CATIE Environmental Economist Presents at the Most Important European Conference in the Field

• The EAERE 2024 Conference is being held this year in Belgium, bringing together academics from different parts of the world

Since 1990, the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE) has been regularly hosting one of the world's most important conferences in environmental economics. This year, researcher Róger Madrigal, who coordinates the Environmental Economics and Sustainable Agribusiness Unit (UEAAS/EfD), at CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), is participating in the 29th edition of this event.^th edition of this event.

Madrigal is representing the institution as a speaker in one of the sessions held from July 1 to 4 on the campus of the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium.

“At the EAERE 2024 conference, I am sharing the main results of two studies conducted with researchers from various academic institutions in the United States and Costa Rica, including CATIE,” said the researcher.

He detailed that the studies are titled Sustained governance of community-based water management in the context of economic change: Lesson from Costa Rica, developed with researchers from Seattle University and UEAAS/EfD, and the article titled Volumetric pricing use in community-based water organizations in Central Americawritten with researchers from Duke University, the University of Costa Rica, the University of Montana, and UEAAS/EfD.

“These studies allowed us to establish scenarios where the use of volumetric pricing is more likely,” Madrigal explained. He added that “this type of pricing can become a policy instrument to help mitigate the growing water scarcity problems faced by community water organizations in Central America, Colombia, and Bolivia.”

About EAERE

This year, the EAERE 2024 Conference is organized by the Center for Economics and Corporate Sustainability at KU Leuven, a university established in 1425, 600 years ago.

Regarding EAERE 2024, Madrigal stated that it brings together top-level academics from Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world.

“The content and technical rigor of the presented works are very high and revolve around topics such as the economics of climate change, sustainable food systems, water management, forests, and biodiversity, among other topics,” added the CATIE environmental economist.