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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.
The Policy dilemmas in biodiversity and
alternative medicine -
a New approach to conservation and management of
medicinal plants.
Our natural ecosystems have thousands of different plant species that have
evolved over million of years. These plants have been used by the first
inhabitants of Earth before pharmaceuticals were invented. Nowadays, many
indigenous and poor people in the world are still basing their health and
medicine from these plants. What is also fascinating is that the number of
people that dependent on pharmaceuticals for their health are now changing
to alternative medicines. People are choosing more holistic approaches and
the use of medicinal plants. This is all very good, but this is also
causing a threat because many plants are becoming endangered. These plants
are endangered not just because their use has increased, but also because
deforestation of natural ecosystems is on the rise. Deforestation of
forest that contains so many useful species is happening due to cattle
ranching, agriculture, mining, oil exploration and other development
activities. The conservation of natural ecosystems is becoming a high
priority to protect these endangered species and also the cultivation of
wild plant used for medicinal purposes should be suggested to the policy
makers. These trends are creating conflicting policies that are not always
best for human health (overall) and for the environment and survival of
rare and extremely useful plants. In this talk, the policy dilemmas in
biodiversity and alternative medicine will be discussed. |
