Hon. Adjany Costa is currently the Advisor for Environmental Affairs to the President of the Republic of Angola, after having served as the youngest Minister in the History of the country, at age 31, to the then newly created (Super-)Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Environment. With a Double Degree Masters in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation as an Erasmus Mundus Program Grantee, she has been greatly involved in the establishment of the first Marine Protected Area in Angola, in its Southernmost Coastline, having lead the official kick-off intersectorial assemblies for its creation, as a Minister. While in that position, she has also driven the dialogue on Climate Action with several national and international stakeholders, promoting the creation of the first climate observatory in country. As an ethnoconservationist, she strongly believes in coupling science and Traditional Knowledge to develop effective policies that maximize the protection of wildlife while improving the wellbeing of impoverished and rural communities, be it in marine, freshwater or inland environments. She has spoken at numerous national and international events of significance, has authored a book and several scientific papers and has received various recognitions for her work, including the 2019 United Nations Young Champions of the Earth Award and the 2020 UN MIPAD, and has received a decoration in Angola with a Golden Medal for Civil Merit, in 2019. She is pursuing her PhD at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, where she is developing a Community Based Natural Resource Management model for the Headwaters of the Okavango, Zambezi and Kwando in the Angolan Highlands.

Sarah Savory is the single mother of 2 young children, Luke and Mika. She is the youngest daughter of Allan Savory, world-renowned ecologist and developer of the Holistic Management Framework which enables decision makers to simultaneously check for and balance the inseparable, short and long-term social, economic and environmental complexity most of our daily decisions and every one of our policies involve and impact, preventing unintended consequences further down the line. Sarah is following closely in his footsteps and has become a very successful Holistic Management Consultant and Educator in her own right. In an effort to simplify the framework, she has written illustrated, educational children’s books on Holistic Management and has also broken new ground by teaching it as a subject in Zimbabwean schools, with demand for education and educational materials growing rapidly and is now writing the first school workbook for Holistic Decision Making and Ecological Literacy to be taught to students as a subject in schools. She is also part of a new, global policy task force which is focusing on breaking through in government policy by having the first government to develop an agricultural policy using the Holistic Management Framework - which will ensure policy actions which always reflect the fact that the physical and economic stability of the nation rely entirely on ecological health.

Dr. Rodgers Lubilo is a regional Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) governance specialist for Southern Africa. He has 23 years of experience working on CBNRM and rural development programmes in Zambia and the region, including Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique. He specializes in CBNRM and Protected Areas governance, institutional management, organization and development, benefit sharing mechanisms and building rural democracy and accountability. Dr Lubilo is currently a Community Outreach Director for Frankfurt Zoological Society Zambia Programme, the chairperson of the Community Leaders Network of Southern Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Wageningen University Netherlands with a key focus on wildlife conservation and CBNRM. Originally from the Luangwa Valley and with more than two decades of experience in community conservation work in Southern Africa. Dr Lubilo shares his strong passion for conservation and continues to work and inspire communities to be active stewards of wildlife. He is activist of rural communities rights to natural resources and wildlife management.

Mikateko Sithole is the Deputy Director in the South African Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment within the Climate Change Adaptation Chief Directorate. She has over the past 15 years worked with the various spheres of government on various aspects of Environmental Management and has for 10 years been responsible for Climate Change. Upon her return to the Department in 2014, she instituted the Local Government Climate Change Support Programme (LGCCSP), amongst other subnational and national programs. LGCCSP was designed to take Climate Change Adaptation to the people i.e. as a vehicle of implementing the Lets Respond Toolkit. Ms Sithole has seen this evolution which is currently on its 5th phase, supporting Municipalities of mechanisms of accessing Climate Finance. She has also led processes that saw all nine South African Provinces developing and/or reviewing their Climate Change Adaptation Response Strategies and South Africa developing its first Adaptation Research Agenda. As much as it seems a lot has happened, Ms Sithole feels its only beginning because for all policies and strategies to be real, they need to be implemented. For resilience to be enhanced, action has to take place. Ms Sithole has served in various committees Nationally and Internationally (Adaptation Futures) and continues to make a contribution in the Climate Change Adaptation Agenda.

Ida Djenontin is a human geographer/social scientist in Environment and Development. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, working on the Conservation and Development component of a project in Gabon. Ida addresses environmental degradation, conservation, and restoration issues in sub-Saharan African contexts, questioning how to balance biodiversity, mitigation, and other ecological needs with natural resource-based livelihoods, food security, and socio-economic development goals. In her PhD, Ida used an interdisciplinary approach to investigate some socio-institutional dimensions of ecosystem restoration in Malawi, focusing on the Forest (and) Landscape Restoration approach. She explored integrated governance systems for collective restoration of lands, trees, and forests, and examined individual and collective restoration decision making and investments, including their potential aggregate impacts at the landscape scale.