Climate Classroom @ COP29 – Integrating Nature in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs)

Jessica Troni has an MSC Natural Resource & Environmental Economics from University College London and an MSc Public Policy and Management from School of African and Oriental Studies, London and more than 25 years of experience in environment and development policy, of which 20 years’ experience is on climate change adaptation for the last 19 years. She has oversight over all programming related to the international climate funds (Green Climate Fund, Least Developed Countries Fund and Adaptation Fund) at UNEP. She served as a UNDP Regional Technical Adviser for Adaptation for the East and Southern African Region between 2007 and 2014 and for the UK Department for International Development Headquarters from 2003 to 2007 as the adaptation policy lead and as the UK representative in the EU delegation to the UNFCCC for 4 years. Jessica started her career as an Overseas Development Institute Fellow, posted in Zanzibar as an economist in the Commission for Lands and Environment from 1995 to 1997.

Valerie Kapos is the Principal Specialist – Nature-based Solutions at UNEP-WCMC. Valerie helps to oversee and provide strategic direction for UNEP-WCMC’s work on the role of ecosystems in climate change adaptation and mitigation, and in health and well-being. She has worked extensively on incorporating ecosystem services and their importance for adaptation and mitigation into conservation planning and implementation, and on ways of ensuring that mitigation and adaptation efforts yield benefits for biodiversity in the context of global change. She holds a PhD in tropical forest ecology and has nearly two decades of field research and other experience in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Katie Dawkins isSenior Programme Officer – Nature-based Solutions, UNEP-WCMC. Katie works with a range of stakeholders to provide the tools and information needed to understand impacts and dependences on nature, and scale up the use of Nature-based Solutions (NbS). She has a particular focus on NbS for adaptation, and ensuring the multiple benefits of NbS are considered in decision-making.