Carlos Soria was among the first 22 conservationists to receive his economics education from CSF, back at our first course in 1999. The Peruvian lawyer was named this month as the new General Secretary of Peru's entire collection of national protected areas. Carlos has distinguished himself over the years at the Instituto del Bien Común (IBC), in the national ombudsman's office (Defensoría del Pueblo) and other key positions. As head of SERNANP (the Spanish acronym for the park service) he will oversee 73 nationally protected areas covering around 15% of the country's territory. They span a wide diversity of habitats, from Amazon jungles to high Andes reserves and marine parks.

After attending Conservation Strategy Fund's Economic Tools for Conservation course in 2009, Theresa Kas visited the small village of Sohoneliu in her home country of Papa New Guinea. Once she arrived, she realized much of the forest had been depleted to the extent wild animals were no longer hunted and the river was full of sediment and pollution from the local quarry. Theresa took the initiative and began meeting with the local community where many had converted precious forests into farmland. Using the skills she had acquired from the training course at CSF, she conducted a Cost Benefit Analysis to evaluate the true cost of these unsustainable practices. They soon realized that the true economic cost was far greater than the benefit of the harvest and quarry development.

Each year conservation professionals from around the world join Conservation Strategy Fund for a two-week course where they learn to use economics to be more strategic and successful in their work. This year students will be coming from 12 countries and 5 continents to participate in this one-of-a-kind course being held August 15th-26th at Stanford University.

Watch the video below to find out more about the course and what participants from last year plan to do with what they learned. You may also click here to watch it on our You Tube site.

To find out more about the course, click here.

Learn how the calculation of financial incentives protects nature.

For the full article (in Portuguese), please click the link below:

http://planetasustentavel.abril.com.br/noticia/ambiente/quanto-ganha-que...