CSF's International Flagship Course

Join a global network of environmental leaders

Our Early Bird discount has been extended to June 6th! See below for more details. 

Our course is for professionals at the forefront of global sustainability issues, and participants come from government, NGOs/CSOs, academia, the private sector, and multilateral institutions. By taking this course, you will be connected with peers from around the world learning how applied economics and finance can help address today’s most urgent environmental challenges. Course graduates will join a network of more than 3,000 CSF alumni in 40 countries. 

This year's course has a new extended format spread over 3 months to make it easier to participate while still managing other work and personal responsibilities.

(If you are interested in taking a Spanish version of this course later in the year , click here for more information.)


2022 Course

Important Dates & Deadlines

  • Course Dates & Times

    The course runs from Jun 20 - Sep 16. The time commitment will be approximately 10 hours per week, including 2-hour live (synchronous) sessions on Tues and Thur from 8am-10am Pacific time (GMT-8).

  • Enrollment Deadline

    Enroll by June 14th to participate in all live sessions of the course this year, including pre-course technical orientation and course welcome.

  • Discount

    Enroll by June 6th for early-bird discount pricing! Use code EARLYBIRD20 at check out for 20% off.

Benefits of the Course

After this course, you will have:

  • An essential foundation in basic economic concepts and language.

  • Insight into the institutional and market drivers of environmental problems.

  • Tools to evaluate the costs and benefits of natural resource management, including values of ecosystem services.

  • Skills to incorporate economic incentives in more effective strategies and policies for conservation, including sustainable finance solutions.

  • The ability to articulate environmental values in a language that communities, businesses, and governments can understand.

Choose Payment Option

Use code EARLYBIRD20 for 20% off the course price if you enroll by June 6th!!

  • $1,500.00

    One-Time Payment (Paypal or credit/debit card)

    Enroll Now

  • 3 x $500.00

    3 Monthly Payments of $500.00

    Enroll Now

Our Commitment

  • World-Class Teaching

    Our talented instructors include CSF staff, professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and experts from the Conservation Finance Alliance, who all have a deep understanding of real-world conservation challenges.

  • Engaging & Interactive

    The course is a dynamic combination of pre-recorded lessons, virtual discussion sessions with instructors, interactive exercises with fellow participants, and on-demand readings and other resources, all organized on our easy to navigate N4N platform.

  • Inclusive & Diverse

    Conservation and sustainable development practitioners from every country and background are invited to enroll. Previous training in economics is not required. Participants should have strong English comprehension and be comfortable reading and speaking in English.

Instructors

Our instructors are drawn from CSF staff, as well as leading academic and international institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Conservation Finance Alliance.

Kim Bonine

Kim is currently the Head of Capacity Development at the Stanford Natural Capital Project. She is the Founder and former Director of CSF’s Numbers for Nature Training Institute and has build training programs in over 40 countries and across five continents. Over the past 25 years, she has led the design and implementation of environmental economics courses and analysis projects in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and North and South America on themes such as wildlife conservation, infrastructure development, fisheries management, tourism economics, and sustainable livelihoods. Kim holds a MS in Earth Systems and a BA in Human Biology, both from Stanford University.

David Meyers

David is an environmental finance expert and entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in the field. He is currently the Executive Director of the Conservation Finance Alliance. From 2012-2018, David was a Senior Technical Advisor for the BIOFIN/UNDP project. David spent well over a decade in Madagascar and helped the country plan and execute a doubling of the area under conservation. He holds a PhD in Biological Anthropology and Anatomy from Duke University, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Jennifer Raynor

Jennifer Raynor is an Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she has been on the faculty since 2022. Before moving to Wisconsin, she was an Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University and a Research Economist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Raynor’s research focuses on the economics of fisheries and wildlife management, with an emphasis on measuring the feedback between human and natural systems. She strives to inform on-the-ground decision-making and works closely with state and federal resource managers to design and evaluate conservation policies. Her main topical interests include human-carnivore coexistence, marine spatial planning, and non-market valuation.

David Johnson

David is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Economics Department at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Prior to moving to UWM, he taught Microeconomics and Macroeconomic analysis at Wellesley College, Harvard University and Stanford University. He has received wide recognition for his teaching talent and animated style, and strives to make his courses interesting, important and relevant. David has been teaching in CSF courses since 2004.

Corbett Grainger

Corbett Grainger is an Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he has been a faculty member since 2010. He is also a faculty affiliate ("Professor II") at University of Bergen (Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET)), a Fellow at CESifo (Munich), and a Co-Editor of Land Economics. He has consulted with a variety of organizations, including development banks, private companies and environmental NGOs.

Marcello Hernández-Blanco

Marcello Hernández-Blanco has a PhD in Ecological Economics from the Australian National University, a Master of Science in Biodiversity, Wildlife and Ecosystem Health from the University of Edinburgh, a master’s degree in Environmental Management from the Interamerican University of Costa Rica, and a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the Latin University of Costa Rica. He has been an international consultant and speaker for over a decade in topics related to natural capital valuation, green and blue economy, financial mechanisms for conservation, environmental policy design, climate change, and environmental management, among others. Marcello also collaborates with various global initiatives, such as the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) where he is lead author for the Americas' assessment, and author of the assessment on the multiple values of nature; he is the chair for Costa Rica of the Ecosystem Services Partnership as well as a member of its Steering Committee, and he is a member of the IUCN thematic group on ecosystem services from the Commission of Ecosystem Management

Testimonials From Course Graduates

Melissa Carmody

Wildlife Conservation Society, Chile

"The course showed me the power of economics to help understand the complexity of managing our natural resources. I now see why many of the strategies that conservationists put in place don't have the impact we expect.”

Joyce Wang

Wildlife Conservation Network, USA

"The CSF course far exceeded my expectations. The depth of the material and quality of instruction, combined with the breadth of knowledge and experience brought to the table by the rest of the participants made for a really effective, inspiring, and practical learning experience. The cross-cultural and interdisciplinary exposure made every topic so interesting. I wish everyone in the conservation space had the chance to take this course."

Mohamed Bakarr

Global Environmental Facility, USA/Sierra Leone

"The course is definitely the most cost effective way of making environmentalists literate in economics.”

Isabel Felandro Llanos

Lawyer, Peru

“I not only learned about economic concepts that will help me in my career, facing environmental issues, but also this course gave me the opportunity to meet wonderful people from around the world. These people have inspired me to believe and to have hope for the challenges we are facing."

Charles Karangwa

International Union for Conservation of Nature, Rwanda

“I’ve already had six countries request support with the implementation of forest landscape restoration initiatives. One of the key deliverables is financial and economic analysis. Because of this course, I will be able to help perform this task better.”

Join Our 2022 Cohort of International Leaders

Course Begins on June 20th!

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