Dr. Arona Diedhiou is Senior Research Director at the National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) and Vice-Director of the International Joint Laboratory NEXUS on “Climate, Water, Agriculture, Energy Nexus and Climate Services” between France and Côte d’Ivoire (University Félix Houphouët Boigny; Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire). Specialist of the African climate system, he is involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as Lead Author of the Special Report on 1.5°C (2018) and as Review Editor of the next IPCC Report (AR6).

Professor Hortense Atta Diallo is the Vice-President in charge of Planning, Programming, and External Relations at the University Nangui Abrogoua. She was the Director of the Plant Production Research Pole at the University Nangui Abrogoua (UNA) from 2014 to 2019. She has coordinated several research projects, including a project on methods for controlling pests and diseases of cassava and yam funded by the World Bank-WAAPP in Cote d’Ivoire (2012-2015) and a project on Monitoring post-harvest fungal diseases of desert banana, funded by FIRCA (“Fonds Interprofessionnel pour la Recherche et le Conseil Agricoles”) in Cote d’Ivoire from 2013 to 2019.

From 2014 to 2017, she was the principal investigator from UNA in a project led by Sporometrics (Canada) to fight the deadly yellowing disease of coconut palm funded by IDRC and Global Affairs Canada. Prof. Diallo has been a member of several scholarship selection committees. She is currently a member of the Scientific Council of the Fund for Science, Technology, and Innovation (FONSTI) in Cote d’Ivoire. She is also a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Lagos State University Africa Center of Excellence for Innovative and Transformative STEM Education (LASU-ACEITSE). She holds a Ph.D. degree in Plant Sciences (Plant Pathology) obtained at the University of Arkansas (USA) in 1998.

Professor Shem O. Wandiga is a Professor of Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Director, (Ag.) Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation, at the University of Nairobi. He has a PhD from the Case Western Reserve University, U.S.A. Prof. Wandiga was also the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Administration and Finances) of the University (1987-94). He was elected as Kenya’s representative to the Executive Board of UNESCO (1995-99), President of the External Relations and Program Commission of the Board (1997-99), and member of the General Committee and the Advisory Committee on Environment of the International Council for Science (ICSU) (1999-2002).

He is a Fellow: World Innovation Foundation (2002-); IUPAC (2004- ); AAS (2006-), Fellow Royal Society of Chemistry (2010), Member: American Chemical Society (2010). Prof Wandiga was a member of the International Jury UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the popularization of Science (1999-); member of the Board: UNESCO’s International Basic Sciences Programme (IBSP) (2004-2010); member of the Advisory Board, IDRC/DFID Project: Climate Change Adaptation Support Programme for Action Research and Capacity Development in Africa (CCAA) (2006-2008) and awarded the UNESCO Medal Prize for the promotion and development of nanotechnology and nanoscience on 10th April 2015. He is an author of 137 papers, 134 conference presentations, 26 books and chapters in books, 12 public lectures at international conferences, 10 government reports, and 13 consultancy reports.

He has chaired several national committees on university education and been a consultant on World Bank, UNESCO, and UNEP projects undertaken in Kenya and Eastern Africa. Prof. Wandiga was the Chairperson of the Kenya National Academy of Sciences from 1992 – 2002, and Chair of the Pan African Committee of START (2001-2007) as well as past chair of the National IGBP Committee. He was awarded a certificate by Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of Kenya (2004), for outstanding work on Hazardous and Toxic Chemicals and Pesticides.

Dr. Ramadjita Tabo is a cropping systems agronomist with a PhD in Agronomy and Plant Genetics from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. He is currently the Regional and Research Program Director of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in West and Central Africa and is based in Bamako, Mali. Prior to his current position, he was the Deputy Executive Director of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) based in Accra, Ghana (September 2009 to February 2014). Prior to that he was the Assistant Director of ICRISAT-West and Central Africa and cropping systems at ICRISAT-Niamey, Niger.

Dr. Tabo worked and was based at various ICRISAT locations including Hyderabad/Patancheru, India; Kano, Nigeria; Bamako, Mali, Niamey, and Niger since 1986. He is a member of several committees amongst which is the Pan-African START (a global Change for Change System for Analysis, Research, and Training) Regional Committee (PACOM), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He won several awards one of which is the prestigious 2007 Nobel Peace prize as a member of the IPCC. He also chaired the Advisory Board of the IDRC-funded Africa Interact project (Enabling research-to-policy linkage for adaptation to climate change in Africa).

He coordinated the Desert Margins Program (DMP) GEF-funded project on arresting land degradation and conserving biodiversity in sub-Saharan Africa and the Challenge Program on Water and Food funded (CPWF) project on enhancing rainwater and nutrient use efficiency in the Volta Basin. His previous research work also included evaluation and promotion of fertilizer micro-dosing technology and warrantage system, intensification of integrated crop-livestock system. He has published several papers in scientific journals and proceedings.

Ms. Mariam Khan Senghore is a consultant with over two decades of development experience working in the United States of America and Africa. She is a former UN development expert and has a wealth of experience in UN system policy and technical operations, a trainer in results-based management, gender mainstreaming, and women’s transformative leadership and social entrepreneurship. She brings significant expertise working with Government and non-Government partners.

She was entirely responsible for the planning, development, and monitoring of two consecutive five-year UNICEF Country Programmes, coordinated, developed, and monitored annual work plans, drafted annual reports, coordinated all the reviews of the Country Programmes for eight consecutive years, and managed a five- year UN Joint programme successfully. She managed and ensured quality of major Household surveys e.g. Gambia Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2010, SMART survey 2012, Demographic and Health Survey 2013, and Integrated Household survey 2010 for the Gambia. Her recent experience working as a consultant ranges from developing the M&E framework for the Gambia National Development Plan 2017-2020 to co-producing Country programme evaluations for the United Nations Agencies in the Gambia.

Ms. Senghore is fluent in written and spoken English and holds the degrees entitled Master of Arts in Economics and Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Peter A. Minang is the Principal Science Advisor CIFOR-ICRAF, Leader for Landscapes Governance Theme and?Global Coordinator, ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). He received his PhD in 2007 in Environmental Policy from the University of Twente and the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Enschede, Netherlands. His master’s degree is in Planning and Management of Natural Resources from International Institute for Geoinformation Sciences (ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands. He has more than 20 years of experience working on climate change forestry and landscapes in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

His current research interests include the nexus between adaptation and mitigation to climate change; and the interface between environmental services, development, and multifunctional landscapes.? Recently led the publication of this volume on Multifunctional Landscapes. Climate-Smart Landscapes: Multifunctionality in Practice.

Professor Cheikh Mbow is the Director of Future Africa at the University of Pretoria. Prof. Mbow served as the Executive Director of START-International in Washington DC and Lead Scientist on Climate Change at the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Kenya. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Forestry. He led several international research programs such as Chapter 5 of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) and has been a Lead Author for the Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) of IPCC-AR5. Prof. Mbow is now a Coordinating Lead Author for the?Climate Change (IPCC)?Special Report on Climate Change and Land and lead author of IPCC AR6 on AFOLU.

He served in many Scientific Committees such as the Global Land Program (2005-2011), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program-IGBP from 2012-2014, and Future Earth (2013-2015). Prof. Mbow worked on drivers of land resource dynamics in various human-ecological contexts. He focused on climate impacts and land-based mitigation pathways, food security, and land resource opportunities in semi-arid ecosystems. He is currently working on the development of transdisciplinary approaches to address Africa’s development challenges by establishing frameworks for thriving sustainability science to support need transformation in the continent.

Professor John Porter is an internationally known Agro-ecological scientist with expertise in ecosystem services in agro-ecosystems, including agro-ecology, simulation modeling, and food system ecology including that of cities. His main contribution has been multi-disciplinary and collaborative experimental and modeling work in the response of arable crops, energy crops, and complex agro-ecosystems to their environment with an emphasis on climate change, ecosystem services, and food systems. Prof. Porter has published ca. 170 papers in peer-reviewed journals with ca. 19000 citations. He has personally received three international prizes for his research and teaching and three others jointly with his research group.

From 2011 to 2014 he led the writing of the critically important chapter for the IPCC 5th Assessment in Working Group 2 on food production systems and food security, including fisheries and livestock. This chapter was one of the most cited from the IPCC 5th Assessment and formed an important scientific bedrock of the COP21 agreement in Paris in 2015. He has recently become a member of the interdisciplinary international working group on post-growth economics and a founder member of the Advanced Research Institute at the University of Montpellier and a science consultant on the One Planet Fellowship Programme. His mantras are – ‘Enough from less’ and ‘The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing’.

Dr. Sophia Huyer is Gender and Social Inclusion Leader at the CGIAR Research Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) as well as the Director of Women in Global Science and Technology (WISAT) based in Brighton, Canada. She has engaged in research and policy analysis on global gender equality issues relating to technology, innovation, and sustainable development for over 20 years. She was with the Gender Advisory Board of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (GAB-CSTD) from 1998 – 2014 and Senior Advisor to the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) at The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) from 2009-2013.

Her recent publications include “Weathering the Storm or Storming the Norms? Gender Equality in CSA (2020)”, guest editor of a special issue in Climatic Change on Gender Equality and Climate-smart Agriculture; “From vulnerability to agency: gender equality in climate adaptation and mitigation” (2020) in Advancing gender equality through agricultural and environmental research: past, present and future published by the CGIAR Gender Platform and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and “Gender and Food Security in a Changing Climate” (2019) in Taking stock: Data and evidence on gender equality in digital access, skills and leadership published by the UNU Institute on Computing and Society/International Telecommunications Union.

Dr. Huyer held a Fulbright Fellowship at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2000. She received her Ph.D. from York University in Toronto.

Dr. Opha Pauline Dube is a global environmental change scientist and an Associate Professor at the department of environmental science at the University of Botswana, with a PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia, (2000). She has many years of experience teaching and supervising students while working with local, regional, and international research groups focusing on integrating social and biophysical aspects of the environment in areas of applications of Remote Sensing, land degradation/desertification, wildland fires, energy, and environment, gender, and environment, impacts of climate change, vulnerability and adaptation and environmental hazards and disasters.

She served at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Science Committee (2008-2010) and subsequently served as its Co-Vice Chair (2010-2015) while leading its synthesis theme on “Global Environmental Change and Least Developed Countries”. Dr. Opha served in the IPCC Working Group II assessment process since the 3rd report, as Coordinating Lead Author (CLA), contributing author, and review editor. She served as the Deputy Chair of the multi-sectoral Botswana Government National Climate Change Committee (2017-2019).

Currently, she is the Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Climate Research for Development in Africa (CR4D)-UNECA and Vice-Chair of the WMO Scientific Advisory Panel, and serving as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Journal.