Juan Diego Del Castillo Ruiz seeks to unveil human-nature relationships in cities to better deal with global urban challenges

Del Castillo Ruiz is interested in exploring human-nature relationships in urban settings. He believes this can support more comprehensive and just participatory management schemes of urban biodiversity.

Before arriving at the SRC, Del Castillo Ruiz achieved his bachelor’s degree in Biology from La Molina National Agrarian University (Lima, Peru) in 2013. His thesis title is “Spatial and temporal variation analysis of plant community in Carabayllo’s fog oasis (Lima, Peru) during 2013 as a contribution to its management.”

Between 2016 and 2021, Del Castillo Ruiz worked as a research assistant for the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in a REDD+ project with Indigenous and local communities, for Bioversity International and the World Agroforestry Centre in compilation research of restoration initiatives in Peru, and with the Andean Forest project of Helvetas compiling carbon monitoring projects in Peru.

Del Castillo Ruiz was the biodiversity monitoring specialist of the project “Development of the Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Strategy and Biodiversity Action Plans for the Metropolitan Area of Lima (AML)” with ECODES Engineering between 2021 and 2022. In 2023, as the Youth Engagement Specialist for the Science Panel for the Amazon (UN-SDSN), he helped develop the Youth Engagement Strategy.

Del Castillo Ruiz is the director of the local NGO “Peruvian Centre for Urban Socioecosystems Resilience – Centro Urbes”, which is focused on urban biodiversity conservation with a participatory approach. He was representative of the NGO in three stakeholders’ platforms at the national and subnational levels for “lomas” or fog oasis management. Also, he promoted the creation of a network of community-based organizations in Lima working on “lomas” conservation.

Academic awards and achievements

• Swedish Institute Scholarship for Global Professionals 2023-2025
• Ideal Wild grant 2020 with the project “Enhancing Participatory Conservation of the Peri-Urban Ecosystem Lomas of Amancaes”
• CIPSEM fellowship in 2019 for the 42nd UNEP/UNESCO/BMU International Postgraduate Course on Environmental Management for Developing Countries
• Teaching experience as Teaching Assistant “Fundamentals of Ecology”, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University, March 2017 – July 2018
  

Policy awards and achievements

• National Youth Prize - Category Environment 2019
• Co-founder of the Peruvian Chapter of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network between 2019 and 2021

Supervision

• Erik Andersson
• Johan Enqvist