KEYNOTES AND PANELS
Keynote Speakers:
Priya Shyamsundar, Lead Economist, The Nature Conservancy
Priya Shyamsundar is Lead Economist at the Nature Conservancy, where she leads a Global Science team that undertakes research on economics and governance issues related to environmental management and equitable conservation. The Economics and Governance team addresses two main questions: How do conservation interventions affect human wellbeing? And how can we encourage people to undertake more conservation? Priya’s own research covers a range of local conservation to global climate change issues, with a particular focus on economic development. Priya has served on advisory panels for the Government of India, the World Bank, IGBP, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canada. Previously, Priya was Founder Director of SANDEE, a research network focused on solutions to shared environment-development challenges across seven countries in South Asia, and also consulted extensively for the World Bank. As a member of IUFRO’s Expert Panel on Forests and Poverty, she was involved in an IPCC type global assessment of forests and poverty, and has served as a member of the Science Taskforce supporting the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Daniel Zarin, Executive Director for Forests and Climate Change at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
Daniel Zarin is the inaugural Executive Director for Forests and Climate Change at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), where he leads a growing team working on innovative solutions to help ensure that Earth’s remaining forests and peatlands can deliver climate change mitigation and adaptation benefits at the scale we need. Before joining WCS, Dan helped to create the Climate and Land Use Alliance, a collaborative of major philanthropies, which he served as Director of Programs from 2010-2021, having previously served as a Senior Advisor to the David & Lucile Packard Foundation. Dan’s first career was in academia, first at the University of New Hampshire (Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology, 1995-2000), and subsequently at the University of Florida (Associate Professor, and then Professor of Tropical Forestry, 2001-2010). He has published widely on tropical forest ecology, management and policy issues, and the intersection between deforestation and climate change, in both scholarly and popular media. Dan is an alum of Yale (BA 1987, MFS 1990) and the University of Pennsylvania (PhD 1993).
Frances Seymour, Senior Advisor, Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
Frances Seymour is an internationally recognized expert on tropical forests and climate change. In November 2023, she joined the Office of the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate as Senior Advisor for Forests and Nature. Previously she was appointed as a U.S. Science Envoy for the Department of State from her base at the World Resources Institute. She is the lead author of the 2016 book, Why Forests? Why Now? The Science, Economics, and Politics of Tropical Forests and Climate Change. From 2016-2012, Ms. Seymour served as Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research based in Bogor, Indonesia.
Panel I: Potential and Pitfalls of Biodiversity and Carbon Markets: A Focus on Tropical Forests
Marthe Tollenaar, ESG Director, SAIL Ventures
In Marthe’s current role as ESG Director at SAIL Ventures, she helps shape the investment portfolio of the &Green Fund, selecting and designing agricultural commodity production blueprints in the tropics that can support the transition towards a deforestation-free production model. She has over 10 years of experience in ESG strategy and compliance in forestry and agriculture investments across emerging market geographies. She has supported companies in the transition towards sustainable management practices, sharing learnings and experience, establishing partnerships, and (co)developing frameworks that facilitate the implementation of impact commitments.
Mr. David Okul, Conservation Manager and GIS Officer, Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust (MWCT)
Mr. David Okul has background of natural resources management with over 15 years’ experience and training from Egerton University and the University of Nairobi.
He works with the communities of Kuku and Rombo Group Ranches, in southeastern Kenya, to support the conservation of the critical corridor that ensures the connectivity of the greater Tsavo-Amboseli Landscape. Some of the conservation projects include conservancies management, wildlife protection and monitoring, compensation for livestock losses from predation, payment for ecosystem services, and habitat restoration.
Mr. Okul is also part of the project office team of the Chyulu Hills REDD+ Project that supports the conservation of over 1,000,000 acres of the high biodiversity landscape. Over the years, the project has invested the revenue from carbon sales back into the communities in the project zone. The project has 9 partners that include communities, local NGOs, and government agencies. He has a keen interest in the potential application of biodiversity credits.
Mariana Sarmiento, Founder and CEO, Terrasos
Mariana is the founder and CEO of Terrasos. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Policy and Management from Yale University and has a Bachelors in Political Science and Environmental Studies from Tulane University. She has more than 20 years of experience in the development and implementation of environmental sustainability strategies for companies, governments, and communities in Latin America and the United States. Specifically, on the issue of environmental offsets, she has worked in the design and implementation of different compensation mechanisms in the United States and Colombia. She led the creation and operation of the first Habitat Bank in Colombia and Latin America and has advised government agencies in the identification of regulatory and implementation gaps. She has led the creation of one of the first protocols of issuing biocredits and she serves on the UK-France international panel on biodiversity credits and is a member of the Biodiversity Credit Alliance taskforce.
Panel II: Scaling Up Conservation: Integrating Regional Perspectives for Global Impact
Dr. Peter Mbanda Umunay, Senior Environmental Specialist, FOLUR and Food Systems Programs Lead, GEF
Dr. Umunay is a Senior Environmental Specialist at the Global Environment Facility (GEF) where he manages Food Land Use Restoration (FOLUR) and Food Systems Integrated programs. Peter supports the GEF’s mandate to generate global environmental benefits under the biodiversity, climate change, and land degradation focal areas. He brings over 15 years of work experience with international organizations, academic and research institutions and governments. Peter has contributed to around 30 scientific publications in the areas of the forest-climate nexus, land use finance and sustainable commodities. He holds a MSc and PhD from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Dr. Ane Alencar, Science Director, IPAM
Ane Alencar is Science Director at IPAM, a research based environmental Brazilian NGO working in the past 28 years to promote sustainability, healthier environment and social justice in the Amazon. She is a Geographer with a Master degree in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System from Boston University and PhD in Forest Resources and Conservation at University of Florida. For the past three decades she has been working at IPAM with the dynamics of rainforest understory fires and their relationship with deforestation, land use practices and climate change. She has been responsible for coordinating the development of social technologies to support better socio-environmental management and forest conservation, with the development of two awarded APPs to support better monitoring of indigenous territories and health in partnership with indigenous groups. She is one of the lead authors of the Science Panel for the Amazon and coordinates MapBiomas Fire, a comprehensive Brazil burned area monitoring initiative which uses deep learning. She also coordinates the Forest Fires GHG emissions estimate from SEEG. She is a Fulbright Fellow and recently was selected as one of the Leading Women in ML4EO in 2022 by the Radiant Earth Foundation.
Dr. Kimberly Carlson, Associate Professor at New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies
Kimberly Carlson is an Associate Professor at New York University’s Department of Environmental Studies. Her research addresses the critical challenge of equitably and sustainably governing land systems that are under multiple pressures, including increasing global commodity production and ongoing climate change. Much of Carlson’s work has focused on tropical forested regions, particularly in Indonesian Borneo. Carlson received her PhD from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2012. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Stanford University and was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. Most recently, she was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management at the University of Hawai’i Mānoa. Her research has been funded by NASA, NSF, USDA, and Google, among others.
Panel III: Climate Change and Biodiversity: Working with Social Complexity and Rapid Change
Dr. Diane Russell, CEO, SocioEcological Strategies
Diane Russell, PhD (Anthropology-Boston University), MEM (Yale) is President of SocioEcological Strategies, Inc. She is currently a consultant to the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security and USAID/Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment. From 2005-2018, Diane was Senior Social Scientist in USAID’s Biodiversity Division. She helped manage the first climate change mitigation programs in the Agency. Prior to USAID Diane was a theme leader for trees and markets at the World Agroforestry Center (Nairobi) and Senior Program Officer with the Biodiversity Conservation Network (Asia-Pacific). Her most recent publication is the chapter on anthropology (with Yale PhD Annie Claus) in Conservation Social Science: Understanding People, Conserving Biodiversity.
Md. Ehsanul Hoque, UNHCR Environmental Officer
Md Ehsanul Hoque is a National Officer for the Environment at the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. He has over 15 years of experience in environmental protection, conservation, and humanitarian response. Ehsan works on assessing and mitigating the ecological impacts of refugee camps and promoting sustainable use of natural resources. He has completed courses on tropical forest landscapes and environmental and natural resource economics from the Yale School of the Environment and Doane University, respectively. He is passionate about finding practical and innovative solutions for ecological emergencies and enhancing the resilience and well-being of vulnerable communities.
He has implemented projects on co-management of natural resources, community-based adaptation to climate change, integrated floodplain management, and disaster management, working with various international, national, and local stakeholders. He contributed to the global recognition of forest landscape restoration and climate action initiatives in the Bangladesh refugee operation. He is the focal point for Greening the Blue, compiling and reporting the country-level greenhouse gas data for UNHCR Offices since 2018.
Dr. Emiel de Lange, Conservation Impact Technical Advisor, Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia
Emiel is an environmental social scientist and the Conservation Impact Technical Advisor at WCS Cambodia. His research in Cambodia supports the development and evaluation of interventions with Indigenous communities and other stakeholders, through participatory and experimental approaches. Current work is focused on development of equitable and effective Benefit Sharing Mechanisms under REDD+, and interventions in land governance and sustainable agriculture. Emiel is also interested in the idea of Conservation Basic Income.