Louisa Wood is the Head of the Marine Assessment and Decision Support Programme at UNEP-WCMC. Louisa has a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of British Columbia and 9 years of experience working on a variety of marine conservation, fisheries, and marine protected area (MPA) projects, spanning a range of issues including: marine ecology; illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fisheries; capacity building; MPA monitoring, planning, and compliance; and spatial decision support. These projects have ranged in focus from local (Seychelles, Canada, UK) to global (IUU fisheries, MPAs). Louisa also has an MSc in Tropical Coastal Management from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, and a BA(Hons) in Zoology from the University of Cambridge, and has published numerous reports and peer-reviewed publications. She has been a Board Member of PacMARA since 2007, a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas since 2006, and recently joined the Steering Committee for the Global Islands Partnership (GLISPA).

Prior to working for UNEP-WCMC, Louisa worked for IUCN’s Global Marine Programme, in collaboration with Google and partners on the development of a global layer of MPAs for inclusion in ‘Oceans in Google Earth’. This is a product that cross-cuts the needs for better scientific information on MPAs and better communication to a global public to support more information about the value and importance of effective marine resource management and conservation. One of Louisa’s goals for the MADS Programme at WCMC is to embrace the role that new technologies and innovative research techniques can play in achieving greater understanding, planning, assessment, and management of biodiversity and human use of the ocean, and to integrate this knowledge with policies operating at multiple scales.