Marieke Sassen (Ph.D.)

Senior Technical Specialist Biodiversity and Agriculture
UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre

Marieke Sassen (Ph.D.) is Senior Technical Specialist Biodiversity and Agriculture at UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (Cambridge), based at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Marieke has more than 15 years of experience using interdisciplinary approaches to investigate how human-environment interactions lead to spatial variation in land and resource use and impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services at different scales. Her current work focuses on understanding the impacts of land-use change on biodiversity and ecosystem services using future scenarios, modelling and spatial analysis to support more integrated and sustainable land use planning and agricultural development policy. She was previously a degree fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) (Kenya) and the Institute for Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) (Uganda), and worked for the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Cameroon and Gabon. She holds an MSc in Natural Resources Management and a PhD in Conservation and Development from Wageningen University.