Rosa Amboage, Ph.D.

Rosa Amboage is an environmental economist with 10 years of experience expanding markets for nature-based solutions (NbS) to achieve climate, economic and social progress. Working across academic, private, and public sectors, her expertise includes land use policy, NbS, environmental markets, green finance, and natural resource management.

Amboage contributed to the UK’s post-Brexit agri-environmental policies and designed its first national scheme promoting a natural capital approach to economic and climate goals. Before Abt, she was the lead economist of the £640M GBP ($740M USD) Nature for Climate Fund, a national program to help industries and communities realize net-zero ambitions.

As senior advisor of climate and environment for Abt Britain, Amboage leads on the design and delivery of programmes in NbS, adaptation and climate resilience sectors, tackling the triple challenge of climate, nature, and economic development. She also contributes expertise and thought leadership to products on Blue and Green Economy for climate adaptation.

At the Nature for Climate Fund, Amboage designed policies and incentives for nature-based solutions. She created the first national agri-environmental scheme to support a natural capital approach. Her plan promoted the public benefits of afforestation (including biodiversity, flood regulation, water and air quality, recreational access, and other social gains). She also integrated environmental markets and standards—such as voluntary carbon and biodiversity markets—into nature-based incentives and explored potential new financial and fiscal mechanisms to blend private and public green finance.

Internationally, Amboage has worked as an environmental carbon analyst to develop a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation program in Guatemala. In the Colombian Caribbean, she evaluated how extreme weather events impact communities’ climate response and resilience. Across Europe, she informed the design of maximum-sustainable-yield indicators across European fishing stocks and, in Northern Spain, she assessed the demand for new agricultural crop insurance products for small producers.

Expertise:

• Environmental markets
• Land use policy
• Climate finance
• Agriculture and forestry
• Adaptation, resilience and livelihoods

Publications:

• O’Brien, L., Karlsdóttir, B., Ambrose-Oji, B., Urquhart, J., Edwards, D., Amboage, R. and Jones, G., 2021. How Can Local and Regional Knowledge Networks Contribute to Landscape Level Action for Tree Health?. Forests, 12(10), p.1394.
• Touza, J., Lacambra, C., Kiss, A., Amboage, R.M., Sierra, P., Solan, M., Godbold, J.A., Spencer, T. and White, P.C., 2021. Coping and Adaptation in Response to Environmental and Climatic Stressors in Caribbean Coastal Communities. Environmental Management, 68(4), pp.505-521.
• Understanding land managers' behaviours for tree health policy options (2019). Report to Defra submitted by Forest Research, Fera, Sylva Foundation, CCRI, ADAS.
• Mato‐Amboage, R., Pitchford, J.W. and Touza, J., 2018. Public–Private Partnerships for Biosecurity: An Opportunity for Risk Sharing. Journal of Agricultural Economics. https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-9552.12315
• Nielsen, J. R., Thunberg, E., Holland, D. S., Schmidt, J. O., Fulton, E. A., Bastardie, F., Mato-Amboage, R., and Bethke, E. (2018). Integrated ecological–economic fisheries models—Evaluation, review and challenges for implementation. Fish and Fisheries, 19(1), 1-29.