SESSION 4 AGENDA & SPEAKERS

Imelda “Dada” Bacudo is a senior advisor to ASEAN and its member states on the policies to support the transformation of ASEAN to low emissions and resilient agrifood sector. She is an expert leader and plays a pivotal role across a range of ASEAN initiatives including the ASEAN Climate Resilience Network and  ASEAN Negotiation Group on Agriculture, as well as ASEAN partner projects such as the ASEAN-German Programme on Response to Climate Change and UN FAO work with ASEAN.

She has over 20 years' experience in the areas of biodiversity conservation, sustainable development, and conservation finance in the Philippines, Latin America, Uganda and Southeast Asia, working with NGOs, national governments, and international development agencies. She acquired her Master’s Degree in Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science under a Fulbright Scholarship.

H.E. Dr. Sok Silo has served as the Secretary General for the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) of the Royal Government of Cambodia since July 2019. He has been appointing as the Scaling Up Nutrition Government Focal Point since August 2014 and the National Food System Dialogues Convener since November 2020. He is also the Secretary of the Technical Working Group for Food Security and Nutrition.  Previous holding these positions, H.E. Dr. Sok Silo was Deputy Secretary General of CARD for 12 years, Director of the Administration Department of CARD for nearly 10 years and Private Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries for almost 5 years.   

Dr. Sok Silo played an important role in the coordination and policies and strategies formulation related to food systems, food security and nutrition in Cambodia. He has actively led the dialogues and consultations in the development of the 2nd National Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition 2019-2023, the Cambodia’s Roadmap for Food Systems for Sustainable Development 2030 and the Country Operational Roadmap for the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting and many others. 

Ply is the Sustainable Consumption and Production Project Manager at WWF Thailand. His educational background is in the field of industrial engineering and urban environmental management. He has extensive experience managing international funded projects, environmental campaigns at Greenpeace Southeast Asia,  environmental, social and governance (ESG) consultant to the retail business, and developing renewable energy and sustainability projects in Thailand. Throughout his 20 years career, his area of expertise includes sustainability consulting, sustainability and renewable energy project development, rural community development, environmental management, forest landscape restoration, ecological agriculture, and environmental campaign and advocacy. 

Dao The Anh is the Vice-President of Vietnamese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VAAS) since 2017. He was former Director of the Centre for Agrarian System Research and Development (CASRAD). With a first degree in agricultural production, a master (1994) in farming systems, a PhD (2004) in Agricultural, Rural and Food Economics at Montpellier SupAgro, France, he has developed an experience of 30 years in research and developement related to agricultural system and family farming in Vietnam. Recently, he focuses on policies promoting sustainable food system, agro-ecological farming systems, food safety, cooperative development, branding for agricultural products, agri-food value chain governance for smallholder in Vietnam. He is forein member of France Academy of Agriculture since 2020 and Member of Scientific Committee of CIRAD since 2023. He is one of national conveners of UNFSS in Vietnam. 

My name is Meti Tamrat. I am living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Currently I am the director in Addis Ababa mayor office. I used to work as adviser to Addis Ababa city administration mayor on Nutrition multisectoral coordination since 2019 and work as a board member of school feeding agency.  Prior to, my assignment as an adviser I spent more than four years as a school feeding program coordinator in Addis Ababa education bureau and as the first head of Addis Abeba school feeding agency.  

Currently I am responsible to oversee the implementation of the overall food system related program in sustainable and improved way. Since the program was launched with the idea of lifting some of the burden off of the poorest residents of the city, which is also contributing to the attainment of sustainable development goals of zero hunger, quality of education, gender equality, good health and wellbeing etc for toddlers.

• Economist with a PhD in environmental economics. 

• Since 1994 Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection.  

• From 2006 to 2022 Head of  Division  `Sustainable Consumption, Environmental Product Policy´  

• Since August 2022 Head of Division `European and International Policies on Adaption to Climate Change´ 

• Co-Lead of the `Consumer Information Programme´ of the United Nations 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production 

• Representing the Federal German Government in several national and international fora 

Robert Cole works for the Mekong Region Land Governance (MRLG) project, which supports evidence-based policy reforms to protect smallholder land tenure rights in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. The project is funded by Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) and the governments of Germany and Luxembourg, and led by Gret and Land Equity International. His role at MRLG focuses on agricultural investments and related policies, drawing from a research background on agri-food systems, upland livelihoods and environmental change in the Mekong region. He is also an advisor for the SDC-funded Transformative Land Investments project, working towards more sustainable and socially inclusive agri-food systems. Rob is an Associate of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore