Nicolas Javier Rodriguez is a PhD Candidate in the Environmental Economics group at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM). His research focuses on the economic valuation of ecosystem services provided by coral reefs, mangrove forests and seagrass meadows, with particular emphasis on their benefits to coastal communities and the role of ecosystem connectivity.
His work contributes to natural capital accounting and the development of financing strategies for ecosystem management and is part of the m-CONNECT project, which brings together academia, government, industry, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to co-develop science-based guidelines for the conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems across island Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.
Nicolas completed a Master of Science in Behavioural and Applied Economics and a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Management at the University of Trento. His Master’s thesis assessed the effectiveness of a Marine Protected Area in promoting coral cover using causal inference and quasi-experimental methods. Following his Master’s degree, he interned as a Research Assistant the Bank of Italy and volunteered in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, where he worked alongside marine biologists to conduct underwater surveys assessing coral reef and fish populations while living alongside local communities. Before joining IVM, he undertook postgraduate studies in Economics at the University of Exeter
