Eva Garen

Dr. Eva Garen has spent 25 years working on the socio-cultural and political aspects of conservation and development in the tropics. Prior to becoming the Director of Yale's Environmental Leadership & Training Initiative (ELTI) in 2012, Dr. Garen was a technical advisor on the social aspects of REDD+ with Conservation International's Science and Knowledge Division. She also worked social safeguards and REDD+ as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow with USAID’s Forestry and Biodiversity Teams in Washington D.C. For her postdoctoral research in Panama with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Dr. Garen analyzed how and why cattle ranchers and smallholder farmers plant and protect native trees and forests on their land and how these traditional practices could catalyze land restoration in the region. Dr. Garen completed her M.E.S. and Ph.D. at the Yale School of the Environment, with a concentration in social and political ecology.