
Left to Right: Tom Smith, Virginia Zaunbrecher, Elsa Ordway, and Filipe Zapata
December 6, 2024
Today, the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IOES) reports on the United Nation’s recent biodiversity summit, COP 16, highlighting how UCLA researchers have been shaping international conversations to improve how we protect important ecosystems and communities around the world.
Three of the researchers highlighted are professors in our Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology:
Felipe Zapata, Co-Director of the Center for Tropical Research, sparked conversation at the summit around Colombia’s scientific diaspora, advocating for diaspora scientists to help bridge local and global conservation endeavors.
Tom Smith, Founding Co-Director of the Center for Tropical Research and of the Congo Basin Institute (CBI) – along with CBI Managing Director Virginia Zaunbrecher – presented the CBI’s collaborative approach to community-driven conservation.
Elsa Ordway, Co-Director of the Center for Tropical Research and of the Congo Basin Institute, presented her NASA-funded PANGEA initiative, an international study to understand how tropical forests are responding to climate change. The information collected through PANGEA can guide more-effective conservation policies.
You can read more about our faculty at COP 16 and about biodiversity research at UCLA in the IOES Magazine.