Keynote speakers

Throughout the week, different keynote speakers addressed the conference theme from their experience and reflected on Ecosystem Services Science, Policy and Practice in the face of Global Changes. 

Below an overview is given of the keynote speakers. Click the presentation titles below to view presentations in PDF. All the plenary recordings can be found here.

Monday 7 June

10:30 - 11:30

• Anne Teller - European Commission

The role of ES in implementing the EU Green deal

• Sylvia Barova - CINEA- European Commission

Bringing Nature back through LIFE

• Nina Kaiser - University of Duisburg-Essen 'Short introduction on the YESS perspective (Young Ecosystem Services Specialists)'

Wednesday 9 June

09:30 - 10:30

• Erik Gomez-Baggethun - Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)/European Society Ecological Economics (ESEE)

Ecosystem services vs nature's contributions to people: Paradigm shift or old wine in new bottles?

• Nadine McCormick - World Business Council for Sustainable development (WBCSD)

Speaking the language of business to integrate biodiversity into corporate decision-making

Thursday 10 June

15:30 - 16:30

• Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio - EcoHealth Alliance 'The links between deforestation and disease emergence or How Saving Forests Could Save Your Life'
• Anton Shkaruba - Estonian University of Life Science

Challenges and opportunities for ES implementation with focus on Eastern Europe

Biographies

 Anne Teller - is a Senior Expert in the Directorate-General Environment of the European Commission. She graduated as a Forest Engineer from the University of Brussels and completed her Master of Science in Forest and its relation to Land Management at Oxford University. Anne has more than thirty years of experience in European environmental policy. She has worked at regional, national and European level. Her specific domain of interest is the improvement of the knowledge and evidence base for environmental policy. Anne is currently supporting the first EU wide ecosystem assessment to support biodiversity policy.

Sylvia Barova - is a Project Advisor in the EU LIFE Programme with over 20 years of experience in nature conservation and restoration, policy implementation and programme management. Following her Master of Science degree in molecular biology she worked as the Development Director of the Bulgarian partner of BirdLife International for eight years. In 2007 she moved to Brussels to work as Policy Officer in the Nature Unit of DG Environment of the European Commission where she followed the implementation of the EU Birds and Habitats directives, the Natura 2000 network, coordinated the development of various European strategies, EU species action plans, managed contractors and coordinated the communications campaign celebrating the European Natura 2000 day. Since 2019 as Project Advisor in EASME and the European Climate, Environment and Infrastructure Executive Agency Sylvia follows the implementation of over 30 LIFE nature restoration project across Europe.

Nina Kaiser - is a doctoral candidate at University of Duisburg-Essen in collaboration with University of Applied Science Trier. Her research focuses on the effects of freshwater restoration on ecosystem services, with a particular interest in how cultural ecosystem services and associated values are captured through social media. Since 2019, Nina is an executive team member of YESS – Young Ecosystem Service Specialists, a global network of early-career scientists and practitioners working on ecosystem services.

Erik Gomez-Baggethun - a Professor of Environmental Governance working at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the University of Oxford. His research covers various topics and themes in the sustainability sciences, with a focus on ecological economics. Key themes of his research include ecosystem services, environmental justice, environmental governance, resilience theory and environmental values. He serves as President of the European Society for Ecological Economics and he is a lead author of the report ‘The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity’ (TEEB) and of the global assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Nadine McCormick - works in IUCN’s Business and Biodiversity programme where she is responsible for mobilizing knowledge and experiences to scale up engagement in the conservation community with business. With more than fifteen years of experience in both the private and not-for-profit sector, Nadine brings positive energy and strategic thinking to catalyze dialogue and design for effective change processes at individual, organizational and sectoral levels. She has engaged more than 30 companies across four continents and supported more than 150 conservation practionners on their strategies to influence the private sector. Nadine is British and holds an MSc in Environment and Development from the University of Edinburgh and a BSc in International Management and French from the University of Bath as well as a certified process facilitator. One of her current roles is in the Horizon 2020 We Value Nature campaign where she brings behavioural and organsiational change insights to accelerate the uptake of natural capital approaches in business decision-making.

 Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio - is the Vice President for Conservation and Health at EcoHealth Alliance. He has over 15 years of experience linking biodiversity conservation, land-use planning, environmental change and disease emergence via multi-institutional collaborative consortia, as well as over 10 years of experience managing projects internationally, including Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Carlos has contributed to the development of the research on ecosystem health, especially as it relates to biodiversity loss, land-use change, disease emergence and their economic implications. He has served as lead author for the Biodiversity and Pandemics report of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). He currently chairs the Thematic Group on Human Health and Ecosystems Management of the Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM-IUCN).

Anton Shkaruba - is a senior researcher at the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences. After years of field research experience in geobotany, soil geochemistry and ecosystem biophysics, he obtained PhD in physical geography and moved his focus to environmental governance studies, in particular becoming concerned with biodiversity conservation, forestry, green urban planning, nature-based solutions and related issues of science-policy interfacing. He was a lead author for the IPBES Europe & Central Asia regional assessment, and currently a lead author of the IPBES assessment on sustainable use of wild species. Anton is a co-director of EEA summer schools on sustainability transitions and summer schools on biodiversity and ecosystem governance; he is active in capacity building actions for higher education and currently leads several actions addressing various aspects of sustainable natural resource and ecosystem management in Belarus, Bhutan, India, Malaysia, Mongolia, Russia, Ukraine and Vietnam.