Timothy Balag'kutu

Lecturer, University of Professional Studies

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Timothy A. Balag’kutu is a Lecturer in the Centre for Peace and Security Research, University of Professional Studies, Accra in Ghana. He is also an Earth System Governance (ESG) Research Fellow, and a Society for Freshwater Science Headwaters Leadership Academy Fellow. He holds a PhD in Global Governance and Human Security from the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston. He is a multidisciplinary scholar/researcher in global policy and governance, and (human) security, with regional expertise in Africa. His research interests include peace, conflict and climate (in)security, environmental peacebuilding, plastic and chemicals pollution, and global sustainability governance with focus on indigenous African knowledge and governance systems. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in high impact publications. He reviews for several scholarly journals, including Environment, Development and Sustainability; and serves on the Editorial Board of Canadian Journal of African Studies and the ORCID Researcher Advisory Council. He consults for national and international institutions and contributes to policy discussions across levels. Among others, he contributed to the Scientific and Technological Community Major Group Position Paper for the 2022 High-Level Political Forum on SDGs, and currently serves on the Future Earth Editorial Board for European Union’s Horizon Scanning on Biodiversity and Climate Science. He is an avid early career advocate and engages in initiatives through such professional communities as the ECR-NON, ESG Early Career Committee, Headwaters Leadership Academy, and Environmental Peacebuilding Association. Tim is passionate about and committed to early career development and representation in sustainability science, policy, and practice initiatives.

Xiaoyu Fang

Co-Executive Director (Communication & Engagement), Future Earth Coasts

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Dr. Xiaoyu Fang is a marine scientist and sustainability advocate with over 15 years of experience in environmental research, spanning glaciers to coastal ecosystems. She holds a PhD from the University of Plymouth and Ghent, with expertise in marine ecosystem health, biodiversity modeling, and ocean observation.Xiaoyu has dedicated her career to advancing global sustainability through science-policy engagement, international collaboration, and leadership development. She is particularly passionate about empowering underrepresented voices, supporting women scientists, and fostering the next generation of leaders driving change in environmental science.As Co-Executive Director of Future Earth Coasts, she oversees communication and engagement, bridging science, policy, and communities to promote inclusive, sustainable solutions. She leads cross-cutting initiatives like Empowering Future Leadership and the Meta-Network and co-founded the Cyber-Coasts, Just Transitions, and Tour de Coasts working groups to advance coastal sustainability through innovative research and equitable action. She also serves on the Expert Group of the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre, the Science Steering Committee for the Sustainability Initiative in the Marginal Seas of South and East Asia, and is a member of the ISC Expert Network for the UN Ocean Conference 2025.Previously, Xiaoyu worked at the European Marine Observation and Data Network Secretariat, where she coordinated international projects like the EMODnet Partnership for China and Europe and contributed to Horizon 2020 projects such as iAtlantic and Blue-Cloud, which strengthened cross-border collaboration in marine research.With a vision for a future driven by equitable decision-making, Xiaoyu is committed to empowering the next generation to create a thriving and sustainable planet.

Catherine Machalaba

Science Officer

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Catherine Machalaba is the Program Coordinator for Health and Policy at EcoHealth Alliance, where she and colleagues work towards One Health solutions for humans, animals, and the environment. She serves as the Science Officer for the ecoHEALTH project. She holds an undergraduate degree in biology, a Master in public health from Dartmouth Medical School, and is currently a Doctoral student in Environmental Health at the City University of New York School of Public Health.

Xuemei Bai

Distinguished Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

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Xuemei Bai is a Distinguished Professor of Urban Environment and Human Ecology and an Australian Research Council’s Laureate Fellow at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University. Her research interests include: understanding the structure, function, processes and evolution of urban social ecological systems, the drivers and impacts of urbanization, urban metabolism, cities and climate change, urban sustainability experiments an transition, and more recently on Anthropocene futures and Earth system boundaries. Prof. Bai is a member of the Earth Commission, leading its Working Group 5 on methods of cross scale translation from planetary limits to cities and businesses. In the past, she served as Vice Chair of IHDP, and as an inaugural member of Future Earth Science Committee leading the development of its Urban Knowledge-Action Network. Prof. Bai is a Fellow of Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia since 2017, and was named as one of the World's 100 Most Influential People in Climate Change Policy in 2019 and 2022. She is the Laureate of the Volvo Environment Prize 2018, and the Global Economy Prize 2021.

Ariane de Bremond

Executive Director, International Programme Office, Global Land Programme; Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Switzerland

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I am Executive Officer of the Global Land Programme, Senior Scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern, and Assistant Research Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.  In addition to my work coordinating the GLP community, my research interests include governance of distally connected socio-ecological systems (telecoupling); land tenure and relation to land use and cover change; forest governance and conflict; and carbon conservation schemes such as REDD+ in the context of global climate change policies and development issues. I am also Principal Investigator on a recently awarded grant from the NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) program, “The Global Rush for Land: A Socio-Ecological Synthesis” Principal Investigator (2017-2020) and a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute.

Jean Pierre Ometto

Senior Researcher at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and Head of the Strategic Projects Division

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Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Space Research and Head of the Strategic Projects Division. Vice Coordinator of the Brazilian Network of Research on Global Climate Change; Coordinator of the AdaptaBrasil Platform MCTI; Coordination Committee of the FAPESP Program for Research on Global Climate Change; Representative to the Belmont Forum Consortium of Funding Agencies. Appointed to the IPCC Working Group II for the AR5 and AR6 cycles, and to the IPCC Task Force on Greenhouse Gas Inventories; the IPBES for the Regional and Sub-Regional Scope Assessment and Nexus reports; the Global Environmental Outlook 5 and 7 synthesis report (UNEP)

Joon Kim

Vice-chair, Future Earth Korea National Committee

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Wendy Steele

Co-Chair, Future Earth Australia Steering Committee

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Wendy is a Professor of Sustainability and Urban Governance at RMIT University and co-chair of Future Earth Australia (FEA). Committed to the need for urgent action on climate change, her research focuses on the nature of cities and the role of urban citizens as planetary stewards with an emphasis on rethinking critical urban infrastructure, responsible practices and climate justice. Recent books include Planning Wild Cities: Human-Nature Relationships in the Urban Age (Routledge 2020), Quiet Activism: Climate action at the local scale (Palgrave 2021), The Sustainable development Goals and Higher Education (Palgrave 2022), Hot Cities: A Transdisciplinary Agenda (Edward Elgar 2023) and The Routledge Handbook on Grassroots Climate Activism(2024). Wendy is a founding member of the Planetary Civics Inquiry (PCI) working in collaboration with others to support and promote the governance of shared bioregions and more regenerative urban futures.

Sebastian Sonntag

Executive Director DKN Future Earth

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Yulia Sugandi

Educator and Researcher, the Homeland Earth Ambassador, Center for Transdisciplinary and Sustainability Sciences, IPB University, Indonesia

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Yulia Sugandi is an Anthropologist and Sociologist with advanced research methodologies on social and human sciences and social policies. She has a PhD from the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Muenster, Germany, a MSc from the University of Eastern Finland, and a Bachelor's degree from Gadjah Mada University. Yulia actively promotes socio-ecological justice through her work as a development professional and as a board member of various projects. She combines this with teaching and researching gender justice, social equity and inclusive development, human ecology and climate change. Yulia collaborates with stakeholders to support organic social change and systems transformation. She worked alongside the Minister of Environment and Forestry as part of the editorial team for the Trilogy books and policy brief on Indonesia Facing Climate Change. Throughout her career, she consistently linked scientific research and policymaking. The curriculum module developed by Yulia on equity and social inclusion, known as green empathetic leadership, has been adopted by the National Public Administration. She effectively employs mixed methods in developing relevant and sustainable policies and programs for government agencies and the United Nations. Yulia advocates for ecological reflexivity, resilience thinking, contextual assessment, the decolonization of knowledge, and collective social learning to attain planetary justice.

Sharachchandra Lele

Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Environment & Development, ATREE & Adjunct Faculty, IISER Pune

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Sharachchandra (Sharad) Lele is currently the Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy & Governance at the Centre for Environment and Development of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bengaluru. He is also Honorary Professor at Shiv Nadar University Delhi, where he is helping set up a new programme in Sustainability and Public Policy. Sharad has degrees IIT Bombay, IISc Bangalore, and UC Berkeley. He co-founded the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment & Development in Bengaluru in 2001, and led it till 2009, when it merged with ATREE.Sharad is an inter- and trans-disciplinary environmental researcher, keenly interested in the concepts of sustainability and sustainable and equitable development and their practical translation in the forest, water and energy sectors. His main interests are forest governance, landuse change, urban water management, and the environmental regulation of large infrastructure projects. He is Founder-Member and past President of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics, and has served as a Board member of the International Society for Ecological Economics, and serves or has served on the editorial boards of many interdisciplinary environmental journals. He is currently a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Land Programme. He is also heavily engaged in policy-related work at local, provincial and national levels in India, and is currently leading a major action-research programme on forest rights in central India.

Dhanasree Jayaram

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Dr. Dhanasree Jayaram is a Senior Assistant Professor, Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, Manipal Institute of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, and Co-coordinator, Centre for Climate Studies, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), India. She is also a Research Fellow and Member, Scientific Steering Committee, Earth System Governance Project; Member, Climate Security Expert Network; Research Fellow, Centre for Public Policy Research (India); Non-resident Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs; Visiting Fellow, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (India); and Associate, Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (Hiroshima University). She was a Research Fellow at Centre Marc Bloch and Guest Researcher at Freie Universität, Berlin – under the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s International Climate Protection Fellowship in 2022-2023. She pursued a visiting fellowship (Erasmus Mundus) at Leiden University, the Netherlands in 2014-15; and a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Lausanne, Switzerland, under the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship in 2018-19.Her areas of research include environmental and climate security; climate diplomacy; environmental geopolitics in Southern Asia, Indo-Pacific, and polar regions; gender and climate governance; and geopolitical/security implications of solar geoengineering. She is the author of Climate Diplomacy and Emerging Economies: India as a Case Study (2021) and has published in journals such as Third World Quarterly, Politics and Governance, Futures, Oxford Open Energy, Contemporary Security Policy, Global Environmental Politics, Contemporary South Asia, Nature Sustainability, Transnational Environmental Law, and International Politics.

Maria Uhle

Program Director for International Activities Institution: US National Science Foundation

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Maria Uhle currently serves as the Program Director for International Activities in the Directorate for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation, where she develops mechanisms and agreements to foster international collaboration for global environmental change research through the Belmont Forum, the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) and Future Earth. She is Co-Chair of the Belmont Forum, Chair of US Future Earth Board and Chair of the Executive Council of the IAI. She works with other US federal agencies through the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) where she is the National Science Foundation’s Principal to the Sub-committee on Global Change Research and co-Chair of the International Activities, Interagency Working Group of USGCRP. Prior to her appointment at NSF, she served as an International Affairs Officer in the Office of International and Academic Affairs (OIAA) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where she developed programs to foster research collaboration with NIST’s international partners from countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Prior to working at NIST, she served as Program Director for the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board and the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. She directed several committees that addressed topics relevant to the Arctic and Antarctic, and focused on reanalysis of historical climate data, and climate projections based on emission scenarios. Before joining the NAS, Dr. Uhle served on the faculty at the University of Tennessee in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Her background includes degrees in environmental science and geology, and her research focused on investigating the fate of organic matter and contaminants in atmospheric, surface water and soil environments from urban areas and the polar deserts of Antarctica.

Deliang Chen

August Röhss Chair Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg

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Deliang Chen is a meteorologist by training and a renowned climate researcher. His research includes Earth System Science and global environmental change, climate dynamics and modeling, and atmospheric circulation. He focuses on recent and future regional climate changes and their impacts on water, ecosystem, environment, and agriculture. Currently, he mainly works with climate and environmental changes over the Third Pole (Tibetan Plateau) region and its surrounding, with a focus on the water cycle. Deliang is an elected Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg, the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, as well as a Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has served on numerous international and national committees and boards, as well as advised various governmental, intergovernmental, and international non-governmental bodies including funding agencies. Previous appointments include Director of the Gothenburg Atmospheric Science Center and Executive Director of International Council for Science (ICSU). Recent examples include Chair of the Nomination Committee of the Stockholm Water Prize; Board member of The Future Earth Sweden Foundation; Chair of the Earth Science Division of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; and member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of Stockholm Resilience Centre as well as Bolin Centre’s External Science Advisory Group. He also acts as a Coordinating Lead Author in Working Group I of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report and serves as an editor for several international scientific journals. Recently, he was listed in the @Reuters Hot List of top climate scientists in the world and awarded the H. M. The King's Medal in the 8th size with the Order of the Seraphim ribbon for outstanding contributions to Swedish and international climate research.

Prudence Makhura

NRF Executive Director: International Grants and Partnerships

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Dr. Prudence Makhura is currently the executive director of international grants and partnerships at the National Research Foundation (NRF) South Africa. In this capacity, she is responsible for unlocking international research and innovation funding opportunities and leveraging additional funding for the South African National System of Innovation (NSI). She does this through the management of research grants with international partners (i.e. at bi-, tri-, and multi-lateral levels), the private sector, development aids, and state-owned enterprises. Dr Makhura serves on the Advisory Board for the Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (KFPE), Co-Chairs the Global Research Council (GRC) Multilateral Engagement Working Group (MEL-WG), and is South Africa’s National Contact Point for both the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and the European Research Council (ERC). She has previously held different portfolios within the South African Higher Education, Research, and Innovation Sector. These include working for the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) managing the higher education partnerships within the African continent (e.g. AU, SADC, COMEDAF, ADEA, AAU etc.), and Universities South Africa (USAf) being responsible for strengthening the Higher Education Sector’s Research, Innovation and Technology capabilities; and international and continental collaborations. Prior to joining USAf, Dr Makhura was a Manager for the Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council on Higher Education (CHE) and a Junior Researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the Centre for Sociological Research (CSR) based at the University of Johannesburg. She holds a Doctorate of Management in Technology and Innovation with the DaVinci Institute for Technology Management.

Stéphane Blanc

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Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Makoto Taniguchi

Co-chair, Future Earth Japan National Committee / Deputy Director-General, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature

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Professor Makoto Taniguchi is a hydrogeologist and Deputy Director-General of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in Japan. He received his PhD in the field of groundwater hydrology from University of Tsukuba, Japan in 1987. He was a visiting scholar at the Division of Groundwater, CSIRO, Australia (1987-1988, 1996-1997), Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, University of Arizona, USA (1991-1992), and Department of Oceanography, Florida State University (2001-2002, 2002-2003). He has worked on groundwater research and teaching of hydrogeology in universities including The University of Tsukuba and Nara University of Education. He moved to RIHN in 2003, and became a full professor of hydrogeology in 2009. He is currently the vice president of International Association of Hydrogeology (2016-present) and a president of the Japanese Association of Groundwater Hydrology (2015-present). He served as a coordinator of the UNESCO GRAPHIC Project (2004-2011) and GWSP-Asia network (2005-2009), Associate Editor of Ground Water (2003-2008) and Hydrological Processes (2010-2013), and Vice President of the International Committee of Groundwater of IAHS under IUGG (2007-2011). He has worked on groundwater projects around the world, in particular Asia, authoring or co-authoring over 120 articles and 8 books including “Subsurface Hydrological Responses to land cover/use changes (Kluwer, 1997)”, “Land and Marine Hydrogeology (Elsevier, 2003)”, “Groundwater system responses to changing climate (Taylor and Francis, 2009), “Groundwater and subsurface environment (Springer, 2011)”, and “Groundwater as a key for adaptation to the changing climate and society (Springer, 2014)”. He has published widely in some of the top journals in hydrogeology and geophysics, such as Hydrogeology Journal, Nature Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, Water Resources Research, Groundwater and Journal of Hydrology. He has strong connections to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary international research, which include not only natural/social sciences like oceanography, climatology, engineering, economics, human geography, anthropology, etc., but also stakeholder engagement research including governors, industries and citizens. Recently, he received a transdisciplinary research fund as PI of the Belmont Forum “Sustainable Urban Global Initiative Food-Water-Energy Nexus (SUGI FWE NEXUS)”: Intelligent Urban Metabolic Systems for Green Cities of Tomorrow: a FWE Nexus-based Approach, and as PI of international research projects of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) which are strongly related to water-energy-food Nexus in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ways. He also has experiences as Principal Investigator in co-designing research agenda to identify research priorities for the Japanese Strategic Research Agenda (JSRA), by emphasizing sustainability with researchers, representatives of local governments, industry, media, and non-governmental organizations, as well as highlighting a series of topics and themes for researchers to prioritize. As a result, he has a strong record of working at disciplinary and sectoral interfaces at an international scale.