Chair, Theme on Governance, Equity and Rights

Professor Zurba’s work focuses on projects that are developed and implemented in collaboration with communities. Professor Zurba has worked collaboratively with Indigenous communities in Canada and abroad on projects focusing on co-management of species and protected areas, shared forest tenure agreements, Clean Environment Commission hearings for water regulation, land use and occupancy mapping studies, food sovereignty, health promotion and wellbeing, and land-based learning and curriculum development. Her work has also contributed to public discussion on what “reconciliation” means in Canada through her work on learning and relationship building through the shared-governance of land. Professor Zurba is also interested in how global policy frameworks affect community participation in the day-to-day management of the environment.

Dr Isa Olalekan Elegbede (PhD) has a doctorate in Environmental science, specialising in ocean and coastal resources sustainability. Hi focuses on coastal and ocean resources sustainability. He is presently the Deputy chair of the IUCN/CEESP/TGER, Switzerland and a Fellow of the Future Earth Coast (FEC). Likewise, he is affiliated with the Lagos State University, Ojo. He is also a Central and South Atlantic Regional Scientific Research Working Group member, coordinating regional deep-sea research. Also a member of the fisheries - DOSI - Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative and a co-chair of the GEO BON blue planet fisheries working group. Likewise, he was the head of research, innovations, and development at SaeioGlobal (SGL), where he managed and implemented various projects from NSF, USA, European Union, and GIZ, Germany.

He has a wealth of interdisciplinary background and experiences in citizen sciences and data hackathons. Thanks to his resilience and hard-working attitude- he obtained a BSc in Fisheries at the Lagos State University, Nigeria, an MSc in Marine Sciences at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and also an MSc in Environmental and resource management at the Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU), Germany with several international professional training and certifications. He was a visiting fellow and Scholar of the Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI) and the Robin Rigby Trust (RRT) at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, where he has contributed to teaching, research and capacity-building activities within the university. He has committed to knowledge dissemination in Africa as a diaspora expert under the German governmental agency, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the German Federal Employment Agency. Several awards and grants have been awarded to his credit. Isa has participated, contributed and volunteered in several international capacities and collaborative initiatives in many SGDs goals across the globe. He is an alumnus of the graduate programs in oceanography at the Sao Paulo School of Advanced Sciences, Brazil and an honorary member of the Indigenous and community conserved area (ICCAs), Switzerland.