Future Earth brings together researchers from all over the globe working across the natural and social sciences and the humanities to foster international collaboration that generates and shares integrated knowledge supporting transformations towards more sustainable, liveable, and equitable societies.
27 thematic Global Research Networks and 20 national, local and regional networks form the core of Future Earth’s community. Supporting Future Earth’s work is an international secretariat represented by nine global hubs in Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Taipei, South Africa, Sweden, and the US.
Established in 2015 with the creation of the Future Earth programme, the French Hub is hosted by Sorbonne University in Paris, France and receives funding from the MESR (French Ministry of Research and Education), CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), IRD (French National Institute for Sustainable Development), ANR (French National Research Agency), and AllEnvi (French National Alliance for Environmental Research).
The French Hub leads Future Earth’s Pathways Initiative, whose mission is to enhance researchers’ capacity to engage in transformative research and actively contribute to supporting societal actors in co-developing pathways for more sustainable futures at different scales.
Ariane de Bremond
Global Land Programme (GLP)*; University of Maryland
I am Executive Officer of the Global Land Programme, Senior Scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern, and Assistant Research Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. In addition to my work coordinating the GLP community, my research interests include governance of distally connected socio-ecological systems (telecoupling); land tenure and relation to land use and cover change; forest governance and conflict; and carbon conservation schemes such as REDD+ in the context of global climate change policies and development issues. I am also Principal Investigator on a recently awarded grant from the NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) program, “The Global Rush for Land: A Socio-Ecological Synthesis” Principal Investigator (2017-2020) and a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute.
Davnah Urbach
Global Mountain Biodiversity Programme (GMBA)*; University of Bern
Flurina Schneider
Scientific director of ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research. Professor at the Faculty of Biological Sciences, Goethe University of Frankfurt
Mark Stafford-Smith
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
Dr Mark Stafford Smith is the Science Director of CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship in Canberra, Australia, where he oversees a highly interdisciplinary programme of research on many aspects of adapting to climate change. He has more than 30 years experience in drylands systems ecology, management and policy, including senior roles such as Program Leader of CSIRO’s Centre for Arid Zone Research in Alice Springs, and then CEO of the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre. During this time he was a task leader under the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems core project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). He was also a key contributor to the AridNET international network of drylands researchers that devised the Dryland Development Paradigm. In the past decade his research focus has turned more to adaptation to climate change. He was an ICSU-appointed member then vice-chair of IGBP’s Scientific Committee during 2003-2009; and co-chair of the Planet Under Pressure: New Knowledge Towards Solutions conference on global environmental change in the lead up to Rio+20 in 2012.
Alta de Vos
Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS); Stellenbosch University
Viola Baldeschi
Science Officer, France Hub
Viola joined the French Hub as an intern in 2023 and she is continuing her journey with Future Earth as a Science Officer. She is a Master’s student at Sciences Po Paris in International Governance and Diplomacy where she specializes in environmental and sustainability policies. With a Bachelor’s in International Relations from the University of Groningen, she is particularly interested in designing policies reconciling social and environmental needs.
Coline Grimée
Science Officer, France Hub
Coline joined Future Earth in September 2023. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Policy from Sciences Po Paris and a BA in Liberal Arts and Science from Maastricht University. Her interests lie in the reconciliation of environmental and social issues, policies for soft and active mobility, and the translation of degrowth theories into practice.
Pavel Kambersky
Science Officer, France Hub
Pavel joined the French Hub of Future Earth in July 2023 as a Science Officer. He studied a Master’s in International Development with a specialisation in environment at Sciences Po, where he also studied a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. His interests include environmental justice, decolonial climate perspectives and degrowth.
Stephanie O'Toole
Science Officer, France Hub
Stephanie joined the French Hub in 2023 as an intern and she is currently a Science Officer alongside pursuing a Masters in Environmental Policy at Sciences Po Paris. Her interests lie in the integration of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems, environmental justice and the active translation of decolonizing sustainability science from theory to practice.
Sandrine Paillard
Global Hub Director, France Hub
Sandrine Paillard is based in Paris at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) headquarters. Sandrine’s background is in the economics of science and innovation. After her postdoctoral studies on comparative innovation systems, she joined a governmental think tank to develop foresight studies on science-society relationships, involving scientists and various stakeholders. She then spent seven years at the French Agricultural Research Institute as the head of the Foresight department. She led many projects aiming to develop socio-economic scenarios in the field of agriculture, the environment and food security. Before joining Future Earth she was the lead of the Secretariat of the Belmont Forum, whose main goal is to foster international collaboration and inter- and transdisciplinary research on global environmental change.
Aurélie Mpaka
Hub Coordinator
Aurélie joined the French Hub as a coordinator in 2024. After two years of experience in environmental compliance and risk management within the industrial sector, she intended to support more comprehensive work that would tackle equally natural and social challenges in the context of global environmental change. Her recent background involved collective endeavours aimed at reassessing practices and recognising prospects for sustainable development.