Elisabeth F. Huber-Sannwald

Elisabeth Huber-Sannwald is Full Research Professor in Ecology and Global Environmental Change and currently Department Head of the Division of Environmental Sciences at the federal research institute Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológiva, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. She received her Master’s Degree in Geobotany from the University of Innsbruck in Austria and her PhD in Range Ecology from Utah State University in the United States. She has extensive experience in dryland ecosystem ecology, livelihood analysis and resilience assessment of social-ecological systems, complex systems analysis of land degradation and desertification, land use and climate change effects on dryland ecosystem services and integral well-being.

She has coordinated national and international projects and collaborated with Mexican and international partners in Europe, Latin America, and North Africa to establish the Agadir Platform for cooperation and collaboration in dryland sustainability. She is founder and coordinator of the International Network for Dryland Sustainability (RISZA), the first national focal network of this platform, which fosters the co-generation of knowledge linked to drylands assessment, social-ecological conservation, restoration, management and development projects with local, national, regional and transnational transdisciplinary research alliances including academics, government representatives, civil society members, NGOs, representatives of the private sector, and indigenous groups.

She is also founder of the national network of Participatory Drylands Observatories in Mexico, a social-ecological innovation to collectively produce, compile and exchange knowledge, strengthen transversal multistakeholder partnerships for transdisciplinary research and collaborative environmental governance and foster intercultural dialogue at the science-policy interface considering sustainable dryland development.