Alex Chepstow-Lusty

I have a PhD in palaeoecology from Cambridge University, and have used all kinds of microfossil groups (from 300 million years ago to the present) for understanding climate and ecosystem changes, as well as having studied chimpanzees in Tanzania or collected plants in the Pitcairn Islands. The last 30 years, I have focussed on environmental records, particularly from the Andes and sub-Saharan Africa, for revealing the nature of human impact and climatic change in the past, as they are relevant for disentangling current issues of conservation, agriculture and sustainability. I consider a historical perspective has to feature in present decision-making processes of land management as often appropriate solutions have been used successfully in the past by local people, but forgotten or ignored.