- Problem:
- Not many scholars nationally are able to put an economic value to ecosystem services.
- Not many local scientists can quantify the economic value community projects can add to, or diminish from, ecosystems.
- Solution:
- I attended a course on Business Planning for Protected Areas at Washington State University, in Pullman Washington State.
- Special notes on course:
- This course was the first of its kind in the world.
- 210 people from 40 countries worldwide participated and only the top 25 candidates were invited to Washington.
- I was one of the 25 top achievers invited.
- The one week visit was the culmination of 5 months of online actual training , knowledge tests, homework, assignments and offline reading that was supported by tutors.
- This innovative training program was developed with "support of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, a group of renowned organizations including The Nature Conservancy (and its Mexico Program), CONANP (National Commission of Natural Protected Areas of Mexico), and Washington State University, in collaboration with members of the Conservation Finance Alliance (CFA).”
- Outcomes:
- I was able to assist projects to better quantify the value they bring to ecosystems and to motivate why they should get funding.
- An interesting finding was that while some projects may not be profitable when looked at in isolation, these projects give financial benefits to the greater society that by far exceeds the original investment of the donors.