I am the Senior Policy Manager on Sites for BirdLife International. I lead our work on protecting our most important sites for biodiversity globally. In both my current and former roles I have worked closely with the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands to strengthen wetland conservation at national and international scales.

The main challenge to safeguarding wetlands is unlocking sufficient and sustainable funding for both conservation and restoration actions. Recently, innovative financial models have been tested for sustaining wetlands over substantial areas.

My Fellowship will investigate how these innovative funding models are being leveraged to protect and restore critical wetland ecosystems for biodiversity and water security and to mitigate climate change and natural disasters. I am interested in learning and sharing how substantial resources have been mobilised to deliver actions on the ground and realise the multiple values of reviving wetlands.

Through this Fellowship, I intend to bring together the wetland community within the UK to develop plans to finance and deliver wetland restoration at scale and start to bring back all the wetlands we have lost.