Keynote speakers

The Scientific Conference Committee selected four keynote speakers to present around the central conference theme 'Management of Ecosystem Services for Nature Conservation and Human Wellbeing in Africa'. The following keynote speakers addressed this theme from their respective angles and background:

1. Mariteuw Chimere Diaw - Africa Model Forest Network: "The Africa IPBES Assessment and Africa Model Forest Network" (17 June, Monday, 13:30-14:30) 
   You can view the presentation here.
    
2. Mark Schauer - Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) program, GIZ, Frankfurt, Germany: "Valuation of ecosystem services: costs and benefits of sustainable land management" (18 June, Tuesday, 08:30-09:30)
   You can view the presentation here.
    
3. Jan Philipp Schägner - European Commission, Joint Research Centre (EC, JRC): "Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Africa: State, Trends and Policies" (19 June, Wednesday, 08:30-09:30)
   
    
4. Davnah Payne - Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment, University of Bern, Switzerland: "Global Mountain Assessment: changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services" (19 June, Wednesday, 15:00-15:45)
   You can view the slides of the presentation here. 
   You can also listen to the presentation here.

Biographies

Mariteuw Chimère Diaw - is the Director General of the African Model Forest Network (AMFN). He is a member of the International Model Forests Network (IMFN) Networking Committee, of the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature (LPFN) and of the Board of Directors of Ecoagriculture Partners in Washington. Chimère is a member of the scientific panel (MEP) of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. He was a Coordinating Lead Author of the 2018 IPBES Africa Assessment and a member of the LDC Independent Expert Group (IEG) on the UN Post-2015 agenda. Chimère holds a PhD in Economic anthropology from Laval University, an MA in Rural Sociology from Michigan State University and a Master in Philosophy and Sociology from the University of Dakar. He has been a scientist and programs manager for several decades in the African and International research system (CGIAR, AMFN) and has led and contributed to several international programs on Adaptive Collaborative Management, Governance, Verification, Climate change, Biodiversity and ecosystem services, Model Forests and landscape governance, value chain and social business development in Africa. His research interests and publications include African history, migrations, share system modeling, embedded commons and property rights, deforestation and food demand, parks and people, landscapes, participatory action research, interactive social methodologies, and transformation of local economies. Chimère has lived and worked in Senegal, the United States, Canada, Indonesia and Cameroon.
You can view the presentation here.

 

Mark Schauer - is the Coordinator for the global Initiative “Economics of Land Degradation (ELD)” hosted by the German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH. Mark is responsible for the overall management and harmonization of the research and policy dialogue activities of the ELD project through the Secretariat of the Initiative. Before Mark joined GIZ, he worked for the United Nations Environment Programme as the Head of the Central Office of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) and the Division for International Nature Conservation of the German Federal Ministry for Environment (BMU) coordinating projects which closely linked economic and ecologic issues. Mark holds a Master Degree in Forestry Management form Germany. After his graduation, he worked in Europe, southern Africa and southern Asia on natural resource management and nature conservation. His work focus is on this issue's interconnectedness with economics, poverty alleviation and institutional and individual capacity development programs. 
You can view the presentation here.

 

Jan Philipp Schägner is an environmental economist working at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission as part of the www.BIOPAMA.org project. In his current work he focuses on (1) the assessment and spatial modelling of protected area tourism and its economic impacts, (2) the linkages between biodiversity and ecosystems services in the scientific literature and (3) ecosystem service value mapping and natural capital accounting for protected areas. He has more than ten years of experience in the assessment, valuation, modelling and mapping of ecosystem services. A central focus of his research is the question of how ecosystem services and their contribution to human well-being emanate from the spatial interactions of human, social, build and natural capital. Capturing and modelling the nature of these interactions mandates the acquisition of spatially referenced data for all four kinds of capital. This raises many questions associated with the spatial and temporal resolution of the data inputs, error propagation etc. In this context, Jan Philipp Schägner applies GIS-technologies and geostatistical modelling in combination with economic monetary and non-monetary valuation techniques. Jan Philipp obtained his Ph.D. in Landscape Economics from the Technical University of Berlin in the domain of spatial modelling of ecosystem services and their economic values with a particular focus on nature recreation and tourism.  

 

Davnah Payne - studied ecology and evolution at the Universities of Lausanne (Switzerland) and Tromsø (Norway). After obtaining her PhD in evolutionary fisheries from the University of Lausanne, she pursued on the same topic as a post-doctoral research at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria. Her next post-doc on evolutionary ecology took her to Dartmouth College in the United States. After an additional five-year experience as a project coordinator and leader at the interface between research, industry, and policy in the mobile phone and medical fields, she returned to biodiversity and mountains, her passions in both professional and private life. Since 2016 she has been working for the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) at the University of Bern (Switzerland). There here responsibilities are numerous and diverse. She is coordinating the GMBA network of scientists and the development of research tools for the mountain science community at large; facilitating inter- as well as transdisciplinary science in mountain biodiversity and sustainable development and doing some research in this field herself leading communication and publication activities and both liaising and actively engaging internationally, and in particular with key stakeholders in the science and policy community.
You can view the slides of the presentation here. 
You can also listen to the presentation here.