Pr Ben Groom was one of three keynote speakers at the inaugural Congress of the Latin American and the Caribbean Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (LAERE2025) in Bogota in March 2025. He spoke on the importance of nature based solutions to climate change, a novel means of valuing biodiversity and the importance of measuring additionality for the finance of nature based solutions for climate change and for interventions aimed at improving biodiversity. He also got time to visit the Paramo, a unique mountain ecosystem outside of Bogota.

The conference was hosted by the Department of Economics at Universidad de los Andes and co-organized by the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, JEEM.

LAERE aimed to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange among researchers, students, and policymakers working on environmental and resource economics in Latin America and the Caribbean. This includes contributing to the development and implementation of science-based policies for sustainable development and resource management in the region. 

Further details can be found here.