Elena Ojea Fernández-Colmeiro
🇪🇸 | University of Vigo – Spain

Full name : Elena Ojea Fernández-Colmeiro

Gender : Female

Work location : University of Vigo

Academic background :

Elena Ojea is a senior researcher at the University of Vigo currently leading the Future Oceans Lab, a group launched with an Starting Grant from the European Research Council. Elena holds an undergrad in Environmental Sciences and a PhD in Economics, and has experience as a post-doc and research fellow at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3). She was a visiting researcher at the Bren School for Environmental Science and Policy (USA) during 2013, continuing visiting over the following years to work with the sustainable fisheries group  together with experts from UCSB on the set of solutions for sustainable fishery management in many systems that are implemented around the world. Her research evolves around the long term sustainability of natural resources and livelihoods, with a focus nowadays on marine  systems and adaptation to climate change. Elena was recently nominated as Leading Author to contribute to the next IPCC Assessment Report (6AR) in WGII, Oceans chapter.

Current position held:

Associated researcher University of Vigo under the Oportunius program.

Field of research: climate change adaptation.

Research interests/topics: fisheries sustainability, marine livelihoods, ecosystem services.

Research projects (Some of the most important you were involved in):

● CLOCK: Climate Adaptation to Shifting Stocks. ERC 2015 Starting Grant. European Research Council. Principal investigator, October 2016-2020. Role: Principal Investigator.
● ECOMAR – Valuation and Monitoring of Marine and Coastal Ecosystem Services in Iberoamerican countries, CYTED network project, January 2017 – January 2020. Role: project researcher.
● CocoNET: Towards COast to COast NETworks of marine protected areas (from the shore to the high and deep sea), coupled with sea-based wind energy potential. FP7-OCEAN-2011. 48 months, starting January 2012. Role: responsible for coordinating  3 tasks in WP6, including 2 virtual workshops.
● PERSEUS: Policy-oriented marine Environmental Research for the Southern European Seas. FP7-OCEAN-2011-3. 48 months, starting January 2012.  Role: Research Team

Scientific articles/conferences (links, pdfs…):

Published over 20 articles, here the most recent:

● Hossain, Mostafa A.R., Munir Ahmed, Elena Ojea, Jose A. Fernandes. 2018. Impacts and responses to environmental change in coastal livelihoods of south-west Bangladesh. Science of the Total Environment, 637-638, 954–970.

● Laetitia Pettinotti, Amaia de Ayala, Elena Ojea. (2018). Benefits From Water Related Ecosystem Services in Africa and Climate Change. Ecological Economics, 149, 294-305.

● Luis Outeiro, Elena Ojea, João Garcia Rodrigues, Himes-Cornell, A., Belgrano, A., Liu, Y., Edna Cabecina, Cristina Pita, Gonzalo Macho and Sebastin Villasante. 2017. The role of non-natural capital in the co-production of marine ecosystem servicesand resilience to climate change. International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management, 13(3): 35-50.

● Elena Ojea, Isaac Pearlman, Steve D. Gaines, Sarah E. Lester, 2017. Fisheries regulatory regimes and resilience to climate change. Ambio, 1-14.

● Marta Pascual Altares, Marisa Rossetto, Elena Ojea, Nataliya Milchakova, Sylvaine. 2016. Socioeconomic impacts of marine protected areas in the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Ocean & Coastal Management 133, 1–10.

● Elena Ojea, Maria L. Loureiro, Maria Alló and Melina Barrio, 2016. Ecosystem services and REDD: estimating the benefits of non-carbon services in worldwide forests. World Development 78, 246-261.

● Elena Ojea, Challenges for mainstreaming Ecosystem-based Adaptation into the international climate agenda, 2015. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 14, 41-48.

Several book chapters, including: 

● Pascual, U., Garmendia, E., Phelps, J., & Ojea, E. 2018. Opportunities and Conditions for Successful Foreign Aid to the Forestry Sector. In Aid Effectiveness for Environmental Sustainability (pp. 257-305). Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

● Garmendia, Maialen, Anil Markandya. Elena Ojea, Marta Pascual, 2016. Operationalizing the ecosystem approach to resolve mismatches in ocean governance In: Handbook on the economics and management of sustainable oceans. Edited by Paulo A.L.D. Nunes, Lisa Emelia Svensson and Anil Markandya. Edward Elgar Publishing.

● Ojea, Elena, Marta Pascual, David March, Isabella Bitetto, Paco Melià, Margaretha Breil, Joachim Claudet, Anil Markandya. Forthcoming. Socioeconomic Impacts of Networks of Marine Protected Areas. In: Management of Marine Protected Areas. A Network Perspective from the Mediterranean and Black Seas, 118:145. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., New York.

More than 20 presentations in conferences, including: 

●  ECCWO18 – Fourth International ICES/PICES/IOC/FAO Symposium. The effects of climate change on the world’s oceans. 4–8 June 2018, Washington D.C., USA.

● IMPAC4 – 4th International Marine Protected Areas Congress. The role of marine reserves in fisheries adaptation to climate change. La Serena-Coquimbo (Chile), September 2017.

● IORC Barcelona, 2^nd International Ocean Research Conference (UNESCO). Ojea, E., Pearlman, I., Gaines, S. and S. Lester. Fisheries management and resilience to climate change:  building a socio-ecological approach. Barcelona, 17-21 November 2014.

● 5th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics (WCERE). Ojea, Elena. Forests in REDD+: estimating non-carbon benefits from forest ecosystem services. Istanbul, June 2014.

Network activities: involved in ICES Working groups, ECOMAR network, collaboration with CSIRO (Australia), UCSB (US), AZTI (Spain), BC3 (Spain), SRC (Sweden), IPCC.

Dockside :

Your involvement in Dockside: researchers team at University of Vigo.

What is DOCKSIDE for you: is a great opportunity to learn from European and Cambodian partners and establish links and collaborations with them for future research.