Peter Umunay

Peter Umunay is a Senior Environmental Specialist at the GEF. Peter leads the food systems area of work and supports the GEF’s mandate to generate global environmental benefits under the biodiversity, climate change, and land degradation focal areas.

He has over 15 years of work experience with international organizations: Wildlife Conservation Society, The Forests Dialogue, UNEP-WCMC, UNEP, Winrock International; academic and research institutions: Yale University, ForestGeo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; and governments.

Dr. Umunay’s work has been mostly interdisciplinary, with an interest in nature-based solutions to climate change, land degradation, and biodiversity conservation from technical expertise using granular and empirical data to understand ecological patterns and social dynamics, while promoting policies that support green economic development pathways and peoples’ livelihoods. His areas of focus include sustainable forest management, REDD+ and carbon accounting, food systems and sustainable commodity/crops production, land use finance, and forest restoration. He calls himself an “applied scientist,” willing to bridge the gap between landscape-level information and the development of informed policy and governance systems.

Dr. Umunay has over 30 scientific publications and works in collaboration with scientists across the world in the areas of the forest-climate nexus. He holds a BSc from Kisangani University (DRC), and MSc and PhD from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.