of the classes during the 2-week course.
“I saw this course as an opportunity to add skills to my professional experience, the topics we are learning are very good, I am learning applied themes, and this is very valuable, because you don’t want just the theory but also the applied exercises like case studies in field, the experience in Costa Rica in public policies and management of environmental services that are cases that we don’t have in our countries and it makes the experience very enriched” stated Edwin Joyo one of the participants from Perú.
The annual international course on economics bases for the management and the valuation of environmental services has thought over 350 participants across the region and has helped these practitioners to define strategies in their country to include the results of the economic valuation of the environment in the process of decision-making at different levels, methodologies for the design, implementation and evaluation of payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes and to study methods to assess the environment from an economic perspective.
“I came with a lot of expectations, since our back ground is agronomy, the economic aspect has been seen as someone else’s job, but our objective is to learn socioeconomic tools to incorporate it them in our job, our objectives have been achieved, we have learned techniques and methodologies that we don’t have access in Cuba and now we take It back to be implemented in our projects”, stated Yudell García Torres, an agricultural engineer from the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture.
For more information about this course click here (in Spanish)