Imelda provides technical advice to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its ten member states for strengthened regional and international policies to gain wider access to climate finance, which ultimately builds resilience of the agriculture and other land use sectors to impacts of climate change.

She has been instrumental in guiding the ASEAN Climate Resilience Network to push the agriculture sector into engagement with the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and other Multilateral Environmental Agreements. Before joining SEI, she worked as Principal Advisor of the Forest and Climate Change Project under the ASEAN-German Programme on Response to Climate Change (GAP-CC) programme implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

She currently remains the guiding technical expert for the newly established ASEAN Negotiation Group for Agriculture (ANGA) which is pushing the agriculture sector of ASEAN to jointly shape climate policies of the UNFCCC to better face impacts of climate change. She is also senior consultant to organizations such as UN FAO, GIZ, UNEP’s Climate Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), UNFCC and IDRC, and ASEAN’s E-READI project.

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.

Imelda acquired her Master’s Degree in Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science under a Fulbright Scholarship.