ABOUT PHOEBE
​​Synopsis
I'm a lively, collaborative global change scientist with a long history of ecosystem science research, strategy, policy, planning, implementation and communications on three continents. I work on biodiversity, climate, land use and other global changes and the impacts they have on the natural and human worlds.
​
I was born and raised in the USA, but have lived, worked and studied in Canada, the UK, Namibia, Sweden, South Africa, and have run short courses in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.
Through the global coalitions and initiatives I found and lead,
I'm determined to shift the trajectory of humanity to a regenerative civilization - through strategic mindset shift, cultural and social change, and economic reform to a system that works so much better for both people and planet.
​
I'm a veteran public speaker, teacher, writer and strategist, and have written three books, numerous book chapters, and over 180 scientific and semi-popular papers.
Always interested in the future, the state of nature, and the ways to bring about societal change, I've worked at global, national, bioregional, and local scales - combining global understanding with fine-scale evidence and insights. My career so far has been spent mostly in southern Africa, working almost equally between government and academia, trying to underpin strategic planning and policy with scientific rigor.
I'm known as an active initiator, mentor and professor to young scientists across Africa and elsewhere, and as a team-builder, building consensus and resolving conflicts in the arenas of biodiversity, climate change and earth observation systems to community action, citizen science, sustainability and urban ecological connectivity.
​
At the start of my career, I was a student of behavioral ecology in the '80s, switched to conservation biology in the '90s after my PhD, and added global change biology and environmental futures in the 2010s. I have founded and led programs in environmental research, science/policy and strategic planning in academia, governments, international organizations and nonprofits.
​
I feel incredibly lucky to have been asked to join outstanding teams and departments wherever I've gone, and to balance an energetic and productive academic career with salaried posts in government, international organizations, and nonprofits.
​
My work can be divided into southern African (1983-2016) and North American work (2017- present) with a year's spell in Europe for my PhD in Uppsala, Sweden in 1993-94.
North America
​
In terms of my roles - I'm currently:
-
Affiliate full Professor at the University of Washington (2017 to present)
-
Co-founder / co-convenor of the Global Restoration Collaborative (2023 to present)
-
Advisor / Co-founder / founding CEO of the Stable Planet Alliance (2021 to present, CEO 2021-2023)
-
Senior Fellow of the Global Evergreening Alliance (2023 to present)
-
Core team member of the Ecological Civilization Coalition (2023 to present)
-
Member, Club of Rome's Planetary Emergency Partnership (2023 to present)
-
Vision Council member of the Global Earth Repair Convergence and Festival (2024 to present)
-
Research Associate of both the
-
Centre of Excellence at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology (since 2005) and the
-
African Climate and Development Initiative (since 2011), both at the University of Cape Town.
-
I was Chief Science and Policy Officer of the Conservation Biology Institute (2018-2021), and remain its Associate Science, Policy & Communications Strategist.
​
Through my company "Biodiversity Strategy," I also supported the work of the IUCN Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group via the Center for Large Landscape Conservation (2018) on matters of global ecological connectivity, marine conservation and evidence-based decision-making.
​
Prior to that, I led the tiny Pacific Biodiversity Institute (PBI) through a challenging period (2017-2018) after the retirement and financial mismanagement of its founder. The board and I took the decision to fold the institute and restructure its programs, staff and long-term datasets into three bigger, better-resourced organizations for stronger conservation impact and growth.
​
Southern Africa (Namibia, South Africa)
​​
For the first 34 years of my professional career, I worked in southern Africa, a time of incredible opportunity and privilege to impact two countries at pivotal stages of their own histories:
I founded, developed and led Namibia’s first national biodiversity (1994-2003) and climate change programs (1999), and was awarded globally with the Society for Conservation Biology's Distinguished Service Award in 2002, the same year that Sir David Attenborough and Dame Prof. Georgina Mace won the same award in different categories.
I was also hugely privileged to trained young undergraduate professionals at the University of the Witwatersrand (1987-88), University of Namibia (1988-91) and University of Cape Town (2007-2016). I supervised BSc Hons, MSc and PhD students and postdoctoral fellows through 2023 (my most recent PhD student). Part of this work was on climate and land use change vulnerability, risk forecasting and hindcasting, and climate migration, and part was on developing biodiversity early warning systems as a citizen science-fueled instrument to support wise planning, policy, implementation and management. See booklets above, the Biodiversity Early Warning Systems website, and scholarly papers for more info.
I was appointed an honorary research associate of the University of Cape Town's Centre of Excellence at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology in 2005, and its African Climate and Development Initiative in 2011, leading international reseach programs, supervising graduate students and postdocs, and developing and teaching the climate change module of its highly ranked MSc program in conservation biology. I remain an associate of both institutes.
I also worked as the Global Invasive Species Program's scientific and technological coordinator (2003-2005), raising GISP's technical and scientific profile in the international policy space. GISP was a project of the World Bank, CABI, IUCN, SCOPE, SANBI, TNC and the International Oceans Institute.
I then moved to the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) as Principal Scientist (2005-2014), then Lead Scientist (2014-2016) of Climate Change Adaptation and its founding Head of Biodiversity Futures (2015-16). During this time, I co-led with Prof Emeritus Brian Huntley a productive and collaborative team between SANBI, the University of Cape Town, Durham, Cambridge, Stellenbosch and other European and African universities.
In 2016 for financial and family reasons I decided to return to the USA, after 38 years in Canada (1979-83) and southern Africa (1983-2016). Obama was president. What could possibly go wrong...?
​
Europe
​
A third of the way through my African career (1993-94), and armed with a Fulbright Fellowship and a resounding welcome from Uppsala University's Animal Ecology Division, I spent 10 months in Sweden and Norway finishing my PhD in evolutionary behavioral ecology. Uppsala was then ranked #3 in the world in this field and I was privileged to work with the legendary professors Staffan Ulfstrand, Anders Pape Møller, Malte Andersson (my examiner), and many others.
​
I'd also been offered D Phil places by both Nick Davies at Cambridge and John Krebs at Oxford, at the time the #1 and #2 universities in that field, but couldn't raise the cash. Uppsala was my family at the center of the academic universe. ​​
​
And final miscellany...
I've also served, among other roles, as course coordinator and core lecturer for the Tropical Biology Association (1995, Uganda and 2014, Tanzania), board and executive committee member of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2002-2005), Honorary President of BirdLife South Africa (2013-2016), External Examiner at the University of Jos (2014) and academic program reviewer at the University of Zurich (2015-2019). ​
Award-wise, I've received a Fulbright Full Doctoral Scholarship (1993), the Distinguished Service Award (government category) of the Society for Conservation Biology (2002) for team-building in national biodiversity planning in Namibia, and the Esther Forbes Distinguished Professional Achievement Award (2019) from Bancroft School for my work in environmental wellbeing, evolution, ecology and societal futures.
I have BSc (Hons), MSc and PhD degrees in biology, zoology, behavioral and evolutionary ecology from Acadia, Witwatersrand and Uppsala universities respectively.
​
See my CV / Resume above and the page Videos & interviews if you still want more! More about my media and storytelling work is on the page Conservation writing and filmmaking.
​
In my spare time, I run and hikes trails, climb erupting volcanoes, am a community volunteer, explore and travel with my groovy filmmaker husband, and read history, economics, politics and catastrophe books to make sense of this bizarre crossroad in history. More about us as a family is below.
I've argued that just as society needs early warning systems for tsunamis, disease outbreaks, or economic shocks, we need early-warning systems for biodiversity. South Africa's successful early warning system applies citizen science and professional science to the policy, planning and management needs of tracking environmental change in southern Africa. Download these booklets by clicking on the cover thumbnails. After a year of public and agency stakeholder consultations, we also developed an incipient system based on South Africa's successes for implementation in the western USA and Canada (see here), and investigated possibilities for a national early warning system for biodiversity and natural hazards in Rwanda.
EDUCATION
PhD in animal ecology, 1993-94 - Uppsala University, Sweden
Ornament and body size variation in some African passerine birds (published as a booklet, ISBN 91-554-3255-7, and four papers)
MSc in zoology, 1984-90 - University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (part time amid lecturing and giving birth)
Comparative mating systems and reproductive ecology of the African whydahs, Vidua (published as 7 refereed and 4 unrefereed papers, awarded with distinction)
BSc (Honours) 1979-1983 - Acadia University, Canada
Foraging behaviour and energetics of northern harriers, Circus cyaneus (published as five refereed and four oral papers, awarded with distinction of 'grade A')
Independent non-degree postgraduate research
​
The foraging ecology and energetics of three African raptors in a montane grassland, 1983-1984, Drakensberg escarpment, South Africa
A seven-month independent study of foraging energetics and habitat use of three birds of prey (published as two refereed and one unrefereed papers, and an oral paper on habitat use and fire management at a symposium organized to assist countries in developing conservation policy)
Population ecology and reproductive failure in American kestrels, Falco sparverius, 1982, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, USA
A four-month research and public education internship, in which I studied mortality in a population of American kestrels Falco sparverius, later leading to a refereed short chapter in an international technical book. Academic credit (grade A) was granted by Acadia University. I was also a public environmental educator there.
​
See my Publications page for more detail of these and other studies.
RESEARCH and POLICY INTERESTS
ORCID no: 0000-0002-6886-7036
'Half for Nature' and ecological connectivity
​
In 2018, I spent some months supporting the Center for Large Landscape Conservation as senior consultant to assist with the global policy framework for increasing ecological connectivity, in support of the IUCN's Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group. This is an extension of my longterm passion for helping as many species as possible survive in rapidly urbanizing, transforming landscapes and seascapes, and for getting species through the gauntlet of the next few hundred years.
Biodiversity early warning systems
​
We think we know how the world is changing, but the reality always surprises us. Too many species are declining, while others are spreading and shifting, and habitats are being degraded (and sometimes restored) functionally and structurally. In October 2018, I joined the leadership team of the Conservation Biology Institute to take the former Pacific Biodiversity Institute's 'biodiversity early warning systems' program forward in the Cascadia Region and California, with the aim of adapting and scaling it up for other developing countries from the base of a very much stronger institute. I'd led a team developing an early warning concept and system in South Africa, with a simple precursor in Namibia. - See here and above booklets.
Biodiversity futures in Africa
In late 2015 and 2016, I started SANBI's Biodiversity Futures Program to help anticipate societal curve-balls of the next 20-100 years which may blow our best-laid plans for biodiversity and ecosystems out of the water.
​
Our first focus (2016-2019) was the impact of Chinese and other foreign direct investments (FDIs) in large-scale infrastructure on African biodiversity intactness, ecosystem services and processes.
​
Having formally 'retired' from SANBI in late 2016 to lead the Pacific Biodiversity Institute, I now co-supervise PhD student Lavinia Perumal on infrastructure and biodiversity impacts with Professor Mark New of the University of Cape Town's African Climate and Development Initiative. We've worked on biodiversity futures with South African and international partners and collaborators, especially the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) outside Vienna.
Species vulnerability and adaptation to climate change and land use change
​
From 2005-2016 at SANBI, I initiated and led 3 joint SANBI-UCT research programs on species vulnerability and adaptation to climate- and land use change (see also CV and publications):
​
Fynbos endemics on the edge
This project, which ended in late 2016, looked at how endemic birds of the fynbos, a globally outstanding biodiversity hotspot in South Africa, respond to the compound pressures of climate change and urbanization. We used the lenses of forecasting and hindcasting climate models, fire ecology, epidemiology, behaviour, micro-climate and habitat affinities, and conservation status assessment.
Postdoc Alan T.K. Lee and a number of PhD, MSc and BSc (Hons) students have played important roles in this work, as have wonderful collaborators and partners in the UK, Australia and South Africa. For more info, see my FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology program page.
Gondwana Edges Project
I've sought funding to expand our South African endemics global change vulnerability work to other Gondwana countries (Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand) to see how endemic and non-endemic birds, invertebrates, trees and other groups on the southern and western edges of continents are faring under climate and land use change. This project is currently on hold as I've relocated to the USA.
​
Intra-African Migration Program
Postdoc fellow in my team, Dr Samuel Temidayo ("Dayo") Osinubi leads a UCT program on one of the deepest mysteries of African ornithology - intra-African migrant bird species. Where do birds migrating only within the continent actually go at different times of their life cycle? How do they adjust to land transformation and climate change? The work currently focuses on kingfishers and cuckoos, and we seek funds for isotope markers and satellite transmitters to expand to other migrants, and to supplement bird ringing data, in association with researchers from Sweden, the UK, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. For more info, see Dayo's FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology page.
FAMILY
In the last decade we've lived between Cape Town, London, Boulder and the Pacific Northwest USA. My talented filmmaker and media specialist husband John Bowey has commuted between the USA, South Africa, the Middle East, and Europe with his company Transmediavision USA. Together, we make documentary films on big societal and environmental issues like The Climate Restorers and My Otherland.
Our offspring - Cat Simmons, Julia Simmons, Savannah Bowey and Matt Bowey and their partners -- are shaping their lives and careers in the USA and UK. They are all talented, pithy, funny human beings.
