Last year, the Caribbean Netherlands Science Institute (CNSI) hosted two “Economic Value of Nature” workshops on St. Eustatius from 3-6 April 2017. The Dutch Carribbean Nature Alliance (DCNA) recently published an article on these workshops within their newsletter BioNews. For the full article, see St. Eustatius: Economic Value of Nature.

The workshops were part of the “Nature Awareness Project” which is funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV) (formerly Ministry of Economic Affairs) through the Nature Funds (natuurgelden) and facilitated by CNSI. The aim of both the public and private sector workshops was to increase the understanding of natural capital on St. Eustatius.

The workshops were led by our experts together with Wageningen University, who both have visited the island numerous times to conduct research projects, such as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study. To follow up on the workshop and continue to raise awareness about the value of natural capital on St. Eustatius, we developed a toolkit for St. Eustatius that can be used by e.g. CNSI and STENAPA to assess the dependence of local stakeholders on Natural Capital.