Professor Tim Swanson Stephen Polasky
The 13th Annual Bioecon Conference was convened at the Graduate Institute on 11-13 September. This is the largest conference in the world on topic of the economics of conservation and the natural environment. It was established by Professor Tim Swanson in 1998 with the assistance of a European Commission grant. It has been convened annually since that time, usually at Kings College Cambridge or in Venice.
Bioecon was held this year in Geneva by the Graduate Institute’s new Centre for International Environmental Studies (CIES) in order to foster closer ties between the academic research community and the various international organisations in the area interested in conservation. The conference is now supported by a partnership made up of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Conservation International, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Foundation ENI Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and the Graduate Institute. It serves as an academic network and a focal point for bringing together many of the most important thinkers on these issues from the social and policy sciences. CIES now serves as the coordinator for the network, in association with the FEEM in Venice, Italy.
The keynote speakers for Bioecon 13 were Professor Erwin Bulte speaking on “Conflict and Conservation” and Professor Steve Polasky speaking on “Biodiversity in Development”. Videos of the speeches will be available on the CIES website. There were seventy papers accepted for presentation at the two-day event as well as a policy session on the role of natural resource valuation in national accounts. The subject matter of the conference covered every habitat from coral reefs to tropical forests, and looked at all forms of economic policies and mechanisms used in their conservation. Participants came from all parts of the world and included academics as well as policy makers.
2011 has been proclaimed the “Year of Biodiversity” by the UN General Assembly, and the recent conference of the parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity has called for a more concentrated effort at developing global conservation mechanisms. A special presentation at Bioecon by UNEP advanced the idea of an International Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), intended to develop the scientific basis for global conservation. Bioecon continues to play an important role in developing the analytic basis for the advancement of effective and efficient policies in the conservation of natural resources. CIES hopes to build from this enterprise in order to play a key role in the advancement of this important agenda.
The next Bioecon conference will be held at Kings College Cambridge on 18-20 September 2012.
The recently founded Centre for International Environmental Studies focuses on the social and economic issues relating to international environmental problems. It brings together political, economic and legal perspectives on these issues, and operates several ongoing activities: the Geneva Dialogues on International Environmental Problems; the Seminar Series on the International Environment; and the Geneva Conference on the Global Environment.
Timothy Swanson holds the André Hoffmann Chair of Environmental Economics. He has graduate degrees in law and economics, completing his PhD at the London School of Economics under the supervision of Nick Stern. Previously, he was the holder of the Chair of Law and Economics at University College London, a lecturer at Cambridge University and the Research Director for the UK’s National Centre on Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment.