Personas

Rosa Maria Roman-Cuesta is an Alexander Von Humboldt fellow and a tropical forest ecologist with the Climate Change Energy and Low Emission Development programme since July 2017. She also acts as the CIFOR focal point for CCAFS.

She gained her PhD on tropical forest disturbances (2002) in the frame of an EU project on forest restoration and conservation in Latin America (SUCRE). She has since specialized in land use emissions and climate change mitigation at national scales, with a particular interest in forest monitoring, carbon balances, and the REDD+ mechanism. As a Forest Officer and MRV advisor, she spent 3 years with FAO’s UN-REDD team (2010-2012) directly supporting Mexico and Panama’s Governments with their Climate Change and REDD+ programmes. Having been invited to several TSU-IPCC expert meetings, she is well acquainted with the UNFCCC framework and principles, with the IPCC AFOLU guidelines, and with the technical needs and requirements for NDCs and NAMA development.

Her latest work under CCAFS projects has expanded her mitigation expertise towards more comprehensive landscape approaches that include other land uses, particularly agriculture and wetlands. She has actively participated in the development of CIFOR’s latest tropical wetland and peatland map (2017) and has a particular interest in peatland monitoring (i.e. peat degradation).