Francisco Alpízar is Director and senior research fellow of the Environment and Development initiative Center for Central America. He is also Deputy Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Economics Program (www.laceep.org). His fields of specialization include environmental policy making and economic valuation of the environment. He has also done some work on experimental economics applied to policy design. Recently, his work has been focused on sustainable management and funding of protected areas, including both entrance fees and donations, as well as the interaction of communities and economies that interact with a given conservation effort. He has also been involved in the design of Coasian schemes to internalize the external effects (negative and positive) of watershed management for the provision of ecosystem services. Francisco has been a consultant to the GEF-World Bank, the IDB, UNDP, WWF, IUCN and The Nature Conservancy, among others. He has been invited as a lecturer to universities in Sweden, the US, Costa Rica and Colombia.