Anne Larigauderie

Dr. Anne Larigauderie (born Bourges, France) is a French ecologist. She is currently the Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). She was previously the Head of Science in Society at ICSU, the International Council for Science, and the Executive Director of DIVERSITAS, the international scientific programme dedicated to biodiversity science, under the auspices of ICSU, and UNESCO.
Studies.
Anne Larigauderie received her Master's Degree in plant molecular biology from the Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, and her PhD in plant ecology, from the Université des Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Montpellier, France. She then spent several years in the USA, working as a research scientist in several scientific projects. In Alaska, for example, she was involved in the first pilot project performing CO2 enrichment of natural ecosystems in the tundra in open top chambers (with Prof. Walter C. Oechel) to understand and predict impact of climate change on plant physiology and ecology. In California (San Diego State University and the University of California – Davis) she worked on root competition among California grassland species for soil nutrient pockets (with Prof. Jim Richards). A subsequent project focused on responses of various grass species to various scenarios of elevated CO2 and temperature, the aim of which was to predict response of grasses to future climate change (with Prof. Boyd Strain and Prof. Jim Reynolds, Duke University, North Carolina).
Career.
Dr. Larigauderie then returned to Europe, working as a research scientist on the potential acclimation of dark respiration of lowland and alpine plant species to future elevated temperatures (with Prof. Christian Körner, University of Basel, Switzerland). In 1996 she became the coordinator of the Swiss Priority Programme on biodiversity, and the scientific adviser to the Swiss delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
In 1999, she joined the International Council for Science (ICSU, Paris), as Environmental Sciences Officer. She was appointed as Executive Director of DIVERSITAS late 2001. Her priorities have been to build DIVERSITAS as a strong international scientific programme dedicated, on one hand, to the sciences of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and, on the other hand, to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services. She has worked to facilitate, on behalf of the scientific community, the establishment of an IPCC-like mechanism for biodiversity, called IPBES, the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem services. In 2013, she became Head of Science in Society at ICSU, the International Council for Science.
In 2010, she was made Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur by the French national Ministry of National Education, Advanced Instruction, and Research.
She currently resides in Paris.