CSF International Course graduate Prakash Mani Sharma, Executive Director and Senior Advocate for Pro Public, wrote to us last month with some stunning news. On April 16th, 2015, the Supreme Court of Nepal set a precedent in the area of environment protection by ordering the closure of the mining company, Godawari Marble Industries. This decision is the result of over a decade of litigation by Pro Public to protect the 330 species of butterflies, 254 birds, 80 tree varieties, and 571 types of fruits in Godawari and the Phulchowki hills near the mine.

Photo credit: Fernanda Preto There’s no Wikipedia page so you can be forgiven for suspecting that I’m making it up. But Conservation Economics is actually being practiced by a bunch of serious people engaged in one of the most profound challenges of our time - averting massive losses in the diversity of Earth's life forms. So if it doesn’t exist, it’s time we brought it into being. Here goes:

Lone fishing boat, Jamaica Jamaica’s Goat Islands are the center of what has often been portrayed as a classic development-versus-environment conflict.

I remember noticing on a trip to Brazil in 2001 that compact-flourescent lightbulbs were colonizing the country's light sockets with startling speed. It hadn't been raining and the drought was idling hydroelectric dams that accounted for more than 90% of electricity. The resulting blackouts, referred to as "apagões," changed people's behavior. Consumers slashed their energy consumption and solved the crisis. The rains eventually came and the outages faded into memory.

CSF was recently awarded $100,000 to expand our trainings, analyses, collaborative field work in Africa, thanks to the generosity of the Handsel Foundation.

There’s one park in the Kingdom of Bhutan where the ranges of the Royal Bengal Tiger, the snow leopard and Himalayan black bear overlap and where communities have lived in harmony with nature for hundreds of years. A trekker’s paradise, Jigme Dorji National Park is also known for it’s astounding biodiversity, breathtaking alpine meadows and majestic snow-capped mountains. But, until recently, it was missing one thing: proper campsites.

Game theory emerged in the 1940’s as a math-driven, esoteric science of how people alternately cooperate and compete to get what they want. It’s been used in business, diplomacy and military strategies and won famed Princeton economist John Nash the Nobel Prize in 1994. Now, far from the halls of academia and the corridors of power, it’s also being used to conserve nature.

Fernando León is a business school graduate most commonly seen in suit and tie. He’s also one of Peru’s most successful conservationists. His country has tropical forests covering an area the size of California, a coastline rich in marine life, and protected cultural marvels like Machu Picchu. A veteran of years working in the government, he was frustrated by the meager funding allocated to protecting the country’s natural heritage.

From Acadia to Zion, Big Bend to Yosemite, U.S. citizens take them for granted: signs and stairs, benches and bathrooms. Invisible as it may be, infrastructure is key to a park’s value proposition. Visitors willingly pay for a park experience that includes beauty, awe, and a few safeguards and conveniences. And people will defend what they love, which is why we wanted to help them get to know, and love, the Fernando de Noronha National Marine Park.