Vanja Westerberg

Vanja Westerberg is an environmental economist with 12 years of experience in applied research and consulting. Her work focuses on assessing costs and benefits of ecosystem restoration and land degradation, undertaking investment and impact analysis of primary land use and infrastructure developments and advising on regulatory and economic instruments for integrating the values of natural capital into policy decisions. At the GLF she is representing the Economics of Land Degradation Initiative for which she has led numerous studies, focusing on the feasibility and value of improving the sustainability of diverse production systems – ranging from pastoral management schemes in Georgia and Jordan; to cotton and cashew production in Benin; and agroforestry systems in the Sudano-Sahelian zones of Sudan, Mali and Ghana. In 2015, she co-founded Altus Impact – a social enterprise specialised in environmental advisory and sustainability communications. Prior to this, Vanja has worked with French and Danish research institutions (INRA, CNRS and KORA) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. She holds a Ph.D. from University of Montpellier.