Efforts to improve food security and nutrition have contributed to dramatic declines in forest and other natural ecosystems and rapid increases in contact rates between human and wild and domestic animals. Since 1940, agricultural drivers were associated with more than one quarter of all infectious diseases—and more than half of all zoonotic infectious diseases—that emerged in humans. Current risks of infectious diseases are particularly high in Asia, but projections suggest that infectious disease risk will grow fastest in Africa south of the Sahara, as crop area and livestock populations expand.
This policy seminar will discuss the agriculture-ecosystem health interface that was magnified by COVID-19, and will consider cross-sectoral solutions that could reduce such risk and enhance human and ecosystem health with a focus on the contributions that One CGIAR can make.
John E. Fa has more than 30 years’ experience in academic research and teaching in conservation science. He has held teaching and research positions in various universities and worked at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey, where he was responsible for conservation science activities for the organization. Currently he is Professor of Biodiversity and Human Development at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a Senior Research Associate at CIFOR.
Katharine Kreis works with experts across PATH, civil society, and the private sector to improve nutrition and maternal and child health for people in 70 countries around the world. She leads our nutrition health impact team in an ongoing effort to identify, develop, and deploy new tools, technologies, and methodologies aimed at improving nutrition and other public health outcomes.
Her work ranges from field-friendly diagnostics to fortified rice to sustainable and nutritious food systems. She also serves as a member of the Secretariat of the Bridge Collaborative, which engages cross-sector partners to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals associated with health, development, and the environment.
Prior to joining PATH in 2014, Ms. Kreis held senior positions at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and led the nutrition team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She also served as a foreign service officer with the US Agency for International Development, worked with several nongovernmental organizations in Africa, and served as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Ms. Kreis has spent significant time living and working in low- and middle-income countries, is a board member of the Micronutrient Forum, and has served as a member of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement Secretariat and on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils on Nutrition and Agriculture. She was also the lead US technical advisor for health to the US-Japan Common Agenda for Cooperation in Global Perspective.
She earned dual master’s degrees in epidemiology and international health from the University of Michigan.
Ricky Robertson joined IFPRI in 2008. Prior to that he completed environmental and water related post-docs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Civil and Environmental Engineering as well as Agricultural and Consumer Economics departments. His PhD research (also at the University of Illinois) revolved around empirically modeling land use decisions using very large datasets to estimate discrete choice models. Prior to that, he earned a double major in Mathematics Education and Physics from Andrews University in Michigan.
His work is concerned with harnessing GIS and parallelized computation to help deal with research problems of a spatial nature and/or those which are prohibitively difficult to tackle using conventional computational resources. The interaction between the land surface, water, and human activity usually fall into these categories.
Dr. Chris Walzer is a wildlife veterinarian, Executive Director of Wildlife Health at the Wildlife Conservation Society (wcs.org) University Professor and Chair for Conservation Medicine at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria. Chris is a creative interdisciplinary idea initiator and problem solver; critical and strategic conservationist; non-territorial worker and indefatigable optimist. He has international recognized hands-on expertise working with wildlife, especially wild equids and carnivores, gained from combined years of work and research in Europe, Asia and Africa. Chris has a very diverse international research track record with some 350 + scientific publications to his name. He is sought as a consultant in wildlife and conservation matters by various organizations such as WWF, UNDP, WCS, Panthera, OIKOS, SOS Rhino, World Bank, and several other GO’s; NGOs and universities. Based on some 20+ years work experience in zoological institutions, Chris regularly consults zoological institutions on all aspects of animal husbandry, veterinary medicine, collection planning, enclosure design and conservation research. Over the past years Chris has successfully managed numerous large multi-national research teams with varied funding sources such as the EU and the Austrian Research Fund.
Josh Goldstein is the Director of the Bridge Collaborative, a global change agent driving a fundamental shift in how we think, plan, fund and work across the environment, health, and development communities. In this role, he engages leaders, practitioners, and researchers across sectors to achieve evidence-based, lasting outcomes for people and the world we share.
For over 15 years, Josh has worked on projects around the world to mainstream incorporation of nature’s benefits to people in policy, planning, and business contexts. Josh is based in Global Science, where he serves as an economist and ecosystem services scientist. His research has encompassed topics including developing and applying new approaches for ecosystem services mapping and valuation, designing payments for ecosystem services, and quantifying conservation return-on-investment.
Prior to joining the Conservancy, Josh was an assistant professor of ecological economics in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. In this position, he was the founding academic director of the Conservation Leadership master’s program.
Josh received his B.A. in Biology from Williams College and his Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford University. He was a post-doctoral researcher with the Natural Capital Project applying ecosystem services mapping techniques and advancing incentive-based approaches for conservation in Hawaii.
Josh Goldstein is the Director of the Bridge Collaborative, a global change agent driving a fundamental shift in how we think, plan, fund and work across the environment, health, and development communities. In this role, he engages leaders, practitioners, and researchers across sectors to achieve evidence-based, lasting outcomes for people and the world we share.
For over 15 years, Josh has worked on projects around the world to mainstream incorporation of nature’s benefits to people in policy, planning, and business contexts. Josh is based in Global Science, where he serves as an economist and ecosystem services scientist. His research has encompassed topics including developing and applying new approaches for ecosystem services mapping and valuation, designing payments for ecosystem services, and quantifying conservation return-on-investment.
Prior to joining the Conservancy, Josh was an assistant professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. He received his Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford University in 2007.
As Director for CGIAR’s Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) Program, Izabella has worked in Africa, Asia and globally as a development practitioner, negotiator, donor and thought leader on environment and development solutions. Based out of the International Water Management Institute’s (IWMI) HQ in Sri Lanka, she leads a global research-for-development program connecting 11 CGIAR centres, FAO and the RUAF Foundation. Izabella spent ten years with the UK Department for International Development (DFID), where she led the Asia Regional Climate and Environment Unit in New Delhi, served as Lead Negotiator and Advisor for the Biodiversity and Desertification Conventions and as well as working at the Research and Evidence Division, and for DFID Kenya. In her earlier career she was Research Coordinator on Biodiversity and Livelihoods with the International Institute of Environment & Development (IIED), and as Environmental Management Advisor for the Lutheran World Service in Tanzania.