Avital Li

Seminar: Linking biodiversity with inclusive development to achieve the 2030 Agenda

Avital is a young researcher passionate about promoting equity in environmental discourse. In her current position at the Environmental Law Institute, she works on a variety of different projects, including conducting research on the integration of wetlands management approaches into state hazard mitigation planning and coordinating the work of the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement. Before beginning her current position, she spent two years working alongside a Ngöbe-Buglé community in Panama, conducting research and undertaking advocacy work concerning issues of natural resource management, extractive development and tenure rights in partnership with the Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives. During this time, she earned her Joint BA and BSc in Sustainability, Science and Society from McGill University, where her thesis consisted of an in-depth case study based on the field work she conducted in Panama. As an undergraduate student at McGill, she co-led research on water quality, access, and use in a rural Kichwa community in Napo, Ecuador while interning with a local non-profit focused on enhancing sustainable livelihoods for smallholder farmers. She is fascinated by novel collaborative approaches to water systems research and plans to pursue a career at the nexus of social justice and ecosystem-based adaptation.