Patrick P. Kalas is an applied political and institutional ecologist with 20 years of experience in designing and implementing over 80 catalytic projects across 40 countries to benefit the planet and humanity. He dedicated his career to address the integrated nexus between environmental challenges (i.e. climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, halting deforestation, inclusive management of natural resources), food insecurity, sustainable agriculture and equitable socio-economic development. Capitalizing on experience across private, public, multilateral and non-for-profit sector organizations, he currently works with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) where he strategically amplified and helped institutionalize the “E for environment” within “agriculture” through developing cornerstone corporate strategies on the FAO-Global Environmental facility (GEF) strategic partnership (USD 1 billion portfolio), Green Climate Fund (GCF), Climate Change, Biodiversity Mainstreaming and Agroecology. He now implements two large-scale GEF flagship Impact Programs on Dryland Sustainable Landscapes (DSL-IP) as well as Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR-IP) to sustainably transform agri-food systems across 36 countries, represents FAO on technical task forces (i.e. UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration, IPBES for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) and authored several publications.