How to balance economic interests and environmental concerns is always a huge challenge for most environmentalists, and Aurelio Ramos, our UWC-USA alumnus (’89-’91), has stricken an exemplary balance in this regard.

Currently leading the Colombia office in one of the world’s largest environmental NGOs, Aurelio is now running conservation projects in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and northern Perum as the Director of The Nature Conservancy’s Northern Tropical Andes Conservation Programme. Backing up by his academic background of economics, Aurelio with his team aims to generate economic incentives to private and communal land owners in achieving bio-diversity protection despite infrastructure expansion. His proudest programme is Bio-Trade in the Andean region, whose model has proved to be a great success and been introduced to other parts of the world after Aurelio first piloted it in Colombia.

Back to twenty years ago, Aurelio could never have imagined the impact he would make beyond his country of origin. But UWC education has made a difference on him. “UWC opened my eyes to a bigger world outside of Colombia ...I have always liked nature but it was whilst I was at UWC that I realised if I wanted to make a contribution, a big contribution.” recalled Aurelio.

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/unitedstates/washington/washington-aurelio-ramos.xml

http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org/pubs/TNC_Water_Funds_Report.pdf