GLP News

In June 2023, the Global Land Programme will welcome 5 new members to its Scientific Steering Committee.

The newest members are:

Dr. Alexander Prishchepov is an associate professor in the Geography Section at the University of Copenhagen, and is also affiliated with Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (JLU), Germany. He received his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he focused on Remote Sensing of Environment and Land-Use Modeling.

Dr. Prishchepov's research falls within the field of Land System Science. He conducts integrative work to understand the patterns, drivers, and implications of land-cover change, with a focus on agricultural expansion and decline, rural-urban transitions, and the human impact on environmental systems. He uses a variety of methods, including satellite remote sensing, participatory approaches, spatial econometrics, and machine learning, to reveal the patterns of landscape change and its drivers. His research aims to answer several key questions, including:

• What methods are best suited to monitor the status of current and past landscapes?
• What factors contribute to the formation and transformation of landscapes?
• What are the consequences of landscape and land-use transitions for the environment and society, and what solutions are available to help guide land-use development pathways?

Dr. Prishchepov is particularly well-known for his research on global farmland abandonment and changing land-use intensity, and he is among the coordinators of the GLP working group focused on this topic. He has geographic expertise in land transitions in Northern Eurasia, including post-Soviet countries, but he also conducts research in the Global South.

Dr. Ximena Rueda is an associate professor of sustainability management and global supply chains at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her research focuses on the impact of globalization on land use, with special emphasis on tropical commodities. She is currently working on corporate impacts and dependencies on biodiversity, transformative social enterprises, and on market instruments for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

She has over twenty years' experience in rural development, land tenure and environmental conservation in Latin America.  Rueda is currently the co-chair of the IPBES report on Business and Biodiversity, a member of the Academic Advisory Council at the United Nations’ Forum on Sustainability Standards(UNFSS) Committee and a senior research fellow at  Environment for Development.

She has over 30 scientific and large audience publications, and has worked to promote the integration of scientific knowledge into policy design and implementation by supporting global and regional efforts such as the Commission on the Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture and the Latin American Center fo the Sustainable Development Goals, where she acted as its scientific director. Rueda co-developed an open source course on Business and SDGS and is currently working on another one on the Ethical and Sustainability Implications of the Digital Transformation targeting the Spanish-speaking business community.

Dr. Le Yu is an Associate Professor at the Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University. His research has been on the use of geographical information techniques to monitor and model global land use change, especially cropland and to facilitate many applications, e.g., food security, biodiversity conservation, and land system modelling. He particularly focuses on satellite-based methods to quantify the spatiotemporal change of land cover/use and understand their ecological, environmental, and socioeconomic impacts on sustainable development. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS-IBG), a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a Prominent Visiting Researcher at the University of Technology Malaysia (UTM). He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Geo: Geography and Environment, Section Editor-in-Chief of Land, Associate Editor of International Journal of Remote Sensing, Topical Editor of Geoscientific Model Development and Section Editor of Global Sustainability.

Dr. Pham Thu Thuy is a senior scientist who leads the Global program on Climate Change, Energy and Low-Carbon Development team at Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry Center. Dr. Thuy obtained the First class of Honour at University of Queensland and Doctor of Philosophy at Charles Darwin University, Australia. Her research focuses on the political economy of climate change policies, including low-emission development strategies, payment for environmental services, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, carbon market, biodiversity conservation, just transition and social inclusion.

She has supported more than 20 developing countries, global financial institutions, multinational companies, and indigenous communities in designing and implementing effective, efficient and equitable climate changes policies and projects. Her work also targets the poor, ethnic minorities, woman including youth in capacity development and ensure they are able to raise their voices and draw benefits from climate change policies and projects. She received the Australian Climate Action Alumni Award (2023) and was awarded by the Government of Vietnam for our standing contribution for forestry sector development in 2016.

Dr. Thuy is committed to linking science with policy and practice, for example through her involvement with Global Landscape Forum, International Land Coalition, Journal of Land Use Science and advisory boards for many civil society organisations and national universities in developing countries.  Thuy has published more than 200 publications including journal articles, books, and policy briefs on assessing the impacts in developing countries. Several of them are available in English, French, Indonesian Bahasa, Vietnamese, Spanish and Portuguese.

Dr. Nicholas Magliocca is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama.

His work focuses on how people make land-use decisions, how those decisions modify the functioning of natural systems, and how those modifications feedback on human well-being, livelihoods, and subsequent land-use decisions. His current research investigates the intersections of security, equity, and sustainability in the contexts of illicit economies and their social and environmental impacts, and climate change adaptation pathways in developing- and developed-world agricultural systems. His research is motivated by the need to take action toward climate change adaptation while still producing sufficient food, conserving biodiversity, and improving human security.

Dr. Magliocca has three active research projects funded by NSF and NASA, and is Director of the Laboratory for Human-Environment Interactions Modeling and Analysis (HEIMA) at UA. In addition to over 60 scientific publications, Dr. Magliocca has worked to advance synthesis and team science approach in land systems science through his experience with the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) at the University of Maryland, and is committed to informing policy guiding sustainable development and climate change adaptation, such as contributing to the United Nations 2022 World Drug Report section on Drugs and the Environment.