Maria del Mar Esponda

Maria del Mar Esponda is an agricultural engineer graduated from Universidad del Valle in Colombia with expertise in agricultural modeling, spatial analysis, data analysis, and social networks in R. She has nearly two years of experience working for the Alliance in the PISA-FAE area, where she has developed impact evaluation projects for cassava scientific production by analyzing social networks and identifying key actors with greater influence within the global scientific network.

She has also worked on cocoa cultivation in Colombia to promote fair and sustainable working conditions in agriculture. She has collaborated in the socialization of projects at the national level, highlighting and promoting the adoption of various CGIAR outputs related to climate change. In addition, she has studied the main initiatives developed by CGIAR, evaluating and classifying their contribution in terms of climate change mitigation and adaptation, while identifying their approaches and potential for scaling.

Currently, she is working on greenhouse gas estimation studies at the national level, evaluating key estimation methodologies. She is particularly interested in advancing research on agricultural modeling within the framework of climate change, sustainable agricultural development, and sustainable food systems.