Diana works as a freelance sustainable tourism consultant for various stakeholders, such as the Institut de la Francophonie pour le Développement Durable (IFDD) and is a team member of the Berlin-based consultancy mascontour GmbH as well as an official trainer of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Tourism (GSTC).
She has been involved in projects regarding sustainable tourism planning, management, PR and marketing, capacity development and policy advisory.
Diana was based in Seychelles for several years where she co-founded the Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Foundation (SSTF) a platform that works towards a structured and holistic approach for sustainable tourism in Seychelles, connecting relevant stakeholders.
Currently, she is supporting the LT&C-Example Chumbe Island Coral Park in Zanzibar. Her background is in Tourism Management (BA, IMC University of Sciences Krems and MSc, Skema Business School France).
During his career, Michael was always driven to find solutions to one question: How to make destinations, especially protected areas more sustainable?
Coming from the tourism sector, he first worked in the hotel industry and later as a tour guide and product developer for Wikinger Reisen GmbH in Canada, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Georgia. He helped to establish the branch office and network of the European Centre for Eco-Agro Tourism (ECEAT) in Germany supporting eco-farmers in developing and marketing offers on Holidays on Farms.
Early in Michael’s career, he realised that it is important making an effort to influence policymakers to put the right frameworks to sustainable tourism. Together with the NGO Ecological Tourism in Europe (ETE), he contributed to the drafting, negotiating and finally adopting of the International Guidelines for Biodiversity and Tourism Development for the Convention on Biological Diversity with its 192 member states.
Since Michael is working continuously in Central Europe for about 25 years, a logical step forward was to support the Framework Convention for the Protection and Sustainable Development of the Carpathians through ETE. He gave advice to its 7 member states and a wide range of stakeholders to elaborate and adopt the Protocol on Sustainable Tourism and later on facilitated the process to elaborate and adopt the Strategy for Sustainable Tourism Development of the Carpathians.
In parallel to this policy work, he focuses intensively at the local level, managing and implementing projects on sustainable tourism development, with special emphasis on capacity building of stakeholders and touristic product development in and around protected areas. Michael’s work brought him to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Serbia, Georgia and especially Slovakia where he is working for the last 23 years, almost without interruption. His work also took him to Indonesia and Thailand where he worked 8 years for the UNWTO on the same topic.
Greg Bakunzi is a resident of Musanze, Rwanda, home to the iconic mountain gorillas. Greg has more than a decade of experience in tourism and conservation.
His professionalism and reliability, along with his exceptional understanding of the needs and desires of international visitors, have gained him renown and respect among the members of local communities who benefited from his tourism social enterprise, Red Rocks Intercultural Centre, and his non-profit organization, Red Rocks Initiative for Sustainable Development.
Both organizations bring the under-served communities residing near the Volcanoes National Park into the tourism supply chain and support community development projects that help people help themselves through their environmental conservation and cultural tourism projects. His works with communities around the Volcanoes National Park showcase the potential of community-based tourism activities to promote the local community access to reach international tourists with their handicraft products, cultural activities, and environmental programs which have positive biodiversity long-term impacts on the community and the environment. He partners with local people, environmental protection, and sustainable development organizations to support training, capacity building, nature conservation, and promoting good practice.
Currently, Denise owns an environmental consulting company and is the President and CEO of Friends of South Georgia Island and is also a Trustee for the Scottish charity, South Georgia Heritage Trust. Both Sub-Antarctic South Georgia organizations are actively involved in overseeing a highly respected habitat restoration project to rid South Georgia of rodents in order to restore the bird population back to its original numbers.
She is also on the Board of Governors for the American Polar Society. Denise has a Bachelor of Science in Field Natural History and Wildlife Biology from Michigan State University.
She previously served as the executive director of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO). She coordinated the activities through a multitude of techniques including an interactive web-based process of over 100 travel companies from 15 countries, compiled environmental assessments and coordinated permits and documentation for ship visits to the Antarctic. As a result of her many years of work within the industry she was awarded by the US government a glacier named in her honour, located in the Antarctic Peninsula-the “Landau Glacier”.
Prior to her leadership role with IAATO, she worked as a Director of Operations and Field Operations and as an Environmental Consultant, Expedition Leader, Naturalist, Lecturer, Cruise Director and zodiac driver for several other companies within the tourism industry on board ship and land-based tour operators.
Graduate in Tropical and Subtropical Agricultural Sciences in the University of Florence, Italy. He has 25 years experience – of which 15 in the field – in ecosystem monitoring, management and conservation. Sergio’s specialization is soil amelioration and afforestation of impacted areas.
Among others, he is expanding his knowledge and interest in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Integrated Coastal Zone Management, remote sensing techniques for biodiversity monitoring, ecosystem management and wildlife accounting. Sergio gathered specific experience in relation to protected area work in the Niger Delta/ Nigeria, the Congo River Basin/ Congo Republic, the Ural Delta and the Caspian Sea/ Kazakhstan.
Harald Förster is CEO of the Schutzstation Wattenmeer, a German NGO combining nature conservation and tourism in the Waddensea world heritage site of Schleswig-Holstein. With more than 120 employees and volunteers they specialise in environmental monitoring and run more than 8000 guided tours in the waddensea.
With a MSc in Forestry and Wildife Management and a special interest on large carnivore conservation, Harald and his wife Birgit worked 11 years in Namibia as directors of a NGO implementing wildlife management systems on commercial farmland.
Oliver Hillel is Programme Officer at the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, responsible for the engagement of States, Regions and cities in the work of the Convention, and for the mainstreaming of biodiversity and its services into economic sectors and development, including technological innovation.
A biologist with a master’s Degree in Environmental Education and MBAs on Managerial Accounting and Hotel Management, Oliver has over 25 years’ experience on international cooperation and negotiations on sustainable tourism, event organization, and training and capacity building programs across many themes and issues related to sustainable development. Before the UN, he worked in the private sector, in trade organizations, in NGOs and as a teacher and consultant.
Peter Prokosch founded LT&C in 2014, together with Ottar Nakken, and served as Chair of the Board until 2022. Prior to 2014, Peter was for 8 years the managing director of GRID-Arendal, a centre collaborating with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), located in Norway. From 2002 to 2006 he was CEO of WWF-Germany in Frankfurt. He developed and led the Arctic Programme of WWF International from Oslo in the 1990s. In the 1970s and 80s Peter played a pioneering role in the conservation development of the International Wadden Sea and became Head of the WWF Wadden Sea project and office in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
As a researcher at the University of Kiel, Peter studied biology and marine sciences. His PhD thesis focused on the ecology of arctic shore birds.
Peter has extensive experience working with the establishment and development of national parks in the Wadden Sea, the Baltic coast of Germany, Svalbard and Iceland as well as in nature reserves in Siberia and other parts of the circumpolar Arctic, often in close cooperation with tourism.
Anne is a sustainable tourism specialist with a Bachelor of Business Administration in tourism management. She specialized in community based-tourism in Thailand and has experience in entrepreneurship and business development. She co-founded a start up related to sustainable tourism in Qatar and supported the development of another. She held a number of roles in Eco Tourism, Sports Management, Coaching, International Trade Relations and Tourism Policy in Germany and Qatar.
Currently she focuses on consulting a community-based tourism organization in Sweden and is an activist in the transition town movement. Among others, she is expanding her knowledge in sustainable farming methods such as Agroforestry.
Nina has studied International Tourism Management and Consultancy and obtained a MSc in Ecotourism. She has been LT&C’s first Intern in 2019, during which she has updated the website, was heavily involved in the Communications Group and has supported Peter on day-to-day tasks.
After her internship, she started working as a freelancer in sustainable tourism and, together with Michael, consulted on several projects in Europe.
Currently, her interests lie within the border of ecotourism and nature protection as she applies her expertise in communication, research and consultancy to close the gap between nature and people.
Emma is a communication adviser with more than 15 years of experience in different sectors, including not-for-profit, government, energy, and banking.
She has lived and worked in the UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand. Most recently, she was a communications manager at an environmental foundation in Ibiza.
Having explored many countries, Emma is now focusing on sustainable and regenerative tourism and is especially interested in nature experiences for people with disabilities.
Emma lives in Norway and has a bachelor’s degree in history and politics.
© Linking Tourism & Conservation (LT&C) 2019
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