Pieter van Beukering is a Dutch economist with 30 years of experience in research and teaching in environmental economics. In 1993 he started as an economic research associate at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) of the VU University, Amsterdam. In the March 2001, he successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation on the economics of trade, recycling and the environment. His main research interests are natural resource management and economic valuation focused on ecosystem services and renewable energy. Pieter played a prominent role in the international network around The Economics of Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity (TEEB). In this context he conducted numerous case studies on nature conservation on small islands in the Caribbean, for the governments of the Netherlands (Aruba, Bonaire, St Maarten), UK (British Virgin Islands, Anguilla) and US (US Virgin Islands). In 2013 Pieter was appointed as a direct advisor to the Secretary of State of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, advising the Dutch Government on the allocation of large sums of funding on nature protection in the Dutch Antilles. In 2009 Pieter was appointed Associate Professor lecturing environmental economics at the VU University. In 2015, he became the department head of the Environmental Economics group. Between 2015-2022, Pieter acted as the director of the MSc programme Environment and Resource Management (ERM). In 2019, Pieter was appointed Full Professor in Environmental Economics serving the Chair “Economics of Natural Capital”. In the period 2019-2022, Pieter served as Director of IVM. Since 2021 Pieter is a board member of the Wadden Academy in which he is responsible for economic science in the Wadden region.