Biographical Info

Dr. Sara J. Scherr is an agricultural and natural resource economist whose work has focused on land management policy in tropical developing countries. She is widely published in the scientific and policy literature, and has been a leading voice globally in promoting and refining approaches for integrated landscape management, in developing strategies for the restoration of degraded agricultural lands, payments for ecosystem services and the scaling of agroforestry systems. She founded the non-profit EcoAgriculture Partners in 2002. In 2011 she also founded the Landscapes for People, Food and Nature Initiative, which EcoAgriculture Partners convenes. She currently serves on the U.S. board of the agricultural biodiversity research organization Bioversity International, as well as on the advisory board of Food Tank, the UN Agri-food Task Force, the U.S. non-profit Solutions from the Land, and the Sustainable Trade Initiative’s ‘Initiative for Sustainable Landscapes’, and others. Before founding EcoAgriculture Partners, Dr. Scherr was Director of Ecosystem Services at the non-profit Forest Trends, where she co-founded the Katoomba Group. She was previously an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA; co-leader of the CGIAR Gender Program; senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C.; and principal researcher at the World Agroforestry Centre based in Nairobi, Kenya. Dr. Scherr received her BA in Economics at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and her MSc and PhD in International Economics and Development at Cornell University in New York.