Innovation, science, and technology (IST) are expected to have a big impact on the success of the Sustainable Development Agenda. Nonetheless, countries are not utilizing their maximum potential when girls and women are excluded from the narrative of IST. According to UNESCO, less than 30% of the world’s researchers are women, and the Global South representatives continue to lag in the representation in Academia, enhancing inequities between North and South. The relevance of integrating women in science has also been recognized by the United Nations (ONU) when the 11th of February was stated as the International Day for Women and Girls in Science. This was motivation enough to take a step further and engage with a project working along with scientists in my home country, Ecuador.

One of the most conveyed ways to increase women’s participation in science is through communication and visibility. These efforts might help counter the stereotypes associated with career election and success in certain areas. Similarly, information campaigns through mass media are an opportunity to revitalize gender equality as an issue of public and political debate. Making women’s contributions visible is one of the main targets to work to close the genre gap in Academia, according to the Structural Transformation to Achieve Gender Equality in Science Guidelines. Under this premise, the idea to develop a calendar designed to be acquired online for everyone interested in supporting women in science and scientific communication initiatives emerged.

As an advocate of science, women’s representation, and sustainability issues I found here an opportunity to work on my portfolio development. I wanted to use my artistic skills to launch a calendar that helps increase the visibility of the Ecuadorian community of women doing science integration. To achieve my goal, first, I thought about developing a calendar with 12 representatives across Latin America. However, later I reflected and decided that a calendar should be focused on the representatives of my country, Ecuador. However, the task was challenging, and therefore first, I communicate with a friend working on a digital communication journal (Microbios) and we started a collaboration to the Red Ecuatoriana de Mujeres en Ciencia (REMCI). This organization is formed by leading scientists and activists in my country, who continuously launch campaigns to promote science and are role models for young scientists. Working together, we completed the task of selecting 12 profiles and include them in the calendar. As a goal, I defined that the calendar should aim for inclusivity, therefore, when defining the profiles, the inclusion of minorities and outside the capital gained priority.  Given the time we started with the project – November – the task had to take place in a time record. Specially, because the illustrations could take more time than thought, and as well the design was in my hands. However, along with studying, drawing, and learning about leading scientists in my country could not be more than enriching.

We launched the calendar on February 10^th, and I could not be more thankful with the outreach. First, the REMCI was so pleased with the final product, that they decided to launch an event just for it, working along with my partner at Microbios. As well, this was the first initiative of this type in my country and set a precedent, that even local media got interested.  We have assessed the interaction and engagement of the product to evaluate the outreach, and we are discussing what we can improve for next year. Overall, the experience itself was an interesting display on how an idea, a creative mind and the support of a team could create a small product, made with a lot of effort, did start a discussion about the women doing science and introduce civil society to academia. However, as a side note, we also invited to the reflection that genre equality is not a simple product that needs advertisement, but a complex system embedded in our professional and personal life that requires further development and efforts to be achieved.

The product only counts with a Spanish version, however, for those interested, the calendar can be downloaded for free here:

https://microbiosdigital.com/calendario2022/

For 3 years, I have been involved in the Giant Otter Conservation Program in the Madre de Dios River Basin. The region is often referred to as the Biodiversity Capital of Peru; however, it is an informal and illegal gold mining hotspot. In 2019 we aimed to comprehend the complex relationships between conservation practice and policy and the mining communities. As one of the outcomes, we developed the article Socio-environmental perceptions and barriers to conservation engagement among artisanal small-scale gold mining communities in Southeastern Peru which was published last year. A few months after, the call for applications for the 2022 Student Conference in Conservation Science (SCCS) in Cambridge was released. I applied and got selected to present a poster that summarizes the main findings of the paper.

The poster based on the above paper is centered in what people think about conservation and in what conditions would they engage in such initiatives. Our main finding shows that conservation locally can have different meanings apart from nature protection. Despite the recognition that conservation practices are needed to face mining impacts within the community, support for conservation diminishes when it is related to fencing, entrance prohibition, and profit-seeking nature activities only accessed by foreigners. These perceptions suggest that communities near protected areas were and are excluded from the governance process regarding conservation in the region.

During March 28-29, just before the Living Lab, I participated in engaging events that aimed to connect and build the capacity of students across the world by offering talks, workshops, and poster sessions. This year the conference was hybrid with more than 300 international delegates online and at Cambridge University. The poster presentations were events online that included presence in-person discussions with delegates at the venue. This was also my first time as a poster presenter at a conference. The experience was challenging but satisfactory as the attendants to my session were engaged with the topic and shared pieces of advice from their own research experiences. I could reflect afterwards that conservation in the Global South faces numerous challenges to balance nature protection, economic activities, and cultural practices. In my research case, gold mining poses a threat to the socio-ecological system but is the main economic support of the communities in the Madre de Dios basin and the entire region. 

The SSCC was a great network and learning experience on different efforts in conservation and the research methodologies implemented by master’s and Ph.D. students to approach conservation problematics around the world. It was noteworthy the interdisciplinarity of the events and cases presented, where social and cultural aspects are often considered key as the ecologic variables to assess the conservation conditions of vulnerable species. Moreover, during the conference, we could participate in different workshops led by experienced professors of the Zoology Faculty of Cambridge to improve our research skills.

Despite reflections about how conservation practices could impact communities were less present, I could highlight a very interesting PhD research regarding the political ecology of conservation by Trishant Simlai. He focusses on the social and cultural impacts in the Corbett Tiger Reserve of surveillance technologies in conservation like camara traps or drones. The decision of methodology to monitor species look harmless however it can disrupt people’s lives, especially when they are active users of the forest. Certainly, enabling further platforms for such research are needed towards accomplishing fair environmental conservation practices. Gladly, the sense of responsibility while researching and the motivation to contribute to conservation policy and action beyond academia was evident in assistants and posters, and lecture presenters.

In the last ten years, I’ve become increasingly interested in the topic of nature connection – how spending time in natural environments is good for our health and can inspire us to act in pro-environmental ways. So of course, I decided to focus my thesis on this subject! As part of my research and in the process of finding an internship to comply with the program’s requirements, I became a member of the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication (CEC). This commission has an initiative which I find very interesting, called Nature For All. The whole idea behind it is to inspire people to connect and ‘fall in love’ with nature, as this will likely lead them to act to protect it. As part of my collaboration with this initiative, with support from the co-chair of the Nature For All initiative, Cheryl Charles, and Yose Cormier, I wrote a toolkit on how to connect with nature in cities with a forest bathing approach. The toolkit can be accessed here. 

As a result of my contribution, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille, from September 3 to September 10, 2021. I was part of the team that worked in the Nature For All pavilion, called “Youth Oasis”. I also participated as a speaker in the session “Connecting with Nature in Urban Environments” together with Luis Camargo, founder and director of OpEPA (Organización para la Educación y Protección Ambiental), Shreya Utkarsh, from ICLEI Europe, and Stefania Romano, from ICLEI Africa. During this session, I presented a few of my main research findings and gave advice on how to use a forest bathing approach to help us connect with nature in urban areas. 

During the congress, I was able to attend fascinating sessions, panels and debates about sustainability topics. I was mostly interested in those dealing with climate policy, communication and the human connection to nature. Moreover, thanks to the IUCN Youth group, I had breakfast and an interesting conversation with the French Minister for Ecological Transition Barbara Pompili. I would like to highlight the Minister’s encouragement for young people to become involved in politics. As the Minister said, despite the fact that politics often don’t have the best reputation, they are a very powerful tool and arena for creating needed change.