World Agroforestry Centre
Senior Science Policy Advisor
Speaker at the Breakout Session 1C FOR A CLIMATE-RESILIENT FUTURE
Wednesday, 28 September, 9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
Patrick Worms, a molecular geneticist, represents the world’s premier research institution devoted to the study of the roles of trees in agricultural landcapes to policy makers in Brussels and elsewhere in Europe: the World Agroforestry Centre. Active since the 1970s, the Centre has reported on the astonishing benefits of multicrop agriculture involving trees in thousands of peer-reviewed publications. Headquartered in Nairobi and active across the tropics, the Centre is best known for its work in Africa’s drylands, where agroforestry is leading to a revolution in farming productivity.
Patrick has been active at the science-policy interface since the late 1980s, with a start teaching biology in the Hindu Kush. As a young European official, he pioneered a new way of using communications to deal with the environmental legacy of communism across the former Soviet Union before leaving for the private sector and engaging with the disastrous environmental legacy of China’s Great Leap forward.
Later, he helped commercialise ESA’s assets on the International Space Station, consulted for a range of international organisations and Fortune 500 companies, and managed the Georgian government’s international media relations during Russia’s 2008 invasion.
Patrick received bachelors and masters degrees from Cambridge University. A French-speaking German citizen, he is the happily married father of four children.