Session Lead: Victoria Griffiths

Victoria is a natural resource management and sustainable development specialist with 10 years’ experience working in the conservation and mining, hydropower and oil and gas sectors in developing countries. She is an interdisciplinary scientist with extensive field experience in sub-Saharan Africa. Her expertise lies in Environmental and Social Impact Assessments, Social Impact Assessments (including gender-related impacts and impacts to vulnerable groups), impacts to cultural heritage, biodiversity offsetting, social closure planning, developing social safeguard tools and guidance (including stakeholder engagement plans, grievance mechanisms and environmental and social management plans), stakeholder engagement (with public and private sectors, civil society, local communities and indigenous people), training, capacity building and field research. Victoria holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford and was based at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, in the Zoology Department. She worked on a project funded by the UK’s DFID Darwin Initiative, “Achieving No Net Loss for communities and biodiversity in Uganda”. This project was a partnership between three UK and three Ugandan based organisations. Using the Bujagali and Isimba Hydropower Projects and associated Kalagala Offset in south-eastern Uganda as a case study, Victoria’s research explored how to integrate local poverty alleviation, wellbeing, equity and cultural heritage into biodiversity offsets. During her time as a Post-doctoral Researcher at Bangor University and the University of Oxford, she expanded on this work, contributing to both Ugandan and international policy outputs. Victoria is currently an Associate with The Landscapes and Livelihoods Group and is a registered Professional Natural Scientist with the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions.

Presenter: Linus Hasselström

Linus Hasselström, PhD, is an environmental economist and researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. His research is focused on ecosystem services valuation and market-based mechanisms for offsetting negative environmental impacts. Previously a consultant, he has been involved in a great variety of thematic areas such as climate policy, air pollution, marine eutrophication, spatial planning, sustainable finance, tourism and recreation, plastics recycling, etc., working for or together with municipalities, government, NGOs and large and small businesses in Sweden and internationally. Current research includes trading systems for nutrients in eutrophicated marine water and studies on biodiversity offsets in Sweden.

Presenter: Scott Cole

Scott Cole, PhD, is an environmental economist and consultant at WSP in Gothenburg, Sweden. His work focuses on valuing environmental change to support environmental policy making. Main expertise includes the interdisciplinary assessment and scaling of environmental compensation. He is a contributing author to the European Commission’s 2008 REMEDE Toolkit, which was designed to assist EU Member States in compensating for environmental damage. Prior to moving to Sweden, Scott worked at Industrial Economics, Inc, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, where he assisted resource trustees in assessing damage claims associated with injured ecological resources, including lost and diminished recreational use values.

Presenter: Céline Jacob

As an environmental geographer, Céline is interested in environmental governance systems with a particular focus on marine conservation. Her interdisciplinary work drawing from geography, economics and ecology investigates the sustainability of economic development. Céline did her PhD at Montpellier University in France on the application of biodiversity offset to the marine realm. Her research also explores assessment tools related to the maintenance costs of natural capital and analyzes impacts and dependency of the private sector on biodiversity and ecosystem services. I was a post-doctoral fellow at University of Quebec in Outaouais in Canada researching the recent introduction of ‘No Net Loss’ for wetlands and streams in Quebec and the resilience of coastal populations to climate change in the Gulf of St Lawrence. Céline is currently working at Vertigo Lab as a consultant on blue economy in Bordeaux (France).

Presenter: Charlie Palmer

Charlie Palmer is a biologist and holds profession registrations in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. He trained as an ecologist in New Zealand during the 1990s and emigrated to Canada in the early 2000s. Habitat and biodiversity offsetting has been a key part of Charlie’s professional career. His first professional job was with New Zealand’s National Trust - managing private land conservation covenants across the country. Over his career he has been involved in the development and implementation of many conservation offsets to mitigate the effects of major infrastructure projects, particularly for designated species at risk. During the conduct of this work he has gained experience in many types of habitat offsets; including for a large habitat bank and the design of offsets as mitigation for regulatory non-compliance situations. Charlie is based in Vancouver British Columbia and works for Hemmera, a Canadian environmental consultancy.