All posts by : meddbc_kunzi

Alue Dohong was officially sworn in as the Deputy for Construction, Operation, and Maintenance in February 2016. Alue started dealing with peat restoration in 2003 and founded the Institute of Environmental Education and Training (LP3LH) in Palangka Raya, Central Kalimantan. He also serves as lecturer staff at Economic Faculty Palangka Raya University (UPR) majoring on environmental management and environmental economics. He has also been heavily involved in the restoration of peatland in Central Kalimantan and other parts of Indonesia by serving as an expert that provides technical inputs in the planning, governance, and implementation. In the past fifteen years, he also served as professional consultant in several international Project and Non-Governmental Organizations such KFCP, AHT GROUP AG, Management & Engineering, Germany, Wetlands International-IP, Global Environment Centre, Malaysia, and Earth Innovation Institute, San Francisco, USA.

As an academician, Alue writes a lot about the management of peatland. His doctoral dissertation, which he defended in 2015 at the University of Queensland in Australia discussed about the efforts to restore degraded peatland in Central Kalimantan. In addition, in 2007, Alue was awarded a medal by the Wetland International President as the Best Staff for bringing together various stakeholders at the local level and encouraging their active involvement. Alue earned his of Master of Science degree in the field of Environmental Management from Nottingham, England, and a degree in economics from Palangka Raya University.

Thierry has been working as a professional economist for the past 20 years and dealt with issues ranging from development macro-economics at the national level; the linkages between poverty and environment; green economy roll-out at country level; implementation of natural capital accounting and valuation in more than 8 countries to date. Thierry has also published in journals and was a lead author in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment initiative Policy Response Group. Thierry Is currently involved in private sector engagement and green innovative business solutions while actively continuing to support countries with Natural Capital accounting and valuation of critical ecosystems and their related services;

Gaston Samba, est un enseignant-chercheur à l’université Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville (Congo) formé à l’université de Bourgogne (Dijon-France). Il est Maître des Conférences CAMES de géographie physique (spécialité climatologie).

Simon Lewis is Professor of Global Change Science at the University of Leeds and University College London. Prior to this he was a Royal Society University Research Fellow for nine years. A plant ecologist by training, he focuses on changes to the Earth system with a central focus on the tropics. He founded and co-manage the African Tropical Rainforest Observatory, AfriTRON (www.afritron.org), a network of long-term tropical forest inventory sites across 13 countries in Africa, and co-manages the long-term forest inventory data repository and data management tool forestplots.net. With Greta Dargie, Suspense Ifo, Yannick Bocko and others he first quantified the extent of the Central Congo peatlands and made the first estimate of the peatlnds’ carbon stocks that included on the ground observations.

Assitou Ndinga is a biologist. He holds the position of Consultant-Technical Advisor to Wetlands International, based in Dakar, Senegal since May 2010. Ndinga has long experience working for the Academic, Government and NGO sectors as he has spent several years working for the University of Congo, Government of Congo and International NGOs in Central and West African Regions. Ndinga served as IUCN Regional Coordinator for Central Africa. During this time, he helped launch and develop the Brazzaville Process (Conférence sur les Ecosystèmes de Forêts Denses et Humides d’Afrique Centrale). Currently, much of Ndinga’s work for Wetlands International is to provide Technical & strategic advice on issues related to development and implementation of Biodiversity and Sustainable Livelihoods initiatives.

Dianna Kopansky is the Coordinator of the Global Peatlands Initiative and UN-REDD Programme in the Freshwater, Land and Climate Branch at UN Environment, based in Nairobi, Kenya. An expert in landscapes and biodiversity, she delivers a suite of ecosystem management and climate change programmes to contribute to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Dianna has worked in Africa for the past 17 years on a range of issues within the emergency, humanitarian, and development fields. For UN Environment, she works globally and has led teams to develop and implement project just as the 17 MDG-F Environment and Climate Change Joint Projects. While working with the Executive Office she developed UN system-wide strategies, policies to strengthen the Regional Offices, and her work enabled the inclusion of Environment as a pillar in the UN Development Assistance Frameworks. Working in the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes regions, she led the environmental portfolio for UN-FAO’s Regional Emergency Office for Africa. While with UNDP’s Drylands Development Centre, Dianna provided direct technical support to governments in over 40 countries to integrate environmental issues into national development plans and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and developed a new area of work on Drylands Biodiversity.

Prior to coming to Africa, Dianna worked for the Canadian Government preparing their “State of Environment” reports and was part of a team that undertook a ground-breaking study developing a Decision Support System – the Illness Cost of Air Pollution. The results of the study enabled the Ontario and Canadian Governments to dramatically improve air quality by lowering allowable pollutant levels. Dianna holds a Master of Environmental Studies Degree from York University and a Bachelor of Science Honors Degree in Conservation Biology and Ecology from Queen’s University in Canada.