People

Vera was majoring in Theatre Arts in high school on the slopes of Mt. Makiling, when she suddenly decided to become a Marine Biologist instead. She has a B.Sc. in Biology from the University of the Philippines (UP), and did an honours project on roundscads. An Erasmus Mundus Studentship made it possible for her to earn a joint M.Sc. degree in Water and Coastal Management from Universidad de Cadiz in Spain and University of Plymouth in the UK. Since then she focused on research and management of marine protected areas (MPAs). As a research assistant for various NGOs and the UP Marine Science Institute (MSI), she was able to see how rich her country is in terms of natural resources and how much it is also exploited because of high resource dependence. Vera was supervised by Prof. Bob Pressey, Dr. Simon Foale and Dr. Porfirio Aliño of the MSI. Her research aimed to examine governance systems and processes that contribute to effective local government coordination and collaboration when scaling up to form MPA networks in the Philippines.