Steering committee

• Harriet Bulkeley | University of Durham and Naturvation

  Harriet Bulkeley, is a British geographer and academic. She is Professor of Geography at Durham University and is also a coordinator in the Naturvation project. Harriet’s work is concerned with the politics and governance of environmental issues, particularly focusing on urban sustainability.

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• Chris Buss | International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

  Chris is Director of the IUCN Forest Programme centered on three mutually supporting themes of Forest Landscape Restoration, Primary and Intact Forest Landscapes, and Locally Controlled Forests. Chris has over 25 years of experience in a range of natural resource management and rural livelihood programmes, and has had long-term assignments in Botswana, Tanzania and Malawi.

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• Giulia Carbone | World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

  Giulia is the Director of Natural Climate Solutions Alliance at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). Previously, she spent over 15 years at the IUCN as Deputy Director of the Global Business and Biodiversity Programme.

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• Robin Chazdon | University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland

  Robin recently retired from 28 years of teaching at the University of Connecticut, USA and has been studying tropical forest ecology for more than 45 years. Robin served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biotropica and as President and Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. She is the lead consultant with Forestoration International and a senior fellow with the Global Restoration Initiative of the World Resources Institute.

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• Emmanuelle Cohen-Shacham | IUCN

  Emmanuelle is a consultant, researcher and group lead, working on nature conservation, environmental sciences and policy projects for the past 20 years, and she is adjunct Professor at Drew University. She leads the NbS Thematic Group, at the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management and has been co-leading the IUCN work on NbS. Emmanuelle holds her PhD on ecosystem services and management in Mediterranean wetlands, from Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

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• David Coomes | University of Cambridge

  David is a Professor and Head of Forest Ecology and Conservation Research Group at the University of Cambridge. He uses high-resolution remote sensing to understand how forests are responding to global change and contribute to international efforts to protect these ecosystems.

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• Charlotte Danvers | UK Environment Agency

  Charlotte is Strategic Partnerships Manager at the Environment Agency of the UK. She works with representatives across sectors of society to collaborate on action that will help achieve the vision of a nation ready for, and resilient to, flooding and coastal change – today, tomorrow and to the year 2100. She contributed to the Environment Agency’s report Living Better with a Changing Climate. She has over 25 years of experience regulating industry’s contribution to climate change and impact on the environment through emissions trading, permissions, enforcement and land-use advice.

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• Sandra Diaz | Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

  Sandra is a professor of ecology at the National University of Córdoba. She studies the functional traits of plants and investigates how plants impact the ecosystem. Sandra is a senior member of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina. She was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2019, and is senior author of the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity Ecosystem Services 2019 Global Assessment Report.

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• Lucy Emerton | Environment Management Group

  Lucy Emerton is an environmental economist specialising in ecosystem valuation and the development of innovative finance and incentive mechanisms. Currently Conservation Economics and Finance Director of the Environment Management Group, a consultancy group and think-tank, her experience over the last 30 years spans more than 70 countries in in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Australasia and Latin America.

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• Dustin Garrick | University of Oxford

  Dustin is Associate Professor of global water policy at University of Waterloo and Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Dr Garrick has twenty years of experience in water and environmental management and governance with a focus on property rights, institutions and markets. He is interested in the evolution of conflict and cooperation over water and other shared natural resources.

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• Erin Gray | World Resources Institute (WRI)

  Erin is a Senior Economist for WRI’s Economics Center. She has over 10 years’ experience in Environmental Economics, with expertise in ecosystem service and natural infrastructure valuation; cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, and multi-criteria analysis; climate change adaptation monitoring and evaluation; landscape approaches for restoration; and ecosystem service markets and conservation finance. Before joining WRI, Erin worked as a consultant for ICF International’s Climate Change and Sustainability team.

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• Yadvinder Malhi | University of Oxford

  As Professor of Ecosystem Science at the School of Geography and the Environment and Programme Leader in Ecosystems at the Environmental Change Institute, Yadvinder's research interests focus on interactions between forest ecosystems and the global atmosphere, with a particular focus on their role in global carbon, energy and water cycles, and in understanding how the ecology of natural ecosystems may be shifting in response to global atmospheric change.

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• Robert Marchant | University of York, UK

  Robert is a Professor of Tropical Ecology in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York, UK. Robert’s research and teaching interests focus on using palaeoecology, vegetation modelling, archaeological, biogeographical and ecological data to determine the role of past events in shaping the present-day composition and distribution of tropical vegetation. In particular, he is interested in using these insights on vegetation dynamics and ecosystem change to inform sustainable futures.

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• Vanessa Morales | World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)

  Vanessa is a Policy Specialist at WWF International's Climate and Nature Initiative.

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• Musonda Mumba | UN Environment

  Musonda is the Chair of the Global Partnership for Forest & Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), and Head of the UN Environment’s Terrestrial Ecosystems Programme and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). She was previously the coordinator for UNEP’s Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) Programme within the Climate Change Adaptation team. A Zambian national, Musonda received her BSc. Ed degree at University of Zambia and her PhD at University College London in wetland conservation and hydrology.

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• Michael Obersteiner | International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

  Michael is Program Director of the Ecosystems Services and Management Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Luxembourg, Austria. He leads large scale interdisciplinary research projects in the fields of integrated assessment of climate, energy and land-use. Currently he serves in UNEP’s international resource panel, is lead convening author of two IPBES chapters and a steering member to UNISDR’s Global Assessment report.

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• Dilys Roe | International Institute for Environment and Development

  Dilys leads IIED’s work on biodiversity and conservation. Her work focuses on the human dimensions of conservation – including understanding and supporting the necessary conditions for effective community-based conservation.

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• James Smith | World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)

  James is Director of Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) at WBCSD where his work focuses on helping companies on the responsible use of NCS carbon credits and the integration of natural climate solutions broadly into net zero strategies, with the goal of scaling investment in NCS for climate mitigation and adaptation. James holds a PhD in tropical ecology and has experience as a NCS project developer and impact investor.

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• Tasfia Tasnim | International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD)

  Tasfia is a researcher and activist in the field of climate change, environment and sustainable development. Currently, she is working as the Coordinator for the Nature-based Solutions (NbS) Programme at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her expertise is mainly centered around nature-based solutions, climate services and climate finance. She is managing the NbS Bangladesh Portal with the NBSI, University of Oxford to gather and generate evidence-base on NbS from Bangladesh.

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• Marcia Toledo | The Nature Conservancy (TNC)

  Marcia Toledo is the Director of Public Institutions in Europe for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), where she works to advance priority biodiversity and climate policy agendas that are critical at a global scope. She has a multidisciplinary background and expertise in biodiversity and forestry management with 25 years of work experience in designing, implementing and monitoring applied science projects and supporting policy measures to improve decision-making processes.

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• Florencia Zapata | Nature-based Solutions Peru

  Florencia Zapata works at Nature-based Solutions Peru and the Instituto de Montaña in Peru on nature-based solutions in the Andes. She is an anthropologist and naturalist, specializing in sustainable management of mountain ecosystems, participatory action-research methodologies and social memory.

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