Professor Kate Schreckenberg is a researcher on natural resource governance. Her main interests focus on community-based resource management and equity in the context of ecosystem services. She was appointed a Reader in Development Geography at King’s in 2017 and is now Professor in Environment and Development.

Following a BSc in Botany and MSc in Forestry (both from Oxford), Kate worked for the German Sahelian Programme in Burkina Faso, UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Programme and the World Forestry Institute in Hamburg.

After receiving her PhD in Geography from SOAS in 1996, she worked for the Overseas Development Institute and the University of Southampton. In 2017-18, she was Director of the UK’s £43m Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme, coordinating the synthesis of over 120 projects and ensuring an effective programme legacy.

Kate has 30 years’ experience of research and policy advice in the developing world, including fieldwork in Africa, Asia and Latin America, mostly on multi-disciplinary and multi-country collaborative research projects. She is an experienced project manager.

In the past 20 years, she has been involved as a principal investigator or co-investigator on research projects worth over £9 million, with funding from a range of UK and international sources. Kate serves as a trustee of the International Tree Foundation.

Research

• Forests and livelihoods, including collaborative forest management and commercialisation of non-timber forest products
• Agroforestry and domestication of indigenous fruit trees
• Conservation policy, with a focus on equity and justice
• Ecosystem services and human wellbeing

Kate is an interdisciplinary researcher with a special interest in natural resource governance and the institutional arrangements that deliver equitable and just development. The common thread linking her varied research portfolio is a focus on how nature contributes to human wellbeing.

She works predominantly with mixed methods, including participatory research techniques, value chain approaches, household surveys and natural resource inventories.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 6SSG3083 Policy and Application of Geography Research

Postgraduate

• 7SSG5107 Environment, Livelihoods and Development in the South
• 7SSG5108 Tourism and Development
• 7SSGN107 Environment, Livelihoods and Development in the Global South

Further details

See Kate's research profile