GreenGrassGroom

18th BIOECON Conference

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Great venue, great people, good presentations & inspiring discussions, great food! Both the plenaries were excellent!

Groom18thConference

For the fourth year running, Dr Ben Groom (LSE) and Dr Andreas Kontoleon (Cambridge Land Economy) co-hosted the annual BIOECON conference on the economics of biodiversity conservation (14 – 16 September 2016).

It was the 18th BIOECON conference and was held in the majestic buildings of King's College Cambridge. It was the largest BIOECON yet, attended by around 150 delegates from academia, government, NGOs and the policy world at large.

The conference was generously funded by UNEP, The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), together with funding from the Grantham Research Institute at the LSE. BIOECON was endorsed by the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE). The conference was preceded by a workshop organised by IIED on the use of conditional cash transfers in conjunction with payments for ecosystem services (PES). The workshop was attended by delegates from as far afield as Nepal, Madagascar, Kenya and Indonesia, representing the government and NGO sector, as well as academia.

The conference proper, as usual, provided the opportunity to exchange information on the latest developments on the economics of biodiversity and conservation via 70 scientific papers presented in 5 parallel sessions, and two policy plenary sessions. The first policy session, chaired by Ina Porras of IIED, was used to discuss with the conference attendees the outcome of the IIED pre-workshop. The second panel, jointly organised by James Vause of the UNEP-WCMC and David Simpson of the USEPA (although acting in a personal capacity) discussed “What is good enough when it comes to evidence for environmental policy?” This session focussed on trying to establish minimum bounds on the quality of evidence on the valuation of environmental services that should enter into Cost-Benefit Analysis of public projects.

Each day the conference was kicked off by a keynote plenary speech. BIOECON was honoured to have both Sir Pr Partha Dasgupta as its keynote on day one, and Pr Amy Ando from the University of Illinois on day two. Pr. Dasgupta spoke on a key issue in environment and development economics, the issue of fertility, population and environment. Pr Ando spoke on the application of portfolio theory to conservation policy, as well as asking the question: who is conservation really for, and what is the distribution in society of the benefits of conservation? Both keynotes were characteristically thought provoking, and both participated fully in other aspects of the conference: meeting delegates, attending presentations and, in the case of Pr Ando, providing interesting insights on the policy plenary on day two.

The conference also contained the usual parallel presentations on topics such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), Natural Resource Modelling (NRM), fisheries, forests, biodiversity and ecosystem services, economic valuation of the environment, together with several sessions on experimental economics. UNEP sponsored two special parallel sessions, one on PES and one on Infectious diseases.

Our thanks goes out to all who participated in the conference and who helped to make it such a success once again. This includes Silvia Bertolin at FEEM and Kristel Suijs at the University of Tilburg for their administrative support.

Details of the 2016 conference can be found at: www.bioecon-network.org/ . Follow the BIOECON network on twitter at @bioecon1, and use #bioecon18 for the conference itself.

Comments from the post conference survey:

"Service minded organizers. Excellent scientific program with ample time for discussions. Fantastic venue."

"Great venue, great people, good presentations & inspiring discussions, great food! Both the plenaries were excellent!"

"As usual (it is my third time), the organisation was perfect and the sessions were interesting. I was very happy to have lots of constructive comments in my session."

"It was for me a very interesting conference. I got very good and relevant comments on my paper. Interesting keynote speaker and especially the one by Amy Ando was interesting for my research. Well-organised with respect to practical matters."

"I enjoyed keynote address of Sir Partha DASGUPTA."

For further details on the BioEcon network contact Dr Ben Groom (b.groom@lse.ac.uk).