SwedBio Resilience and Development Programme
At SwedBio* Marcus works with international policy and methods development related to global sustainability, sustainable development goals, biodiversity, resilience and ecosystem services and their role in poverty reduction. Areas of particular interest are coastal and marine issues as well as forestry. Marcus also works with planning and strategy of the programme as well as PR and communications.

Research
Marcus is a biologist and ecologist with a research background in ecology, environmental science, natural resources management and environmental economics. Marcus is involved in various research projects including studies dealing with global sustainability, planetary boundaries, marine ecology and coastal zone management.

Marcus has worked with a number of research projects on the effects of various human induced disturbances on marine ecosystems including climate change, fisheries, eutrophication, ornamental fish collection, coral mining, algal farming, solar salt farm constructions etc. Studies have been carried out on the environmental effects of offshore wind power developments.

Marcus has also studied the function of marine protected areas. He has worked in a range of different aquatic ecosystems including tropical coral reefs, sandstone reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds as well as temperate rocky reefs, soft-bottom habitats and brackish waters. Research projects have been carried out in Sweden, Australia, Tanzania, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Cuba and Israel.

A research area in ecology of particular interest for Marcus is how organism communities - mainly fish communities - in different ecosystems interact with habitat structure. This also includes studying the effects of habitat change both as a result of disturbance (i.e. habitat degradation) as well as habitat enhancement.

He has also studied the function of habitat presence in terms of being an ecosystem service and the costs involved if habitats are degraded as well as possible benefits that may be gained if habitats are protected, added or improved.

University teaching and post-graduate students supervision
Marcus has been lecturing on a number of courses and has more than 500 hours of teaching. In his teaching he covers a broad range of topics including global sustainability, planetary boundaries, resilience, general ecology, marine ecology, fish ecology, fisheries, environmental science, natural resources management, conservation biology and environmental impact assessments.

Teaching has been conducted at Stockholm University, the Royal Institute of Technology, Lund University, University of Dar es Salaam and the University of the West Indies. Marcus has supervised a number of master students and PhD-students in Sweden and Tanzania. Student supervision has also been carried out in Sri Lanka and Australia.

Natural resources management
Marcus has worked with various natural resources management projects and programs both in the field as a researcher or advisor, or as an administrator. This includes ecosystem management, coastal zone management, fisheries management and forest management. This have involved work with various international and national organisations as well as work in the field in different countries such as Sweden, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Jamaica and Seychelles.

Government administration
Marcus has worked for six years as a senior administrative officer and advisor at the Government Offices of Sweden including the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry for Rural Affairs and the Prime Ministers Office. Marcus was an advisor to ministers in fisheries, marine environmental issues and forestry. He was negotiator and Swedish delegate to the European Union (EU) in fisheries and to EU and UN in forestry.

As a governmental representative he worked with a number of international organisation such as FAO, OECD, UNEP, UNDP, UNECE, GEF, CBSS, HELCOM, BEAC, CPF, UNFF, IUFRO, ITTO, Forest Europe, EFI and SNS. Marcus was part of the Committee of Senior Officials for Forestry in the Nordic Council of Ministers. Marcus was the EU-coordinator for fishery issues within the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region.

He has been chairman and moderator for various official international meetings as well as organizer of conferences and workshops. For example, Marcus was, in collaboration with BSRAC, responsible for organizing the fisheries conference during the Swedish chairmanship of EU (Baltic Sea Fisheries: Lessons Learned and Future Perspectives).

He was the main author of the Stockholm Declaration on the ‘Management of the Baltic Sea Fisheries’ and is the founder of Baltfish, which is a regional platform for discussing fisheries, among EU-memberstates officials and associated organisations, in the Baltic Sea area.

Foreign aid
Marcus has a long experience of working with foreign aid in South Asia and East Africa. He has led the Sida Bilateral Marine Science Programme between Sweden and Tanzania for research in marine zoology as well as the Sida Multilateral East Africa Marine Science Programme for research and management of coral reefs in the Western Indian Ocean. He was assistant coordinator to the Sida-SAREC Marine Science Programme in Sri Lanka. Marcus was project leader for the fisheries part of a World Bank funded project in Jamaica.

A major theme in his foreign aid work has been capacity building in terms of educating and supervising researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students as well as technical personnel in marine science and coastal zone management.

*SwedBio Resilience and Development Programme is a knowledge interface between practice, policy and science, on issues concerning poverty alleviation, sustainable livelihoods, equity and human wellbeing through development towards resilient ecosystems and societies. It also facilitates funding to related initiatives with partner organizations and institutions in developing countries and facilitates access and participation of developing country stakeholders and actors in international policy development.