Jiaguo Qi

Chair, Future Earth Nexus Knowledge-Action Network; MAIRS

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Dr. Jiaguo Qi (pronounced Chee) is Director of the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, and Professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Geography. As a professor, Dr. Qi has a broad interest in global change with a focus on complex interactions among land, water, climate and society using process-based models, geospatial technologies, and in-situ and remote observations. His research includes: remote sensing and geospatial technologies; environmental monitoring, assessment and modeling; land use and land cover change dynamics; and decision support systems for agriculture and rangeland. Over the past two decades, he: developed geospatial modeling tools to guide rangeland and cropland management; incorporated satellite-based biophysical attributes to improve climate modeling and predictions; integrated land use and land cover information in biogeochemical models to better understand the role of land in global change processes; applied geospatial technologies to characterize landscape patterns for large scale ecological assessment; and developed innovative ways of using geospatial technologies for improved cropland change detection and production estimation. His recent research efforts center on a WEF (water-energy-food) Nexus framework to integrate land, humans, environment and climate change for sustainable development in developing countries in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and East Africa. As director, Dr. Qi has led the Center for Global Change & Earth Observations in several large-scale research efforts to assess the impacts of climate change and human activities on ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, food production, and water resources. By integrating physical processes, human interventions and ecosystem services, the Center generates innovative ways to understand coupled natural and human systems. As the director of the Office of China Programs at Michigan State University, Dr. Qi is leading a major effort to establish an Asia Hub initiative in China to promote innovative international partnerships and collaboration with institutions in China, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. He obtained funding from Nanjing Agricultural University to implement the Asia Hub on the WEF Nexus and Agricultural Science, organized a series of workshops in Southeast Asia and built a regional network focusing on interactions and synergies among water, energy and food systems in the region. Internationally, Dr. Qi is the co-director of the North American Nodal Office of Global Land Programme, located at Michigan State University. At the same time, he serves in numerous international programs and projects, including: MAIRS Project Scientist of the NASA’s LCLUC Program, liaison for the NEESPI program for China, lead scientist of the Central Asia Regional Information Network (CARIN) and MekRIN (Mekong Regional Information Network) under the GOFC-GOLD program.

Pamela Katic

Vice-Chair, Future Earth Nexus Knowledge-Action Network

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Dr Pamela Katic is a Social Scientist at the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) at the University of Greenwich, focusing on quantitative socio-economic methods. She has a first degree in Economics from the Universidad de San Andres (Argentina), and a Masters in Environmental and Resource Economics and PhD in Economics from the Australian National University. Her PhD thesis was developed under the ANU-UNESCO Chair in Water Economics & Transboundary Water Governance and it entailed applications of optimal groundwater management in the Guarani Aquifer System in South America. In 2011, she joined the West Africa Office of the International Water Management Institute, a CGIAR institution, as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics. In this position and later as a Research Fellow in Economics in the same institution, she gained considerable experience assessing the constraints and opportunities of innovative agricultural investments and policies in developing countries. She has led and participated in over twenty innovative interdisciplinary research projects and has been active in public forums such as agricultural sector working groups and teams advising the implementation of agricultural research for development programs in the West Africa region. Pamela’s research has been translated into high-quality articles in some of the world’s leading water, environmental and economics journals and she has presented her work in a variety of regional and high-profile international conferences. She has also taken an active role in non-profit initiatives such as the Food, Water, Energy and Environment network, where, as the Volta Basin Chair, leads activities in the region to provide decision-makers at all levels with the knowledge and frameworks to effectively manage trade-offs. She has field experience in numerous African countries (especially in West Africa) and South America. She is fluent in Spanish (mother tongue), English, and speaks some French and Portuguese. She has strong analytical skills in the following methods: econometrics; Bayesian models; cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis; policy analysis matrices, SAM/CGE modelling; hydro-economic modelling; dynamic optimization; and mathematical programming.

Faten Attig-Bahar

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Tunisia Polytechnic School, University of Carthage, Tunis, Tunisia

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Faten Attig-Bahar is a Postdoctoral researcher Associate at the University of Carthage, Tunisia Polytechnic School. She is also an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow for the International Climate Protection Program hosted at the University of Rostock, Germany (2019/2020). Besides, she was a visiting researcher at the University of Oldenburg, For Wind Research Center for nine months between 2016 and 2017. Faten has rich expertise in Renewable energy technologies and implementation, Renewable energy project valuation and financing options, Climate finance, Renewable energy in emerging markets and Energy Efficiency. Faten is serving on several continental committees and is holding several responsible positions in various African and international NGOs including: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Research Board on Weather, Climate, Water and the Environment, and Future Earth: 1) Steering committee member of the Future Earth Water-Energy-Food Nexus Knowledge-Action-Network, 2) North Africa coordinator of the Future Earth African community, 3) Future Earth Implementation Team member 4) Chair of Future Earth Review Committee for the global secretariat hubs and 5) Future Earth Assembly. She is also an Executive Committee member of the Young Earth System Scientists and the Vice President for North Africa for African Youth Union for Change (AYU4C), an organization focusing on young leaders in Africa and the mission is to support voluntary work and networking activities to promote young professionals in Africa. Faten led many initiatives for young researchers and scientists and co-hosted several (online) seminars and workshops. Faten was also a reviewer of the IPCC report SOD-WGI-AR6 and SOD-WGII-AR6 and supported the work of ECR group review of the IPCC report organized by APECS, MRI, PAGES ECN, PYRN and YESS. On the other hand, Faten is an author and has published 19 books for children in Arabic language. She has received several awards as an outstanding youth author in Tunisia.

Chrysi Laspidou

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Chrysi Laspidou is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Thessaly in Greece. She comes from a diverse Engineering background, including mechanical, industrial, civil and environmental, with her research interests lying at the intersection of various disciplines, including engineering, urban planning, hydrology, energy, biology, ecology, agriculture, economics and informatics. Having taught at various departments, representing many of these disciplines,  she has developed the ability to  “speak the language” of many of these specialists and communicate with them effectively. In addition to being involved in  various networks, namely WssTP, EIP-Water, EIP-Agri and NetwercH2O, she is also the Vice-Chairperson of the International Conference on Environmental Management, Engineering, Planning and Economics (CEMEPE) and member of the Organizing Committee and/or Scientific Committee of two other international conferences, including the International Water Systems conference (EWaS). Recently, Chrysi’s team was awarded funding by the European Commission for the exciting “Sustainable Integrated Management FOR the NEXUS of water-land-food-energy-climate for a resource efficient Europe” (SIM4NEXUS) project (www.sim4nexus.eu). The project develops a serious game for decision- and policy-makers, assisting them to better understand and visualise policies holistically and at various spatial scales, thereby allowing them to better understand the science behind the nexus.Furthermore, she leads a Work Package on the Science of the Nexus. As part of this role, she studies and explores the interlinkages, synergies and trade-offs between natural resources within the nexus. She is passionate about the nexus concept and is determined to promote it to the scientific and policy-making communities, to ensure that its importance is recognised. As a national case study leader in SIM4NEXUS and in other projects, she is used to organizing and running workshops with stakeholders, authorities and ministries, interviewing key people on the nexus, and successfully supporting the nexus concept in their strategic planning.

Aditi Mukherji

Principal Researcher, International Water Management Institute

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Dr Aditi Mukherji currently leads the Water and Air Theme of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) inNepal. Prior to joining ICIMOD, she was a Senior Researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), based at Colombo, Sri Lanka and then at New Delhi, India. She has over 18 years of experience working on policies and institutions of water resources management with a special focus on water-energy-food nexus. Her research revolves around institutions and policies of water resources management and her areas of specialization are groundwater governance, energy-irrigation nexus and community management of water resources.  She has worked in South Asia, Nile basin and in Central Asia and is currently working in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. She has published over 50 peer reviewed research papers, including two edited books by Taylor and Francis. In 2012, she was awarded the Inaugural Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation and given by the World Food Prize Foundation, USA.  Her work has been widely covered by the media and she has been interviewed by all leading newspapers in India such as the Times of India, the Hindustan Times, and The Telegraph as well as by the BBC, Le Monde and National Geographic on water related issues. She has served as a Permanent Consultative Committee member of GEF-FAO’s Groundwater Governance project hosted by FAO at Rome. She is a Member of Global Forest Expert Panel on Forests and Water set up by International Union for Forest Research Organization, Vienna and contributed to a comprehensive assessment report of Water and Forests.  She is currently a part of the 6th Assessment Report team of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and will contribute as a Coordinating Lead Author of the Water Chapter in the Working Group II on Adaptation and Vulnerability and as a Review Editor of the High Mountains Chapter of Special Report on Cryosphere and Oceans in a Changing Climate. Aditi is a human geographer by training and has a PhD from Cambridge University, United Kingdom where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She has an M.Phil in Planning and Development from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay and Masters and Bachelor’s degree in Geography from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi and Presidency College, Calcutta respectively.

Alice Ruhweza

Executive Director

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Alice Ruhweza is Head of Sustainable Production at Conservation International - Africa Division. She also leads, among other programmes, Vital Signs (www.vitalsigns.org), an integrated monitoring system that generates data on agriculture, ecosystems and human wellbeing and transforms them into decision support tools for managers and planners to enable better decision-making in support of sustainable development. Previously, Alice worked for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) where she served as Team Leader of the Environmental Finance Unit in Africa for six-and-a-half years. Prior to joining UNDP, Alice worked for Sprint Telecommunications (USA), the National Environment Management Authority in Uganda, Forest Trends (USA) and as a consultant for the World Bank, UNEP Economics and Trade Branch (Geneva), the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (UK), the UNFCCC Secretariat (Bonn) and the Institute for European Environmental Policy (Brussels) on a wide range of issues. They include the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity, trade and the environment, environmental governance, innovative finance and many more.Her more recent work has focused on systems thinking and identifying decisions points or processes across sectors where data can be influential in policy and planning. This is what attracted her to Vital Signs where she will continue to promote multi-scale and multi-sectoral use of Vital Signs’ data and ensure the same data adds value to policy and planning frameworks across sectors and scales. Alice holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from Makerere University (Uganda), and a Master’s Degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin (USA).

Marja Spierenburg

PECS, Nexus Knowledge-Action Network; Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands

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Marja Spierenburg is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She studied Social Psychology and Anthropology at Utrecht University. In 2003 she obtained her PhD at the University of Amsterdam with a thesis on conflicts about land in northern Zimbabwe. She worked as an associate expert for the Social and Human Sciences for UNESCO in Dakar, Senegal (1998-2000) and at the Division of Ecological Sciences in Paris (2000-2001).Between 2001 and mid-2016 she has been working at the VU Amsterdam, and between 2013 and mid-2016 she also served as Scientific Director of CERES, the Research School for Resource Studies for Development. Marja Spierenburg is (co-)vice-chair of the Scientific Committee of the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS), one of Future Earth’s Global Research Projects. She also chairs the Scientific Advisory Board of the African Studies Centre Leiden. She is currently involved in a PECS-initiative to synthesize experiences with transdisciplinarity across a range of projects, with an emphasis in integrating different kinds of knowledge systems. She is also involved in a project led by a colleague from the Stockholm Resilience Centre that aims to further develop approaches to integrate local and indigenous knowledge in the assessments conducted in relation to the IPBES. Together they have published several articles on the Multiple Evidence Based approach, which have received quite some attention worldwide. Recently, she obtained a grant – together with colleagues from the Radboud University and the African Studies Centre in Leiden – to study the different roles of civil society organizations in negotiating land conflicts in Kenya.

Makoto Taniguchi

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Professor Makoto Taniguchi is a hydrogeologist and Deputy Director-General of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in Japan. He received his PhD in the field of groundwater hydrology from University of Tsukuba, Japan in 1987. He was a visiting scholar at the Division of Groundwater, CSIRO, Australia (1987-1988, 1996-1997), Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, USA (1991-1992), and Department of Oceanography, Florida State University (2001-2002, 2002-2003). He has worked on groundwater research and teaching of hydrogeology in universities including The University of Tsukuba and Nara University of Education. He moved to RIHN in 2003, and became a full professor of hydrogeology in 2009. He is currently the vice president of International Association of Hydrogeology (2016-present) and a president of the Japanese Association of Groundwater Hydrology (2015-present). He served as a coordinator of the UNESCO GRAPHIC Project (2004-2011) and GWSP-Asia network (2005-2009), Associate Editor of Ground Water (2003-2008) and Hydrological Processes (2010-2013), and Vice President of the International Committee of Groundwater of IAHS under IUGG (2007-2011). He has worked on groundwater projects around the world, in particular Asia, authoring or co-authoring over 120 articles and 8 books including “Subsurface Hydrological Responses to land cover/use changes (Kluwer, 1997)”, “Land and Marine Hydrogeology (Elsevier, 2003)”, “Groundwater system responses to changing climate (Taylor and Francis, 2009), “Groundwater and subsurface environment (Springer, 2011)”, and “Groundwater as a key for adaptation to the changing climate and society (Springer, 2014)”. He has published widely in some of the top journals in hydrogeology and geophysics, such as Hydrogeology Journal, Nature Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, Water Resources Research, Groundwater and Journal of Hydrology. He has strong connections to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary international research, which include not only natural/social sciences like oceanography, climatology, engineering, economics, human geography, anthropology, etc., but also stakeholder engagement research including governors, industries and citizens. Recently, he received a transdisciplinary research fund as PI of the Belmont Forum “Sustainable Urban Global Initiative Food-Water-Energy Nexus (SUGI FWE NEXUS)”: Intelligent Urban Metabolic Systems for Green Cities of Tomorrow: a FWE Nexus-based Approach, and as PI of international research projects of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) which are strongly related to water-energy-food Nexus in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ways. He also has experiences as Principal Investigator in co-designing research agenda to identify research priorities for the Japanese Strategic Research Agenda (JSRA), by emphasizing sustainability with researchers, representatives of local governments, industry, media, and non-governmental organizations, as well as highlighting a series of topics and themes for researchers to prioritize. As a result, he has a strong record of working at disciplinary and sectoral interfaces at an international scale.