Lulseged Desta

Lulseged Tamene Desta is a Landscape Ecologist with over 15 years of experience in land degradation, spatial prioritization, landscape restoration, sustainable land and water management, ecological intensification, and assessing the performance of ecosystem health. He is interested in socio-ecological process understanding, tipping points, thresholds, analysis of tradeoffs and synergies between system components and interventions. He promotes coupling integrated land management (conservation) and sustainable farming (intensification) objectives to promote synergies and manage tradeoffs.

Earlier in his career, he served as a lecturer at the Mekelle University of Ethiopia teaching Geography, Agroclimatology, Land Use Planning, Geographical Information Systems, and Remote Sensing courses. During his Postdoctoral tenure with the University of Bonn (Center for Development Research, ZEF), he worked in West Africa contributing to the GLOWA Volta project associated with optimizing land use and water management options across space and over time.

After joining the Alliance, Lulseged coordinated various projects such as the Africa Soil Information Service in the Southern Africa region, served as the Dryland Systems CGIAR Research Program (CRP) focal point and contributed to the implementation of the Water, Land and Ecosystems CRP. Currently, he is leading one of the Excellence in Agronomy Initiative Use Cases in Ethiopia and is coordinating the Alliance engagements associated with the Sustainable Intensification of Mixed Farming Systems Initiative.

He is also supporting implementation of Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa, Supporting Soil Health Initiatives in Ethiopia, and many other projects. It is worth mentioning the role played in creating and coordinating a team of over 150 experts willing to support data sharing and/or facilitate the process. This effort led to the development of location-specific, tailored and season-smart fertilizer recommendation tool in Ethiopia, which can be scaled to other regions and countries. Presently, he is the Country Representative for the Alliance in Ethiopia.

Lulseged has acquired BA Degree in Geography from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), MSc Degree in Applied Remote Sensing from Cranfield University (UK) and PhD Degree in Landscape Ecology from the Center for Development Research (Germany).