On 30 November, Dr. Rosina Bierbaum, the STAP Chair, announced, that Dr. Ngonidzashe Chirinda had been appointed as the new Panel Member for Climate Change Mitigation. Dr. Bierbaum said that “Dr. Chirinda will add considerably to STAP’s breadth and depth!”
Dr. Chirinda, a Zimbabwean national, is a climate change scientist and an Assistant Professor in Sustainable Tropical Agriculture at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco. He is also the Technical Coordinator of the Global Research Alliance’s Paddy Rice Americas Sub-group (GRA-PRASG); the founder and coordinator of the Latin America Climate Change Mitigation Network (LAMNET); and a member of the Agriculture Technical Working Group of the Climate Bonds Initiatives.
Dr. Chirinda’s research focuses on greenhouse gas emissions, uptake, monitoring, and modeling, identifying and evaluating climate change mitigation options, and assessing environmental policy implications, and has worked in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Dr. Chirinda is currently leading the establishment of a center of excellence to support research on climate change mitigation in Africa, focusing on the circular use of resources, agrivoltaic solutions, and the food, energy, and water nexus.
Previously, Dr. Chirinda conducted research at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Colombia; Aarhus University and the University of Copenhagen, in Denmark; and the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Zimbabwe. He is on the editorial board of Nature Scientific Report and Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.
Dr. Chirinda has a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Science and a master’s in Agronomy, both from the University of Zimbabwe, and a Ph.D. in Agroecology, from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
