Institution: United Nations Environment Programme

Xinyue Gu is a communications professional with an academic background in journalism and communications. She is currently based at UNEP’s Disasters and Conflicts Programme as communications lead to support amplifying visibility of environmental topics related to disasters and conflicts, including natural resources, women, peace and climate. 

Prior to joining the United Nations, she gained experience with digital marketing in Hong Kong and mainland China. She was also a reporter and editor for Varsity magazine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Xinyue is also a gender advocate who holds an M.Phil in Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies. Her research interests lie in gender and media, queer migration, and gender norms in contemporary China. She is currently volunteering at Beijing LGBT Centre where she supports the Executive Office’s communications to advocate rights of sexual and gender minorities in China.

Mikhail Fernandes is an environmental advocate who holds an MSc in Local Development. 

Mikhail is currently based at UNEP’s Disasters and Conflicts Programme, supporting the promotion and implementation of Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction (Eco-DRR) for the Partnership for Environment and Disaster Risk Reduction (PEDRR). 

He began his environmental work researching indigenous environmental practices while leading community-based forest conservation initiatives in Southern India, then moved to the United States, where Mikhail supported native prairie restoration projects, and the expansion of farm-to-fork initiatives in rural Indiana. As part of his peacebuilding and outreach work, Mikhail has advocated for utilizing education as a tool for empowering marginalized youth populations across gang-inflected communities, especially in South Africa. Mikhail has also supported the development and implementation of permaculture practices in Ubud, Indonesia.

Nathalie Doswald has been working for over a decade in international nature conservation, providing technical expertise and research to inform policy and decision-making processes. She holds a PhD in Ecology, specializing in impacts of climate change on biodiversity.

She now works to support the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Disasters and Conflicts Program, to up-scale Ecosystem-based 

Disaster Risk Reduction (Eco-DRR) to increase peoples’ resilience to disaster and climate impacts.

Prior to that, she was a Programme Officer at UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Center, she became one of the leading experts on Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA), helping to further develop the concept of EbA, collating several case studies and undertook a systematic review of the effectiveness of EbA.

David Jensen has over 15 years of experience in assessing and addressing natural resources, conflict and peacebuilding. He has worked for UN Environment as a senior expert on a range of different crisis responses operation including the Balkans, Iraq, DR Congo, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire. Since 2008, David has managed UN Environment’s Environmental Cooperation for Peacebuilding programme. In 2015, David’s programme teamed up with the World Bank to develop the MAP-X Partnership. A Canadian national from Victoria, British Columbia, David began his career with the Canadian government at the federal, provincial and district levels. His initial work focused on sustainable forest management and land use planning (Environment Canada, British Columbia Ministry of Forests) as well as on the negotiation of land claims with First Nations (British Columbia Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs). Jensen holds a MSc in Biology from Oxford University (UK) and an undergraduate degree in Geography from the University of Victoria (Canada).

Silja Halle is a Programme Officer with UN Environment Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch. Read more about her work here: https://www.unenvironment.org/people/silja-halle.