About us

Angelo Salsi studied agricultural sciences at the University of Bologna, and started his career as an agro-meteorologist. In 1994 he joined the European Commission, in the Nature Conservation department of the Directorate General for Environment. In 2000 he was appointed deputy head of “The LIFE Unit” – which had responsibility for managing the EU’s financial instrument supporting environmental, nature conservation and climate action projects throughout the EU. Angelo continued his career as manager of the LIFE program until he reached the position of Head of the Department “ Natural resource, climate, sustainable blue economy and clean energy” in the Executive Agency for Climate, Environment and Infrastructures (CINEA). After 29 years on the front line helping EU member states and all concerned parties to protect Europe’s environment and natural heritage as well as supporting the EU’s efforts in the battle against climate change, he retired in 2022.

Aniol Esteban is the Director of the Marilles Foundation, a foundation dedicated to the conservation of the Balearic Sea and coast. He is a marine biologist and environmental economist who has devoted most of his career to reconciling the economy and the environment. He studied Biology at the Universitat de Barcelona followed by an MSc in Natural Resources and Environmental Economics from University College London. Before joining Marilles Foundation he worked for 15 years in the UK including as a Programme Director at the New Economics Foundation and as an Economist for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He has expertise in diverse fields such as education, economics, environmental policy and project design. The sea is his passion, and if he had his way, he would rarely be sighted above water.

Bart Fokkens worked for 40 years with the Ministry for Water Management in the Netherlands in various positions in the field of Land, Water and Wetland Management, often participating in international cooperation programs. These included twinning projects between the deltas of the Rhine, Danube, Volga and Pechora and capacity development and training under the framework of the Ramsar Convention. Between 2002 and 2010 he was president of the Dutch National Union of Provincial Nature Conservation Organisations. He is the co-founder (1999) and for ten years was the chair of the European Centre for River Restoration (ECRR) a Pan – European network of national river restoration centres and other members bound by their common mission to promote and enhance ecological river restoration. He remains an associated expert with the ECRR and also with Wetlands International.

Gerardo Fragoso is responsible for the development and management of Arcadia’s environmental grants portfolio. He was previously Head of Programme at the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre, where he was responsible for overseeing the provision of advice to national and intergovernmental authorities on the protection of endangered species and their habitats. Gerardo’s professional and academic experience span marine and terrestrial conservation, both in tropical and in temperate environments. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, and of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Mexico). He is also a qualified financial manager.

Francine Hughes (Franc) is a geographer specialising in the restoration of rivers and wetlands. She has spent most of her working life as an academic but has always enjoyed the practical challenges of making projects happen on the ground. Her early research was on the downstream impacts of dams on deltaic and floodplain environments in Canada and Kenya. From 1993 to 2003 she co-ordinated a series of EU-funded projects on the dynamics and restoration of European floodplain forests while a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. For several decades she has been advisory in the development of a landscape-scale wetland restoration project by the National Trust, adjacent to Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire. Since 2007 she has been involved in or lead research to develop practical approaches to measuring and monitoring long-term change in ecosystems and ecosystem services at landscape-scale restoration projects, while based at Anglia Ruskin University. She was recently a member of the international expert advisory group for the Swiss Federal Office for Environment (FOEN) project ‘Evaluating the outcome of river rehabilitation projects’.

Erika Vaida Bela started to think and work as a conservationist in the very early stages of her professional life, working as a forester for 12 years. She continued with conservation work as Director of the Retezat National Park, Romania’s oldest national park. In this capacity she established the first park management team, coordinated the development of the first national park management plan in Romania and was part of the working group that developed Romania’s First Protected Area Law. As Team Leader of the Carpathians, Forests and Protected Areas team at WWF, Erika initiated and coordinated projects in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Ukraine. She was also President of the Europarc Federation. In 2006 Erika was appointed State Secretary at the Forest Department in the Ministry of Environment in Romania where she established the legal framework for the protection of pristine forests and for compensation payments for private owners with forests that must be protected for biodiversity values and for environmental services. In 2008 Erika established the ProPark Foundation for Protected Areas in Romania, an organization that now has 13 years of experience in developing and implementing capacity building programmes for protected area practitioners and for stakeholders who are directly involved in land and natural resource management in protected areas.

Ottilia Thoreson is a senior analyst at the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management international cooperation unit. She manages a programme that supports and collaborates with developing countries’ government agencies in achieving sustainable marine and coastal development, mainly in the fields of marine protection and marine spatial planning. Ottilia has always had a fascination for marine life and how it connects people and cultures. She studied marine biology at the University of Plymouth followed by a MSc in Marine Environmental Protection from the University of Bangor, Wales. Ottilia has devoted a large part of her career to marine conservation with some 15 years at WWF leading a team of experts across the nine countries of the Baltic Sea to advocate for policy change and mobilise engagement from relevant stakeholders in the fisheries and agriculture sectors. Prior to joining the Swedish marine and water agency, Ottilia was the programme specialist for marine and coastal development at Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, where she led the planning, reporting and evaluation of multilateral cooperation partners.

Naïg Cozannet trained as a forester and agronomist and is an expert in biodiversity and sustainability impact finance. She has dedicated her whole career to developing innovative solutions and programs at the interface of nature conservation and sustainable development.

She is currently a senior investment manager for biodiversity and natural resources at the Agence Française de Développement (AFD). Previously, Naïg has worked for NGOs including, WWF and Birdlife, and is a co-founder of Rewilding France.

Sir Charles Burrell studied for a Higher National Diploma in Agriculture and Advanced Farm Management at Cirencester Royal Agricultural College. He inherited Knepp Castle Estate in West Sussex from his grandparents in 1983. Despite intensifying the Estate’s arable and dairy business for seventeen years, farming on the heavy Sussex clay remained unprofitable. All 3,200 acres of the Knepp Estate are now devoted to a process-led rewilding project involving free-roaming herds of cattle, horses, pigs and deer as drivers of habitat creation. In 2015, Knepp Wildland received a People Environment Achievement (PEA) award for Nature and, in 2017, the Anders Wall award for special contribution to the rural environment within the European Union.

Professor Leach is the Executive Director of CCI. She is a renowned academic and policy leader with extensive international experience, combining thirty years of ethnographic work in West Africa with engagements and networks across Africa, South Asia, China and beyond. She has led national and international, policy-engaged programmes and consortia across the fields of global health, environment and sustainability, food systems, and social and gender equity. Prior to joining CCI, Melissa spent a decade as Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). She also co-founded and co-directed the Economic and Social Research Council’s STEPS Research Centre and global consortium, is a Fellow of the British Academy and has won several awards, including a Queen’s Birthday Honours CBE in 2017 for services to social science. She holds an impressive record of international roles including co-lead of the International Science Council’s Fellows network; co-chair of Future Earth’s Science Committee; leadership of UN reports; social science leader in the WHO Ebola and Covid-19 science and response committees; and founder member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

Dominic is the Coordinator of the Global Ocean Biodiversity Initiative (GOBI), which works to advance the scientific basis for conserving biological diversity in the marine environment. He was the Executive Secretary of the OSPAR Commission from June 2020 to August 2025. While at OSPAR his role was to support the 16 Contracting Parties to implement the OSPAR Convention for the protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic. Prior to joining OSPAR, he worked for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on domestic and international policy development and implementation. For the last eight years of his career with Defra he implemented marine environment policies at a national, European, and international level. This included development of the UK’s Marine Strategy, marine litter policies, and 30by30 initiatives.

Tundi Agardy is an internationally renowned expert in marine conservation, with extensive field and policy experience in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, North America and the Pacific. She specializes in ecosystem services assessment, coastal planning, marine protected areas, fisheries management, and ocean zoning, and has published widely in these fields, including recent books on Marine Protected Areas as well as Ocean Zoning, and she co-edited the Routledge Handbook on Ocean Management. She is currently Executive Director of Sound Seas, which she founded in 2001. She is Contributing Editor of Marine Ecosystems and Management (MEAM) and the World Ocean Observer (W2O). Her current work in Europe is concentrated on the Ecosystem Approach and MSP in the Mediterranean, and through GIZ Blue Planning in Practice training, worldwide. Tundi previously served as Senior Scientist for WWF and began Conservation International’s Global Marine Program, which she oversaw as Senior Director. She led the coastal portion of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. She received her Ph.D. in biological sciences and Masters in Marine Affairs from University of Rhode Island, was postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and completed her BA at Wellesley and Dartmouth Colleges.

Joanne Preston is a leading expert in coastal restoration ecology, based at the Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Portsmouth. Her research group focuses on understanding the biodiversity, function, connectivity and value of marine biogenic coastal habitats and applying this to effective practice and monitoring of ecological restoration at seascape scales. In 2017 she founded the UK/Ireland Native Oyster Network with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), was a founding advisory board member for the European Native Oyster Restoration Alliance and currently leads its Monitoring Working Group. Working with a group of expert authors, Preston edited a series of habitat restoration handbooks launched at COP26. Currently she is scientific monitoring lead for the ELSP funded Solent Seascape Project and is working on projects for DEFRA, CEFAS and NERC to quantify and value the ecosystem services provided by coastal habitats. In 2022, Preston co-led the first UK conference on ecological connectivity across the temperate seascape at the ZSL bringing habitat experts together to advocate a seascape approach to ecosystem restoration. Since 2019 she has been awarded 8 grants, supervised 6 Phd students and authored over 30 scientific publications. She leads the University of Portsmouth Marine Ecology and Conservation degree module.

Jordi Cortina is a full professor of ecology at the University of Alicante (Spain), Chair of the European Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration, and member of SER Board of Directors. His research focuses on dryland ecology and restoration. He has collaborated with policy-makers and practitioners in the public and private sectors. His current focus is on participatory systematic restoration planning and ecological restoration in VET education. He has authored 197 papers, including 83 in SCI journals, and supervised 12 Ph.D. and 16 M.Sc. Through this work, he has contributed to develop new paradigms for dryland restoration and supported the adoption of new restoration practices. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in ecological restoration for 25 years and coordinated UA M.Sc. program Restoration and Management of Natural Environments.

Esther Turnhout is an interdisciplinary social scientist with expertise in science and technology studies, environmental studies, and political science. She is the Chair of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. Her research and teaching focuses on the interactions between science, technology, lay, indigenous and local knowledge systems, and policy and governance for biodiversity and sustainability transformations. She has published numerous articles on the biodiversity science-policy interface and other topics in high impact journals and she is also the first author of the book Environmental Expertise: Connecting Science, Policy and Society with Cambridge University Press. She is editor in chief of the interdisciplinary journal Environmental Science & Policy. She plays several active roles in the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and was an author of the IPBES Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Pierre Carret is an agronomist and expert in biodiversity conservation. For the last twenty years he has worked on nature conservation programs with several international organizations. His career began in the Congo Basin on European programmes for the protection of forests. He was then the first manager of the participatory science program “Gardens & Butterflies” with the association Noé and the Museum of Natural History of Paris, before joining the environment/biodiversity team of the international cooperation directorate of the European Commission. Since 2010, Pierre Carret has worked for the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), first as an advisor to the Executive Director then, since 2014, as Grant Director . His missions have led him to meet and support many local associations working for the protection of nature, in more than thirty countries of the Caribbean, Africa, the Mediterranean region and the Indian Ocean. He is currently the CEPF grant director for the Mediterranean Basin hotspot, a position he holds from Sarthe, West of France, where he also manages a small-scale organic farm.