List of Speakers and Panelists

Based at Yale University, Dr. Eva Garen has spent almost twenty-five years working on the social aspects of conservation and development in the tropics. Prior to becoming the Director of ELTI in 2012, Eva was a technical advisor on the social aspects of REDD+ with Conservation International’s Science and Knowledge Division. Eva also worked with USAID’s Forestry and Biodiversity Teams in Washington D.C. as a Science and Technology Policy Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For her postdoctoral research in Panama at STRI, she worked with cattle ranchers and smallholders on issues of native species reforestation and land restoration in mosaic tropical forest landscapes. Eva completed her M.E.S. and Ph.D. at the Yale School of the Environment, with a concentration in social ecology.

Emma Grover is a second-year Master of Environmental Science candidate at the Yale School of the Environment. She is advised by Dr. Simon Queenborough. In a broad sense, her interests include tropical forest ecology, effective environmental science communication, biodiversity conservation, and nature based solutions to climate change. She seeks to investigate how tropical plant populations might respond to our changing climate, increasing our understanding of community resiliency in forest ecosystems. For her MESc thesis, she studies how leaf functional traits, with a focus on drip-tips (long leaf apices commonly found in wet tropical forests), vary based on tree developmental stage and life history strategy. Emma holds a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and a minor in Spanish from the University of Virginia.

Deborah Lawrence is an Environmental Sciences professor at the University of Virginia, where she conducts global forest and climate research. She is also the Chief Scientist at Calyx Global, an independent provider of ratings and other carbon market analytics for the rapidly growing carbon market. Her research focuses on the links between tropical deforestation and climate change. She has spent the past 25 years doing field-based research in Indonesia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Cameroon. Most recently, she has been using global climate models to explore the cumulative effect of tropical land use decisions, exploring the climate impact of land allocation among food crops, biofuels and forests across the globe.

Previously, she was a science advisor to the US Department of State, Office of Global Change (the international climate change policy and negotiations unit). She later helped establish SilvaCarbon, a US federal interagency program for forest carbon measurement and monitoring. Deborah has also served on the Technical Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use at the American Carbon Registry. She received a BA in Anthropology from Harvard University, and a PhD in Botany from Duke University. Deborah’s favorite activities include tending to her climate-forward backyard, where she must constantly defend her beloved chickens from foxes.

Yadvinder Malhi CBE FRS is Professor of Ecosystem Science at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, and Senior Research Fellow at Oriel College. Professor Malhi explores the functioning of the biosphere and its interactions with global change, including climate change. He has a particular fascination with and love for tropical forests, though he has recently been spotted in ecosystems ranging from savannas, the Arctic, tropical coral reefs and Oxfordshire’s woodlands and floodplain meadows. He looks at how natural ecosystems may be shifting in response to global atmospheric change, and how protecting or restoring natural ecosystems can help tackle climate change, and help adaptation to the consequences of climate change.

His team at the Environmental Change Institute is known for collecting intensive field data from fascinating but sometimes tough and remote forests. They have ongoing programmes of research in Asia, Africa, the Amazon and Andes regions, and Oxford’s own Wytham Woods. A new recent focus has been on nature recovery and biodiversity restoration in the UK. While addressing fundamental questions about ecosystem function and dynamics, his research findings are significant for conservation and adaptation to climate change. He is a Trustee of the Natural History Museum of London, President-Elect of the British Ecological Society, chairs a number of programmes on biodiversity at the Royal Society, and is a scientific advisor on nature restoration for the UK government and the government of Scotland.

He leads an active Ecosystem Dynamics research lab focussing on forest vegetation-atmosphere interactions, employing field studies, satellite remote sensing and ecosystem modeling.

Pamela McElwee is Professor of Human Ecology at Rutgers and has conducted fieldwork in Southeast Asia over the last 25 years on the topics of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and climate change. Her first book, Forests are Gold: Trees, People and Environmental Rule in Vietnam won the EUROSEAS prize for best social science book on Southeast Asia. She was awarded a 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to work on her next book about the environmental legacies of the Vietnam War and the politics of post-war restoration efforts. McElwee has also served as lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and on the first joint IPCC/IPBES report on Biodiversity and Climate Change. She holds a joint Ph.D. in forestry and environmental studies and anthropology from Yale.

Musonda Mumba is the Director for The Rome Centre for Sustainable Development under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in close collaboration with the Italian Government’s Ministry of Environment and Ecological Transition. The Centre focuses on three priority areas: climate change, sustainable development, and nature protection. In her role, Mumba provides strategic leadership on these matters through convening, collaboration, connecting, and co-creation as the world navigates complexity and uncertainty, with the aim of achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals collectively. She is also the Chair of the Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) and Vice-Chair of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF). She has over 25 years’ experience in environmental and conservation issues globally, and has published widely in various journals, newspapers, articles, and contributed to book chapters. Before joining UNDP, Mumba was the head of United Nations Environment Programme – UNEP’s Terrestrial Ecosystems Programme and served in various roles over a period of 12 years. A Zambian national, she received her BSc. Ed. at University of Zambia and her Ph.D. at University College London in wetland conservation and hydrology.