Dr. Binbin Li is the Associate Professor at Duke Kunshan University and holds a secondary appointment at Duke University. She focuses on the synergy between biodiversity conservation and sustainable development under climate change. Dr. Li has been awarded EC50 by Explorers Club, one of the world’s most inspiring explorers. She serves as the co-chair of IUCN WCPA-protected planet specialist group, and serves as the commissioner of the Lancet/PPATS Prevention of Viral Spillover. She is the co-editor-in-chief of Integrative Conservation, and serves on the editorial board of Conservation Biology and other journals. She is the founder of the China Anti-bird Collision Action Alliance, the largest citizen science project in China. Dr. Li is also a wildlife photographer and was awarded the best nature photographer by China National Geography in 2022. She is the board director of SilverLining Conservation Center, which aims to increase the storytelling for conservation practitioners and to change public behaviors using media instruments. 

Dr Göran Wallin is a plant ecophysiologist with special interested in tree and forest carbon and nutrient dynamics at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He conducts research in both tropical and boreal regions, studying natural forests as well as forests with varying degrees of disturbances. He is especially interest in how environmental changes affect the functioning of trees, and how these changes subsequently influence ecosystem processes. A significant focus of his
research involves manipulative field experiments aimed at simulating current and future perturbations caused by climate change, air pollutants, and changes in nutrient and water dynamics.  Since 2003, he works closely with University of Rwanda and other Rwandan institutions. 

Climate sensitivity of Afromontane trees: Implications for community composition, ecosystem services and reforestation efforts

​

Biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services by tropical montane forests face threats from changes in land use and climate, potentially leading to ecosystem degradation, habitat loss and shifts in tree community composition. To predict possible future changes and to protect and restore these ecosystems, understanding how they are impacted by climate change is imperative. Such predictions largely rely on knowledge of tree sensitivities to heat and drought, as well as their suitability to the local and regional environmental conditions where they occur or will be restored.  

To establish a baseline for Afromontane forest trees, we monitored the growth and mortality of over 6000 trees across various disturbance levels in Nyungwe montane forest, Rwanda. Building on this, we initiated a unique tropical elevation gradient experiment (www.rwandatree.com) to study tree responses to warming and altered water supply. This experiment involves multi-species plantations of 20 native species, totalling 1800 trees per site, at three elevations (1300 to 2400 meters) with daytime temperatures from 17 to 24°C, along with water and nutrient manipulation treatments.

In this presentation, I will show how different species respond to warmer and/or drier conditions in terms of growth and survival, considering their successional strategies and elevation origin. I will also demonstrate how the large interspecific variation in climate change responses potentially influences tree community composition at the stand level. Finally, I discuss the implications of our findings for tree plantation and reforestation efforts in East/Central Africa, as well as potential consequences for forest biodiversity, carbon storage and other ecosystems services in a changing climate.

​

Bagele Chilisa, is renowned postcolonial scholar who has written extensively on indigenous research and evaluation methodologies. She is considered by some as a leading scholar on decolonizing research and evaluation in the global south while some credit her with laying the foundation on the role of IKS as a body of thought that should inform research and evaluation methodologies. Chilisa’s ground breaking book Indigenous research methodologies and other works showcase IKS as a powerful tool for inventiveness, abstract thinking, theory building and development models and tools unique to Africa yet available and amiable for adaptation in other cultures Western and Non-Western. She has received numerous grants to carry out research and evaluation on Indigenous Knowledge systems (IKS). She is currently Principal investigator of a Mastercard Foundation study to map African rooted research and evaluation frameworks, methods and tools and to co-create and co-deign frameworks, methods, tools and protocols that address power asymmetries and elevate the voices of marginalized communities.

​

Decolonizing Research Paradigms: Methodologies for Embracing Knowledge Diversity

How can we make Science inclusive? Which and whose Science?  It is now known that it takes 30 years of observation for a complete understanding of variations and patterns of an ecosystem. The time is almost the equivalent to that which an academic spends at an institution, thus the academic can only be an amateur in the study of bio-diversity. Indigenous and local knowledge systems are now a pillar for conservation science and dialogues on bio-diversity and ecosystems. Yet, there are problems in global scale integration of traditionally unequal knowledge systems.   Often when we discuss Science, reference is to Western Science which is well documented, with paradigms, theories and methodologies that have been tested.  Western science which began as a localized cultural practice in Europe during the enlightment period is to a large extent viewed as the only legitimate way to generate new knowledge. Yet science is a cultural practice, that is localized, contextualized and socially constructed making Western science just but one of the many localized and contextualized sciences that stands at par with the marginalized indigenous science of the formerly colonized societies. When indigenous science is not given its legitimate space in the global knowledge space there is a tendency to extract knowledge from indigenous communities rather than the two knowledge systems collaboratively working together to provide a deeper joint understanding. I discuss an indigenous science paradigm and methodologies of integrating knowledge systems such that we an achieve inclusive science for effective conservation in the tropics.

Beatrice Cyiza is a committed environmental expert with over 15 years of experience in environment management. She is the Director General of Environment and Climate Change at the Ministry of Environment, Rwanda where she coordinates policy development and stakeholder engagement and steers the development of strategies and plans while ensuring the mainstreaming and compliance with key policy actions. As a Director General, she promotes research and studies that are instrumental in advancing policy implementation and facilitating the sharing of best practices in environment and climate change. As an administrative coordinator for Academic Affairs, Extension and Applied research at the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture from 2018 to 2021, she contributed in the development of the institutional policies, action plans and faculty development strategies. As an Environmental Audit and Monitoring Officer and the Nagoya Protocol Focal Point at the Rwanda Environment Management Authority, she developed a number of audit check lists for key sectors and developed environmental audit reporting tools. Beatrice has dual Master's degrees in Biodiversity Conservation and in Disaster Risk Management & Climate Change Governance.

Dr. Tuyeni H Mwampamba is a native Tanzanian who was trained as an ecologist at the University of California, Davis. Before joining The Nature Conservancy as the Africa Science Director, she was a tenured research professor at the Institute for Ecosystems and Sustainability Research (IIES) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico where - for 12 years - she headed the lab “Ecology and Social Dimensions of Community Forestry”.  Mwampamba’s research has focused on describing and measuring social and ecological sustainability of charcoal systems in Mexico and East Africa and studying the effects of dominant charcoal narratives on energy and environmental policies. She has co-developed participatory methodologies and assisted numerous national and international NGOs, communities and local governments to meaningfully involve local communities in assessing the value of proposed interventions, particularly REDD+ programs. Her interests have recently expanded to explore plurality in knowledge generation and addressing the challenges of indigenous and local knowledge integration in socio-ecological research; decolonizing tropical ecosystems and conservation science; and increasing stakeholder participation in scientific processes through transdisciplinary research. Mwampamba was awarded the 2019 Beacon Award by the Society for Conservation Biology in recognition of her contributions to conservation with communities. She was a Earth Leadership Fellow and a Coordinating Lead Author in the IPBES Values and Valuation Assessment published in 2022. She currently serves as the President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and is the Chair of the 60th Annual Meeting of ATBC.