Claudia Sobrevila - USA

INTRODUCTION

OBJECTIVES

THE VERBANIA DECLARATION

SPEAKERS

SPONSORS & PATRONS

Senior Biodiversity Specialist
Environment Department (ENV)
Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (ESSD)
The World Bank
Washington DC

Ms. Sobrevila is Senior Biodiversity Specialist at the World Bank. A Venezuelan national, she holds a degree in biology from the Central University of Venezuela and an M.A. and a doctorate degree (PhD) in Ecology from Harvard University.  During her 10 years at the World Bank, she has provided technical and project management expertise to projects in more than 15 countries mainly in Latin America on the establishment and management of Parks, building ecological corridors, ensuring that biodiversity conservation is in the agenda of governments, on the establishment of environment trust funds, and more recently on the participation of indigenous peoples in biodiversity conservation.  She is a strong practitioner of participatory development.  The wide input she seeks ensures stronger ownership of the decisions by an array of interest groups and may ensure more long-lasting effects in conservation.  Ms. Sobrevila has led workshops to develop best practices on the issue of the role of indigenous peoples in biodiversity conservation, on traditional knowledge of indigenous groups and on long-term innovative financing mechanisms for protected areas.

Prior to her position at the Bank, Ms. Sobrevila was Chief Ecologist at The Nature Conservancy, where she did inventories of vegetation types and park planning in more than 8 countries and developed a Manual for Rapid Ecological Assessment that is being used commonly in Latin America.  She was also Senior Director for the Andean Countries at Conservation International, where she promoted the concept and development of ecological corridors, particularly in the Peru-Bolivia Amazon Lowlands, which has become a major conservation strategy in these two countries.

Ms. Sobrevila has authored several papers and reports on rapid ecological assessment, ecological guide to a park, conservation planning tools, biodiversity conservation and more recently on the role of Nature and Peace.  Recently, Claudia founded a non-profit organization “EcoVillages Foundation-Peaceful people in a Healthy Environment” to support poor indigenous communities in remote villages in Tibet and in the rain forests of South and Central America.

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