Keynote Speakers

Professor Toyohiko Miyagi is a geomorphologist and mangrove geo-ecologist specializing in mangrove geo-ecology, coastal landforms, sea-level change, and landslide mapping. He graduated from Tohoku Gakuin University and received his Doctor of Science degree from Tohoku University.

Through extensive field studies in Japan and overseas, he has examined how geomorphological settings, sediment dynamics, and relative sea-level rise influence the distribution, structure, and resilience of mangrove ecosystems. His work has contributed to mangrove restoration planning and coastal environmental assessment.

He has served as Vice Chair of the Japan Society for Mangroves, Senior Researcher of the International Society for Mangrove Ecosystems (ISME), former Chair of the Tohoku Branch of the Japan Landslide Society, and member of the International Consortium on Landslides.

Professor Anusha Rajkaran is a mangrove and estuarine ecologist at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, where she serves as Head of the Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology. She received her training from Nelson Mandela University in Botany and Estuarine Ecology, and her Honours, Masters, and PhD research focused on different aspects of mangrove forest ecology.

Her research examines the ecology, functioning, and conservation of mangrove and estuarine habitats, with particular attention to resource use, ecosystem services, habitat health indicators, pollution, and coastal environmental change. Her work spans much of the South African coastline and has expanded to include salt marshes, seagrasses, microplastics, chemical pollutants, and broader estuarine ecosystem functioning.

Professor Rajkaran also serves as the South Africa Representative of the Western Indian Ocean Mangrove Network. Through her research, teaching, and supervision of students and postdoctoral researchers, she has contributed substantially to mangrove science, estuarine conservation, and capacity building in South Africa and the Western Indian Ocean region.

Associate Professor Thomas Worthington is an aquatic ecologist at the University of Cambridge, where he leads the Global Coastal Wetlands Lab in the Department of Plant Sciences. His research focuses on the conservation and restoration of vegetated coastal ecosystems, including mangrove forests, saltmarshes, and seagrass meadows.

Using remote sensing, spatial datasets, and global-scale analyses, his work examines ecosystem change, restoration opportunities, and ecosystem services in coastal landscapes. He has contributed to major global mangrove initiatives, including Global Mangrove Watch and global assessments of mangrove restoration potential.

Through his applied research, Professor Worthington provides scientific evidence to support on-the-ground conservation action, restoration planning, and international efforts to protect and restore mangrove ecosystems.

Dr. Virni Budi Arifanti is a Principal Researcher at the Research Center for Ecology, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), Indonesia. She holds a Ph.D. in Wetlands Ecology from Oregon State University, USA, and specializes in tropical mangrove ecosystems, wetland ecology, greenhouse gas inventories, blue carbon, carbon dynamics, and nature-based solutions.

Her research focuses on understanding the ecological functions of mangrove and wetland ecosystems, particularly their roles in carbon storage, greenhouse gas exchange, and climate change mitigation. She has contributed extensively to international research collaborations and has published widely in leading scientific journals.

Dr. Arifanti is also actively engaged in global science-policy networks. She serves as Indonesia’s Focal Point to the Ramsar Convention Scientific and Technical Review Panel and has been appointed as a Scientific Expert of the STRP for 2025–2028. She is also Executive Director of the Indonesian National Committee for the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme and co-leads the Mangrove Biology and Ecosystems Essential Ocean Variables under the Global Ocean Observing System.

Farid Dahdouh-Guebas is a mangrove scientist of Moroccan-Belgian origin affiliated to the Free University of Brussels (ULB-VUB). Since the mid‑1990s, his research has been almost exclusively focused on mangrove forests, examining how and why they change, as well as their uses and perceptions.

He has studied mangroves through transdisciplinary approaches structured around four main research areas: (i) ecology and spatio‑temporal vegetation and landscape dynamics (phytosociology, plant-animal interactions including macrobenthos, global change, historical ecology and archival research); (ii) ethnobiology and socio‑ecology (human-ecosystem relationships, ecosystem goods and services, traditional ecological knowledge, and resilience of mangrove social‑ecological systems); (iii) restoration ecology (restoration of functional diversity, floristic succession, faunistic recruitment and ecosystem health); and (iv) management (stakeholder, discourse, and social network analysis, governance, IUCN Red Listing of Species and Ecosystems, science communication, and the science-policy interface). His work aims to generate insights that advance fundamental understanding of mangrove ecosystems while informing biological conservation and ecosystem management, spanning spatial scales from local case-studies to global macroecological analyses. 

Farid is best known for the functional ecological concept of cryptic ecological degradation, for his contributions to mangrove ethnobiology, and for The Mangal Play, a gamification approach to learning. He has contributed to mangrove research in >30 countries, with most of his output focused on Kenya, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. With hundreds of peer‑reviewed publications, he has become one of the world’s leading scientists in the field and is repeatedly listed by Stanford University among the Top 2% of scientists worldwide in Ecology and Marine Biology. His team works with a wide range of international stakeholders from all societal sectors, including research institutions, the corporate sector, international organisations, citizen science initiatives, governmental and NGOs. He is also the Founding and Managing Director of TROPIMUNDO and the only person to have participated in all MMM Conferences and Workshops.