Ecology, Research
Team
Patricia Balvanera
Ecologist
Patricia Balvanera is a biologist, ecologist, researcher at the Institute for Research on Ecosystems and Sustainability of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She has studied how different plant species are distributed in a landscape, how tropical vegetation recovers after abandoning agricultural activities, the way in which local communities use and manage their natural resources, the preferences they express about what benefits of they consider nature as the most important, as well as the role that visions about the future and relationships with nature play in its management. She has also explored how the global dynamics of resource consumption and economic growth show very unequal patterns of gains and losses between countries and between sectors of society, and the implications of all the above in the design of local, national and global public policies.
She is the coordinator of the project financed by PAPIIT-UNAM and by PRONACE-CONACYT. Her role is to promote the work in the different sites. She temporarily lives within the community of Santo Domingo Tomaltepec from where she engages in daily meetings with local actors and helps to strengthen actions of the project in different areas.