Sara Scherr

Biography

Dr. Sara J. Scherr, an agricultural and resource economist, is a prominent voice globally in promoting restoration of degraded lands. She founded the non-profit EcoAgriculture Partners in 2002 to promote locally-led transformation of agricultural landscapes for food security, rural livelihoods and ecosystem services. A leading innovator in agricultural landscape analysis, planning, policy, and finance she has supported landscape partnerships in Africa, Latin America, Asia and U.S.; and advised landscape programs world-wide. In 2011 she co-founded the global network ‘Landscapes for People, Food and Nature’, and in 2019 launched a global collaborative--1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People--to accelerate landscape regeneration around the world. Dr. Scherr serves on the boards of Bioversity International-USA and Solutions from the Land, and other advisory and editorial boards. Her research is widely published in scientific and policy literatures. She previously served as Director of Ecosystem Services at the non-profit Forest Trends, senior researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), adjunct professor at Univ. of Maryland, and principal researcher and later Board member of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). She served on the Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force to develop strategies to halve the incidence of hunger worldwide.