Olivia has inter-disciplinary expertise enabling her to work with local communities and stakeholders, understand socio-ecological systems, and to facilitate the development of solutions for sustainable and equitable management in the context of biodiversity conservation and sustainable development.

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Olivia has more than 15 years of experience working in the NGO and research sector, and more recently as a consultant. She started her career as a species conservation ecologist but became quickly convinced of the importance of taking into account social, political, and institutional considerations to resolve conservation challenges. Since she has increasingly specialized in questions around forest governance, community-based management of the commons, sustainable rural livelihoods and human and indigenous people’s rights in biodiversity conservation and sustainable natural resource management. Her geographical focus is Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Olivia has hands-on and field-based experience working with participatory engagement and capacity building approaches with Indigenous Peoples and local communities and coordinating and facilitating multi-stakeholder groups. She has experience in field research and in project design, management and evaluation. She has developed standards and best practice guidelines, particularly on High Conservation Value (HCV) management, rights-based conservation and Indigenous People’s rights. Lately her work has mainly focused on environmental and social safeguards, reviewing and facilitating risk assessments, designing grievance mechanisms and E&S management frameworks such as Indigenous Peoples Planning Frameworks and Access Restriction Mitigation Frameworks.

 

Qualifications

•    DSc Sustainable Forest Management, Wildlife Conservation and Livelihood Development
•    CAS International Development and Cooperation
•    MSc Ecology and Conservation Biology
•    BSc Biology
•    PD Farm Management
•    Permaculture Design Certificate