Maria
Tengö
PhD
Professor, Principal researcher
+46 8 16 42 57
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- Knowledge co-production
- Weaving knowledge systems
- Human-nature relationships
- Biosphere stewardship
- Indigenous and local knowledge and governance systems
- Relational values
- Cultural dimensions of sustainability
Weaving plural ways of knowing and doing for sustainability pathways, focusing on caring human-nature relationships in social-ecological systems.
Maria Tengö is a principal researcher in Sustainability Science at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and holds the Nature College Special Chair in Human–Nature Relationships in the Anthropocene at the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy Group, Wageningen University and Research (WUR) in the Netherlands. She is also a senior advisor at SwedBio, a programme working at the interface of science, policy and practice regarding biodiversity, ecosystem services, and poverty alleviation.
Tengö’s work focuses on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems using a social-ecological systems approach. She is engaging with and analyzing relationships between people and nature, especially how they relate to knowledge and governance systems – as well as their role in actions and movements towards sustainability. She has a transdisciplinary background, combining research and practical work in co-producing knowledge and action. Her focus is on linking local case studies with global sustainability challenges and science-policy processes at the global level. She has developed theory and practice at the interface between ecology and the social sciences, working with conservation, ecosystem management, agroecology and local and Indigenous knowledge and practices in Tanzania, Madagascar, South Africa, India, Brazil and Sweden. Tengö has long-term experience of science–policy–practice interfaces in particular concerning synergies between Indigenous, local and scientific knowledge systems, in local case studies and in connection to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Central in her work is the development of the Multiple Evidence Base approach, which has had significant impact on policy and practice.
Tengö has an interdisciplinary PhD in Natural Resource Management from the Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University. Her undergraduate education was primarily in biology and ecology at Uppsala and Stockholm University, but included courses in ecological economics, philosophy, history of science, and conservation management. During her PhD she was engaged in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Geography, McGill University, Canada.
Current projects:
