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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.
Wisdom and Science are
One: Increasing Positive Decisions for Humanity
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