Juan David Amaya-Espinel is a Colombian urban ecologist with Master's Degree in Natural Protected Areas and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. He is the Environmental Management Master Degree Program´s Director at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana of Colombia and Professor-Researcher of the Faculty of Environmental and Rural Studies. Juan David Amaya-Espinel has more than 25 years of experience in research and management projects on biodiversity conservation and sustainable use in urban settings. Juan David has been working on several urban areas in Latin America by connecting conceptual and practical elements related to urban ecology, conservation biology, and landscape ecology, around the idea to provide knowledge to guide stakeholders for opportunities and tools to incorporate biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban environmental planning. Author of several scientific articles and books on biodiversity and cities. Currently, he has been participating in several initiatives to address urban nature topics at a global and regional scale such as the Horizon 2020 project CONEXUS focused on co-producing nature-based solutions for cities in the European Union and Latin America. Also, he is supporting in Colombia the Biodivercities by 2030 initiative of the World Economic Forum and the Instituto Alexander von Humboldt as well as on the editing of the book Biodivercities by 2030: Transforming Cities with Biodiversity to be launched at the global scale in 2022.
