Nella Canales

Nella is a Research Fellow in SEI’s Rights and Equity Team in SEI Headquarters (Sweden). Nella has been working with climate change issues since 2004 and have been a researcher since 2012. Currently, her research is focused on natural resources governance and equity, including in climate adaptation processes.

Nella has carried out research in diverse socio-political contexts in different countries in Latin America and East Africa. She had held research positions with SEI Latin America (Colombia), where she established and led the Bioeconomy research line; and the Overseas Development Institute (United Kingdom), where her research focused on the governance of climate finance for adaptation.

Nella’s research is also influenced by her previous experience as a development practitioner on climate change issues in Peru, where she worked on climate change adaptation with CARE International, and the clean development mechanism with the National Environmental Fund (FONAM). During this time, she also advocated for the rights of the most vulnerable as part of the Adaptation Technical Committee of the National Commission on Climate Change.

Nella currently leads research and collaborations with various academic partners within Sweden and in other countries. Within SEI, she currently leads the strategic investment of the Team, exploring the impacts of green transitions on indigenous populations’ access to natural resources. Nella is also involved in research on risk ownership for transboundary climate risk with the TransAdapt project, funded by Noradapt, to analyze how risk in one country can impact another one even if they are geographically far away. In the project Partnership for Anthropocene Solutions, funded by Formas, Nella is researching how multistakeholder groups in Sweden define climate responsibility and how do they identify solutions to comply with such definition.

Nella has also been a member of the Technical Team of the Climate Finance Group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC) since 2014, contributing to climate adaptation finance discussions.

Nella holds an MSc in Climate and Development from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the University of Sussex, and a BSc in Economics from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.