Leander Raes is an Economist, with IUCN’s Economic Team, based in Washington DC, USA. His work focuses on the socio-economic and environmental evaluation of nature-based solutions, and the development of policies, action plans and business cases to implement these solutions. He also works on assessing the economic aspects related to marine plastic pollution and the evaluation of potential interventions to address this. He works globally, but the focus of his work is mainly on the local or national level. Leander joined IUCN in March 2016 as an Economist with the Regional Office for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. He was based in Costa Rica until October 2019, when he joined the Economics Team. Leander has a double degree PhD in Applied Biological Sciences from Ghent University, Belgium and in Resource Economics from the Humboldt University of Berlin (2016).