Ocean Experts - Individuals

Vic serves as the Regional Director of ICLEI Southeast Asia. He brings more than three decades of professional experience working with local governments in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand on various urban development issues. He manages a team of experts and consultants within the Southeast Asia region--dealing with urban development issues focusing on environmental sustainability. Vic works directly with external support agencies and national governments to develop and deploy ICLEI's Pathways and advocacy in the region. During his career as a civil servant and as Regional Director, he has been involved in more than 30 international projects. Prior to joining ICLEI, he has worked with the City Government of Baguio as Project Development Officer and Development Management Officer in the local planning department, particularly working on urban planning focusing on environmental and socio-economic sustainability.

Areas of Expertise: Sustainable Development, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation, Institutional and Policy Development, International Cooperation, Project Development, Urban Planning and Law

Education: M.A. Public Administration; Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Science in Forestry

Dr. Natalie Degger has provided consultancy and technical services to networks of national departments, universities, science institutions and industrial partners involved in marine pollution monitoring and earth observational science. During her time with MERIT, Natalie was involved with the Global Artificial Mussel Watch Program and delivered training to environmental managers and scientists from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Before joining LME:Learn, Natalie worked at PEMSEA in 2015 on a one-year fellowship where she is involved in activities supporting the UNDP/GEF Scaling up SDS-SEA implementation project. She is also assisting with the GEF/World Bank Medium-sized Project on Applying Knowledge Management to Scale up Partnership Investments for Sustainable Development of Large Marine Ecosystems of East Asia and their Coasts.

Taufiq Alimi has excellent knowledge plus extensive exposure dealing with international organizations from World Bank to UNDP to oversee various projects conducted in Indonesia particularly related to environmental issues.

He is an environmental economist, a proven expert in cross-cultures communications as well as System Thinking For Organizations, and has helped numerous challenging projects such as The Asian Community Trust (1999 to 2005), besides serving LEAD Indonesia (1998 – 2004) as Program Director before shifting to managing Indonesia Eco-Labeling Institute as Executive Director since 2004-2009. He is prominent person in Indonesian forestry and is elected to be Executive Chair of National Forestry Council.

Taufiq studied Nuclear Engineering at the University of Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta and earned his engineering degree in 1993, he earned his second degree on Environmental Policy Studies in University Oberlin (1995), Ohio USA, and continued to studying Environmental Economics at the University of the Philippines, at Los Banos (1999).

Marine and Coastal Resources Programe Coordinator at IUCN – International Union for Conservation of Nature (Viet Nam Office). She graduated from Biology Department, Viet Nam National University in 1993 and Master of Science at the Department of System Ecology, Stockholm University, Sweden in 1997. Since October 1998 till now, she works for IUCN, Marine and Coastal Program from Project Support Officer to Program Officer and now she is the Coordinator to the Program. As Coordinator of the IUCN Vietnam Marine and Coastal Program, she coordinated all key activities under the programme that included: (1) Provision of technical and policy support to the implementation and development of Vietnam’s National System of Marine Protected Areas; 2) Support Viet Nam the development and implementation the Marine turtle Conservation Action Plan (MTCAP) (2004-2010) and update MTCAP for period 2016-2025 with its priorities activities that focuses on community based marine turtle conservations; (3) Provide technical assistance to strengthen the institutional capacity of the Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site Management Department; (4) Supported and coordinated the development and implementation ICM, MSP and Ridge to Reef in differences coastal provinces; and (5) From 2010 till 2016, coordinated Viet Nam Mangroves for the Future Initiative (MFF) with its priorities focus on Climate change adaptation following ecological system based approach, green growth. Consider coastal ecological system is nature infrastructure and the core element for coastal area resilience. Since 2018, coordinate Viet Nam’s Marine Plastic Pollution activities under the IUCN global initiative MarPlasticcs focus on Policy, Knowledge, Capacity and Businesses.