List of Speakers and Panelists

Dr Juliette Biao Koudenoukpo is a national of Benin and a Canadian Citizen. She has a wealth of experience in international development and 32 cumulative years managing complex initiatives across Africa, Latin America, and Canada focusing on the environment, community livelihood, and gender equality. She has worked with a range of international organizations developing, managing, and mobilizing resources. As the first female forester in West Africa, Dr. Biao pioneered ground-breaking initiatives including participatory management of protected areas.

Dr. Biao joined UNFF from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, where she served for over six (6) years as the Director and Regional Representative for Africa. She worked with Canadian Crossroads International as the Director of Programs. She also served the Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation as the Regional Director for Africa, as well as with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Regional Office for West Africa. She worked for 7 years with a private sector organization. She also served as Benin’s Minister of Environment and Nature Protection as well as Acting Minister of Family and the Child.

She holds an M.Sc. in Forestry economics, a PhD in Public Policy and Administration, and numerous other certificates for which she gained academic accolades. She has won the Global Women’s Leadership and Green Future Leadership Awards and was named Commander of the National Order of Merit.

Josefina Braña Varela has dedicated more than 20 years to global environmental issues, in particular the conservation of the world’s most important forests. Currently, Josefina serves as vice president and deputy lead of the forest team at WWF-US. In this capacity, she manages and supports the implementation of efforts dedicated to halting deforestation and forest degradation in critical geographies. In addition, Josefina is point on Forest Climate Solutions for WWF, overseeing a multidisciplinary team working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by ensuring our forests remain healthy and abundant. Since 2013, she has also led WWF’s global forest and climate policy agenda and advocacy efforts.

Over the course of her career, Josefina has been integrally involved in major international negotiations. From 2009-2013, she was part of Mexico’s delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Forum on Forests, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, where she negotiated REDD+, a mechanism to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and land-use related issues.

Robin is Professor Emerita in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Connecticut and part-time Research Professor with the Tropical Forests and People Research Centre at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Her long-term and on-going collaborative research focuses on forest restoration and flagship restoration case studies. She recently served as the Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation and as Director of the NSF-funded Research Coordination Network PARTNERS (People and Reforestation in the Tropics), focused on understanding the socio-ecological drivers of reforestation in the tropics. She is a Senior Fellow with the World Resources Institute Global Restoration Initiative and a Senior Research Associate with the International Institute for Sustainability in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the new IIS-Australia branch. She is the principal consultant of Forestoration International LLC. She is the author or co-author of over 200 peer-reviewed publications, including her sole authored book “Second growth: The promise of tropical forest regeneration in an age of deforestation” was published in 2014. She is an active member of the FAO Task Force on Best Practices for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

Minnie Degawan is a Kankanaey Igorot from the Cordillera, philippines. She is a lifetime activist for the recognition of IP rights, from when she was a student supporting the struggle of the Kalinga people for justice when their anti-dam leader was killed in 1982. She then joined the Cordillera Peoples Alliance and was elected as its Secretary General, and in such capacity she participated in the drafting of the UNDRIP during the UNWGIP days. She was among the pioneers of indigenous caucuses which led to the creation on the International Alliance of Indigenous and Traditional Peoples of the Tropical Forests in 1990. She then headed the DINTEG - Indigenous Peoples Legal Resource Center which lobbied for, and critiqued laws on Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, such as the IPRA. She was the regional coordinator of the ILO Project on ILO169 before leading the GEF-funded project that sought to strengthen Indigenous Peoples participation in biodiversity use and conservation, the Indigenous Peoples Network for Change. When the UNDRIP was adopted, she decided to join conservation groups to see how it is implemented on the ground. She is currently the Director of the Indigenous Peoples Program at Conservation International where she is exposed to how conservation and Indigenous Peoples rights intersect. She is currently based in the Cordillera, Philippines.