Selected projects and engagements

Challenge: Help conservation programs and partners understand how climate change may affect priority sites and incorporate climate risk into conservation planning and investment decisions.

My role: Co-developed a climate impact and risk assessment system integrating global-level, existing information on biodiversity, climate hazards, ecosystem condition, and carbon. The approach considers risks including changes in species composition, water stress, flooding, heatwaves, wildfire, and other climate-related hazards and identifies indicators that can be used to assess climate risks across conservation sites.

Outcome: A climate impact and risk assessment system that helps partners identify climate risks, compare climat impacts within and across sites, and strengthen the integration of climate resilience into conservation planning and implementation.

Challenge: Better understand how community-based adaptation approaches, including Nature-based Solutions, can strengthen climate resilience and inform investments in those types of interventions.

My role: Led the design and implementation of research examining community-based adaptation initiatives in Brazil and across the Global South. Managed a Brazilian research team, synthesized scientific and practitioner evidence, and developed policy-relevant recommendations.

Outcome: Produced evidence and guidance to inform decision-making and investment in community-based adaptation and Nature-based Solutions.

Challenge: Strengthen the scientific foundation of the organization's climate adaptation work.

My role: Led development of the Climate Adaptation Science Strategy, identifying scientific priorities and implementation pathways aligned with organizational goals.

Outcome: Identified priority research needs and scientific investment toward priority adaptation questions.

Challenge: Despite growing investment in Nature-based Solutions, there was a need for stronger evidence on whether and how ecosystem-based interventions help people adapt to climate change.

My role: Led and contributed to research assessing the potential role of Nature-based Solutions for climate adaptation. The work examined how conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of ecosystems can reduce climate vulnerability. I worked with multidisciplinary collaborators to synthesize existing datasets to assess areas where people's climate vulnerability is increasing and where nature could potentially help reduce this climate vulnerability. 

Outcome: The research shed light on the role of Nature-based Solutions for climate adaptation and contributed to practical approaches for measuring their effectiveness. Findings were translated into a scientific publication, and applied in specific countries for action.

Challenge: Conservation organizations and practitioners needed practical approaches for determining whether Nature-based Solutions are delivering intended outcomes for people.

My role: Co-developed methodologies and guidance for designing, monitoring, and evaluating Nature-based Solutions and ecosystem-based adaptation. The work connected scientific evidence with practical indicators and monitoring approaches that conservation practitioners could apply in programs and projects.

Outcome: Produced a scientific publication and practical guidance for assessing, implementing and monitoring climate adaptation outcomes, which was used in capacity building for conservation practitioners globally.

Challenge: Smallholder farmers faced increasing climate risks, including drought and extreme rainfall, alongside food insecurity and pressure on surrounding forests.

My role: Helped design and provide technical leadership for a large-scale Nature-based Solutions initiative integrating climate adaptation, ecosystem conservation, restoration, and livelihood resilience. The program worked with approximately 22,000 smallholder rice small holder farmers across a landscape of roughly 660,000 hectares.

Outcome: The initiative implemented conservation agriculture practices designed to strengthen agricultural and livelihood resilience while reducing pressure on forests. Impact evaluation found improvements, including increased food security of smallholder farmers and reduced used of unsustainable practices, reducing deforestation.

Challenge: Understand how climate change could affect interconnected terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal ecosystems and use that information to identify conservation and restoration interventions.

My role: Co-led a climate change vulnerability assessment in the Discovery Coast, Brazil, using a ridge-to-reef approach to examine climate risks across the region and identified, in collaboration with local communities, policy makers, and managers of projected areas, conservation and restoration interventions that could minimize those risks. 

Outcome: The assessment helped inform conservation and restoration planning, including coral restoration, and contributed to securing additional funding for forest restoration in the region. 

Challenge: Understand the connections between grasslands restoration, human-wildilife conflicts and social conflicts.

My role: Led research to assess the potential of grassland restoration in reducing human-wildlife conflicts and social conflics.

Outcome: Generated evidence that restoration can deliver benefits extending beyond ecosystem condition, including reductions in human-wildlife conflict and social conflict, helping demonstrate how Nature-based Solutions can simultaneously support biodiversity and human well-being, including human safety and security.