
Sandra Naumann
Diplom-Geoecologist
Coordinator Biodiversity and Nature-based Solutions
Senior Fellow
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Sandra Naumann is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute and coordinates the Institute's activities on biodiversity and Nature-based Solutions. Her work focuses on the evaluation and enhancement of land use, soil protection and biodiversity conservation policies and their links to climate change. She is particularly interested in green and blue infrastructure, nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches to climate change. She works in English, German, and Spanish.
In her other projects, Sandra explores the linkages between green infrastructure, nature-based solutions biodiversity and ecosystem services, with a particular focus on the policy and institutional contexts, as well as citizen’s perceptions of urban nature and the development of new governance and assessment instruments. She coordinates the H2020 project "International Cooperation to Restore and Connect Urban Environments in Latin America and Europe" (INTERLACE) and contributes to further projects focusing on nature-based solutions such as CLEVER Cities. She coordinates the Institute's work under the European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity, contributing to the conceptualization and development of the Biodiversity Information System for Europe (BISE), the development of the European urban biodiversity index, the set-up of the new EU restoration plan and an EU-wide assessment of protected area designation and management. She is also the lead author of the State of Nature in the EU report (2020) and analyses in a current DG Environment project to what extent species protection rules are integrated into sectoral policies. In the H2020 project Soil Mission Support she supports the development of the European research and innovation roadmap on soils and land management.
Previous work includes projects focusing on biodiversity conservation and sustainable land use, such as the assessment of ecosystem-based approaches to mitigation and adaptation and green infrastructure in the EU as well as a project focusing on the relationships between quality of life, well-being and biodiversity in the context of international cooperation. She also worked on the integration of biodiversity data into urban assessments and the potential of nature-based solutions to support sustainable urban development and the transition to resilient cities in NATURVATION (Nature-based Urban Innovation), the BiodivERsA ENABLE project, and the EUKI-project "Climate Mitigation Through Nature-Based-Solutions in Urban Poland". Within the project "Preventing and Remediating Soil Degradation" (RECARE), she contributes to the integrated impact assessment of EU soil protection policies and the analysis of processes preventing soil sealing in cities.
As a member of the expert groups on "nature-based solutions and renaturing" cities and the "Valorisation of NBS research projects" she supported the European Commission, DG for Research and Innovation in the development of a European policy and research agenda for NBS.
Before joining Ecologic Institute, Sandra Naumann worked as a research scientist at the Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) on agri-environmental indicators. From 2004 to 2005 she worked for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Bolivia, focusing on rural development and natural resource management. In 2003 Sandra Naumann worked at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) in Berlin in the area of ecological economics and environmental policy.
Sandra Naumann studied Geoecology at the University of Potsdam, focusing on ecology and nature conservation, environmental management, and economics. In her diploma thesis she analyzed geoecological problems and opportunities for sustainable land use in watershed areas. This work was done in cooperation with the University of Cauca (Colombia).
In her spare time, Sandra Naumann also engages in environmental and development policy education.