The Scientific Partners of BIOECON are pleased to announce the 14th Annual International BIOECON conference on “Resource Economics, Biodiversity Conservation and Development”. The conference will be of interest to both researchers and policy makers working on biodiversity policy, especially natural resources in developing countries.

The conference takes a broad interest in the area of resources, development and conservation, including but not limited to: plant genetic resources and food security issues, deforestation and development, fisheries and institutional adaptation, development and conservation, wildlife conservation and park pricing, and international trade and regulation. The conference will have sessions on economic development and biodiversity conservation, and on institutions and institutional change pertaining to the management of living resources.

Papers are specially invited on the themes of:

• Different institutional frameworks for resource conservation (property rights, etc)
• Developing countries and issues of governance and management of natural resources
• Resources management, distribution, equity, conflict, conservation, growth and development, poverty alleviation
• Biological diversity and its global conservation
• Valuation of ecosystem services and their application to biodiversity conservation
• Incorporating natural capital into inclusive wealth accounting
• Foundations for provision of global public goods
• Market creation for biodiversity and PES schemes
• Policy evaluation of biodiversity related policies.

The conference will take place over two days, with sessions consisting of papers on all of the above themes. In addition, there will be policy forums chaired by the Institutional Partners of BIOECON on mainstreaming ecosystem services into development policies, on the trade-offs between food security and ecosystem service provision, the development of beneficiary pays markets (such as habitat banking), on poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation and on developments in biodiversity policy impact assessment.

Keynote speakers for the 14th BIOECON Conference are:

Professor Jean-Marie Baland
Centre of Research in the Economics of Development (CRED), University of Namur, Belgium

Professor Stefanie Engel
Institute for Environmental Decisions, Department of Environmental Sciences, ETH Zürich, Switzerland  

Papers may be submitted for presentation within the conference and will be considered by the scientific programme committee. It is also possible to submit 3-4 papers together as a suggested “session” under one of the themes indicated above.