Policies for sustainable land systems

Emmanuel Acheampong is a Professor of Natural Resource Governance in the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. He holds a PhD in Human Geography (researching into forest-based livelihoods), an MSc in Environmental Policy and Management, both from the University of Hull, United Kingdom, and a BSc in Agriculture from KNUST. He has done extensive research into forest governance systems, timber production networks and forest justice issues in Ghana. He has also done extensive research on illegal logging, particularly chainsaw milling in Ghana, participatory forest monitoring, the charcoal commodity chain in Ghana, as well as the long-term impacts of the establishment of biofuel feedstock plantations, especially Jatropha curcas, on local communities in Ghana and Ethiopia with regard to their land rights, livelihoods, food production, conflicts and participation in governance. He has several publications in peer reviewed international journals. 

Dr Matthew Adeleye is currently an Assistant Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Cambridge, and he was previously a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Australian National University, Canberra. He hold a first-class Bachelor's degree in Botany from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and a distinction Master's degree in Biology from the University of Victoria, Canada. He completed his PhD in archaeology and natural history at the Australian National University, specialising in landscape and conservation palaeoecology. Dr Adeleye's research centers on reconstructing past changes in ecosystems/landscapes, using fossil biological proxies in sediment cores, and he has worked in Pacific Canada, southeast Australia, and tropical western Africa. His work is currently focused on temperate Australia, investigating the impact of Indigenous people and past climatic changes on vegetation, wetlands, and fire regimes to inform land management in the area.

Erle Ellis is Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). A global Highly Cited Researcher, his work investigates the ecology of human landscapes to inform sustainable stewardship of the biosphere. He teaches environmental science and landscape ecology at UMBC and has taught landscape ecology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He is a Lead Author of the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment, Fellow of the Global Land Programme, Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute, and former member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the ICS. His book, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction, was published in 2018.

Johanna Jacobi leads the Agroecological Transitions research group at ETH Zürich. She studied Geography, Biology and Social Anthropology. For her PhD studies at the University of Bern, she conducted research together with the cooperative El Ceibo on the resilience of cocoa farms in Bolivia to climate change. After a postdoctoral project at the University of California, Berkeley, on agroforestry, she lived and worked in Bolivia for several years, doing research on food system resilience and sustainability in Latin America and Africa. Her research focuses on agroecology as a transformative science, a practice and a social movement, and on power relations in agriculture and food systems with approaches and methods from political ecology. 

Professor Dame E.J. Milner-Gulland is Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford. Her research group (the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science) works on a wide range of projects understanding, predicting and influencing human behaviour, and designing, monitoring and evaluating conservation interventions in order to improve their effectiveness. She runs large programmes on quantifying and mitigating the biodiversity impacts of food systems, industrial activities and the wildlife trade. She aims to ensure that all the research in her group is addressing issues identified by practitioners, is carried out collaboratively with end-users, and builds the capacity of young conservationists, particularly in developing countries. She has launched a number of initiatives which aim to change the real-world conversation around conservation, including the Alliance of Nature-Positive Universities and the Conservation Optimism movement. She is the Chair of the UK Government's Darwin Expert Committee and a Trustee of WWF-UK.

Dr Morena Mills is passionate about applied biodiversity conservation research and she is interested in improving policy that impacts the persistence of species and people’s wellbeing. She spends most of her time applying social science theories to solve challenges associated to biodiversity conservation. Her research spans marine and terrestrial systems, and she runs both global and local scale projects. For example, at a global scale, Dr Mills is investigating what, how and why conservation interventions spread around the world. At a local scale she investigates how policies aimed at conserving and restoring biodiversity in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and coast can be improved. 

Dr Cecilia Zagaria is a postdoctoral researcher at the Farm Systems Ecology Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She has pursued her BSc studies in Environmental Geography at the University of York, followed by an MSc in International Land and Water Management at Wageningen University. In 2022, she obtained her PhD from the Department of Environmental Geography of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam with a dissertation titled Mapping and modelling adaptation in Mediterranean agricultural landscapes. Her research has focused on assessing the multi-scalar drivers and impacts of agricultural land system change by means of participatory approaches and spatial (agent-based) modelling. Through these futures-oriented assessments, she has placed emphasis on acknowledging the role of differing stakeholder values on land system outcomes. Currently, her research is focused on co-creating a new monitoring and evaluation framework for agroecological practices in Europe alongside a diversity of land system actors, in contribution to the Agroecology-TRANSECT Project.   

Peter Alexander’s research focuses on the social, economic and environmental interactions within the food and land use systems, typically applying data and computationally intensive techniques, such as agent-based modelling. Alexander was a Lead Author for the 2022 IPCC Working Group II report and is a Coordinating Lead Author on UNEP’s 7th Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-7). Working with his group (The Land use and Food systems Lab at the University of Edinburgh), research considers the interactions between climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as how the globalisation of the food system creates teleconnections between actions in one location having consequences in others. The role of international trade in reducing or exacerbating vulnerabilities to shocks, including geopolitical shocks, is a particular interest. How land use and food system changes interact with dietary choices and human health, eg, patterns of food consumption influencing environmental outcomes and environmental changes impacting nutrition and health, are also considered. In collaboration with others, he leads the development of the Land System Modular Model (LandSyMM). This model has been used to quantify the impacts of the changes on ecosystem service indicators such as the land carbon balance, runoff, and nitrogen pollution, and explore the impact of future changes in diet on habitat availability in  biodiversity hotspots, as well as the reverse - looking at the food security implications of different land conservation scenario.

Dr Ina Porras has over 25 years of experience in environmental economics in developing countries, working in multidisciplinary teams across multiple levels of governance including communities, universities, governments, and global fora. Her early professional years were in Costa Rica, at the exciting time of the environmental revolution that gave the country its current green credentials. After many years working with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), in 2019 Dr Porras joined the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK. As lead Adaptation & Nature Economist she supports the development of systems to upskill and embed nature and climate in UK’s ODA and diplomacy strategies (including climate finance negotiations), and the design and implementation of ambitious nature programming that help people, especially the poorest, adapt and build resilience to climate change. 

Ximena Rueda is an Associate Professor of Sustainability at the School of Management at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work focuses on the impacts of globalization on land use and livelihoods, particularly for tropical commodities. She has over 20 peer reviewed publications on these topics and several book chapters. She has extensive experience on rural development and conservation. Ximena holds a BA and MA in economics from Universidad de los Andes, a Master in City Planning from MIT, and a PhD in Geography from Clark University. She is currently co-chair of the IPBES Business and Biodiversity report. 

Professor Adrian Martin is a social scientist who specializes in interdisciplinary research to inform environmental governance, particularly in relation to  protected area conservation, participatory forestry and landscape restoration. Recent work has pursued three main themes. Firstly, conservation and environmental justice, including the potential for understanding normative values to support higher quality environmental decision making and to support conflict transformation. Secondly, the opportunities and barriers for integrating more diverse values of nature into environmental policy. Thirdly, exploring the concept of ‘just transformations’ to sustainability, looking theoretically and empirically at how environmental justice can be an effective vehicle for overcoming barriers to transformative change.

Pauline Nantongo Kalunda is the Executive Director of ECOTRUST - the Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda, a local conservation financing organisation. Pauline is an expert in establishing & managing innovative conservation financing mechanisms. ECOTRUST is based on a Blended Financing model, through which Public funding is used to leverage private and community investments. Among her several achievements, Pauline has successfully established a commercially viable payment for environmental services scheme - Trees for Global Benefit (TGB).  Through TGB, ECOTRUST has supported 50,000 smallholder farmers to grow more than 16 million trees on about 40,000ha in different parts of Uganda, linked to the voluntary carbon market. Through TGB, ECOTRUST provides a platform, where different community - led actions are aggregated to achieve scale in a cost–effective manner that enables US$6 out of every US$10 committed for climate action to reach the intended beneficiary in form of direct cash transfers. TGB won the 2013 SEED Award for its innovation and entrepreneurship, its promising efforts to promote economic growth, social development and environmental protection in Uganda, and the potential of its partnership to inspire others.  Pauline also sits on the Board of Directors for several national and international conservation organisations. Pauline Chairs the ACBA Policy working group and is part of the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits where she co-chairs the Supply Working Group.