Dr. Cheikh Mbow Dr. Cheikh Mbow is a research Professor and the Director General of the Centre de Suivi Ecologique-CSE (Senegal). He was previously Director of Future Africa at the University of Pretoria. He served as the Executive Director of START-International in Washington DC and Lead Scientist on Climate Change at the World Agroforestry center in Kenya. He is Adjunct Professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Forestry. He worked on land productivity, food security and climate change. Over the past 23 years, Mbow has been active on various sustainability issues such as agroforest systems in Africa, food systems, forest productivity and land degradation. He established and coordinated the GOFC-GOLD Regional Network for West Africa (WARN) and worked in several regional programs such as AFRICANESS, AMMA (FP6), UNDESERT (FP7) projects, for the Global Atlas of the convention on Desertification, the GBO3 and for the GLO. Cheikh Mbow has been a Senior Scientist on Climate Change and Development at World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and supported the inter institutional program CCAFS (Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security). He is currently leading through the Centre de Suivi Ecologique in Senegal, various programs related to resilience of vulnerable communities in West Africa. With more than 120 publications on various sustainability issues, Mbow has proven transdisciplinary expertise with a focus on natural resources management, capacity building and translation of scientific information to decision makers and various stakeholder groups. He is a Lead Author on the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) chapter in the IPCC’s AR-5 and AR-6. Mbow is now a Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Special Report on Food Security. He served in many Scientific Committees such as the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program-IGBP (2012-2014) and Future Earth (2013-2015). He contributed to many high-level science-policy panels such as AGROPOLIS foundation and IIED.