Elizabeth
Boakes
Research fellow
UCL
I am currently on secondment at UCL's Institute of Sustainable Resources, working with Dr Carole Dalin on the BIOTA project. I am investigating the effect of the international trade in food on biodiversity and will be exploring the effects of future trade and land use scenarios.
After my secondment I will return to my work within the TRADE Hub https://www.unep-wcmc.org/featured-projects/trade
This project involves over 50 partner organisations from 15 countries, seeking ways to make the trade of bushmeat and agricultural commodities more sustainable. I am involved in the project's 'Work Package 5', using models to predict the impacts of trade on biodiversity under different future scenarios.
Prior to TRADE, I was working on the SENTINEL project, investigating trade-offs between biodiversity and food security in Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia. I am interested in what we might learn from patterns of past land-use changes and am still working on assessing the effects of historical land conversion in these countries with respect to food security and biodiversity change.