A key component of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is continued global biodiversity loss and the implications of this for human well being. Biodiversity is a complex resource that demands a multi-disciplinary ecological and economic approach. Solutions to biodiversity loss will come both from better biological models and from a better understanding of the socio-economic factors that benefit from biodiversity, negatively impact its losses and can be directed to sustainable use by appropriate public policies. The continued biodiversity loss of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region is seen as one of the world’s principal environmental problems, with a regional approach to biodiversity yet to be adopted. The role of biodiversity in the provision of ecosystem goods and services to the stakeholders of the LAC, the integration of biodiversity into the region’s peculiar economic structures, the development of economic incentives and payment mechanisms towards regional biodiversity conservation, sustainable use and benefit-sharing, and the production of a generic template for integrated ecological-economic stakeholder-based biodiversity research in the region are the primary objectives of the BIOLAC project.