Vera Agostini
Deputy Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy and Resources Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy
Dr. Vera Agostini is the Deputy Director of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division at the United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), where she provides oversight, strategic leadership and technical support. From 2007–2017 she was with The Nature Conservancy, initially as Senior Scientist with the Global Oceans Team, and then as Director of Conservation and Director of Climate Adaptation. Agostini is a fisheries scientist by training, who has held positions across three sectors (non-governmental, government, and academia/educational) providing technical and strategic leadership across a range of multi-disciplinary efforts around the globe. Her experience ranges from comprehensive ecosystem research to broad policy and planning. Although her work began in temperate systems, she has spent a considerable part of her career in tropical geographies. Areas of focus include ecosystem-based climate adaptation and disaster risk management, ecosystem approaches to fisheries, social resilience and small-scale fisheries, biodiversity mainstreaming in the fisheries sector, marine spatial planning and protected area network design.
SPEAKERS & MODERATORS
Zaidy Afrin
UN Fellow of Government of Grenada´s Blue Innovation Institute & Ph.D. Candidate at World Maritime University (WMU), Sweden
Vera Agostini
Deputy Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy and Resources Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy
Kristal Ambrose
Founder and Director, Bahamas Plastic Movement; Ph.D. Candidate, World Maritime University (WMU), Sweden
Steven Bograd
Supervisory Research Oceanographer, NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Institute of Marine Sciences (UCSC), USA
Jens Brandenburg
Parliamentary State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany
Isabella Lövin
Chair, Stockholm Environment Institute & Co-chair, Friends of Ocean Action & Author, Sweden
Carolyn Lundquist
Associate Professor at University of Auckland, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), New Zealand
Flower E. Msuya
Senior Researcher, Founder & Chairperson, Zanzibar Seaweed Cluster Initiative, Tanzania
Christian Müller
Head of marine resource exploration, German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Germany
Alexis Papathanassis
Professor for Cruise Tourism Management, the Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Angelique Pouponneau
Policy Adviser to the Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), Seychelles
Vladimir Ryabinin
Executive Secretary, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, France
Jörn Schmidt
Chair of Science Committee, International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), Denmark
Merete Tandstad
EAF-Nansen Programme Coordinator, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Italy