Paula Andrea Sánchez García seeks to better understand the complex interrelationship between climate, ecosystems and finance

Sánchez García works as a research assistant on a project that aims to better understand domino effects and complex climate-ecosystem-finance dynamics. She previously collected company data to identify the biggest investors and other financial actors driving the increase of emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases such as the Coronavirus.

She is now interested in unpacking how climate change and ecosystem degradation represent a risk for the finance sector, identifying methods to assess these risks, their weakness and strengths, and the knowledge gaps within this field of study.

Sánchez García's completed the centre's SERSD Master, and a Bachelor programme in ecology. Her studies focused on interdisciplinary research and studies, receiving courses in socio-ecology thinking, political ecology, social research, ecological economy, mathematical modeling, ecology and other field of natural science studies.

Before coming to the SRC, two important job experiences strengthened her interdisciplinary training. Sánchez García worked with CIRAD (The French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development) to understand the impacts that public and private policies related to FLEGT approaches have had in the legality of the forestry sector in the country. She also worked at the Colombian Ministry of Interior to reconcile economic growth and cultural/ethnic diversity.

For her Master thesis Sánchez García sought to unpack the underlying mechanisms of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon, and is now starting a PhD at the Humboldt University in Berlin focusing on understanding telecoupling connections between the EU and Colombian driving environmental degradation and forest loss in the region.

Sánchez García thinks of herself as a pragmatic person. In this sense, resilience and socio-ecological thinking are useful tools for understanding reality, which does not mean that in the scientific world there are not other ways of studying environmental problems. However, in her personal experience, both resilience and socio-ecological systems are tremendous epistemological approaches for understanding and finding solutions to conflicts between nature and society.

Awards and achievements

• Excellent undergraduate performance award: Orden al Mérito Académico Javeriano. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá. Colombia. 2018-3
• Nomination for Outstanding Thesis Award for the Research Project “Efecto del sistema de gobernanza sobre las especies de uso Albizia saman (algarrobillo), Bulnesia arbórea (guayacán), Platymiscium pinnatum (corazón fino) y Tabebuia chrysantha (cañaguate): Estudio de caso en el corregimiento de Guacochito, Valledupar”. Bogotá, Colombia. 2018-1
• Biannual Scholarship for Academic Excellence. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Bogotá, Colombia. 2016-3
• Biannual Scholarship for Academic Excellence. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Bogotá, Colombia. 2014-3