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Sonya Dewi has always been fascinated with how everything in life is connected through patterns and processes.
Now, she devotes her career to creating links between political infrastructure, conservation and ecosystem services as a landscape ecologist and the Director of Asia for CIFOR-ICRAF.
Based in Indonesia, Dewi has spent decades using remote sensing data to highlight how landscape governance can embrace mitigation for the climate crisis.
Her research focuses on tropical regions such as Brazil, India and Indonesia, where she analyzes how species and habitats coexist across ecosystems.
“I am drawn into questions surrounding how political economy drives spatial patterns and processes of land use and land cover change,” she says.
Dewi and her team have developed a software called Land Use Planning for Multiple Environmental Services (LUMENS), which brings together multiple stakeholders in sustainable landscape management planning, monitoring and evaluation.
This tool has since been adopted by the Indonesian government to mitigate the climate crisis through sustainable land management.
While many of us are understandably anxious about humanity’s future, Dewi has faith in future generations – provided we give them the tools to succeed.
“Youth are our future leaders,” she says. “Nurturing young people should be our biggest investment.”
“I hope more people will care more about nature and reflect it in their daily lives and decisions, as well as their long-term plans, regardless of their professions and backgrounds.”
