Helena Neri Alves Pinto

I am a biologist from São Paulo University, and I hold a Masters degree in Applied Ecology from the University of East Anglia. During my Masters, I have focused on the impacts of Economic Incentive Mechanisms on traditional communities in the Brazilian Amazon. Complementing my research, I have worked as a consultant for the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Research Program and the University of Michigan, in which I investigated the contributions, opportunities, and challenges of cattle ranching certification schemes for reducing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. I have a PhD from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was a visiting PhD student at the University of Cambridge, UK. During my PhD, I investigated the role and effectiveness of other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs). My focus was to evaluate how areas such as Indigenous Lands, Marron Territories, and Military Areas contributed to avoiding deforestation and promoting restoration in the Brazilian Amazon. I have worked as a project manager at the UN Environment programme, leading the TEEBAgrifood project focused on Low Carbon Agriculture programme. I also acted as a Research and Development Manager at re.green, cordinating the research related to ecological restoration. Recently I worked as a postdoctoral Researcher at the Globe Institute, university of Copenhagen, working with biocultural biodiversity in area based measures. Currently I am a Professor and researcher at the Institute of Biosciences at University of São Paulo.