IUCN CEESP Governance, Equity and Rights Thematic Group

Deputy Chair, Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy

Dr. Zurba’s has been a member of CEESP since 2011, and is the former Chair of the CEESP Theme for Governance, Equity, and Rights (TGER). She is also an Associate Professor at Dalhousie University in Canada where work focuses on projects that are developed and implemented in collaboration with communities on topics related to equity, reconciliation, wellbeing, and nature-culture connection. Dr. Zurba has contributed to IUCN policy through her leadership of the Intergens report, which was instrumental in directing the IUCN Youth Strategy 2022-2030. Her more recent work on IUCN policy is focused on the creation of equitable and meaningful spaces for Indigenous and local communities in global policy forums, as well as presenting research in support of the development of a formal truth and reconciliation process within IUCN.

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.