Gabriel Mara

Gabriel is a climate policy specialist focusing on adaptation, loss and damage, climate risk governance and the design of people-centred climate policies for vulnerable countries. He contributes to the organisation’s science, adaptation, and loss and damage support to SIDS and developing countries.

Prior to joining, he led country-level Climate Risk Assessments to guide IFRC’s climate programming and decisions in the Pacific. Previously, Gabriel served as Climate Change Officer for the Fiji Government, supporting national adaptation policy, the NAP process, the development of Fiji’s SOP for Planned Relocation and the operationalisation of the Climate Relocation of Communities Trust Fund.

Internationally, he represented Fiji as an Adaptation Negotiator under the UNFCCC and later served as G77 and China Coordinator for NAPs. Regionally, he served as the Melanesian representative on the Pacific Resilience Partnership Taskforce and as Fiji’s representative to the PRP Technical Working Group, providing inputs to the Pacific Regional Climate Mobility Framework development, and strategic advice on implementing the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific.

Gabriel holds an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s in Islands and Sustainability: a Research Master’s in Spatial Sciences from the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and a Master’s in Sustainable Fisheries Resources Management from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain). He has completed the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, as well as a Postgraduate Diploma, Bachelor of Science in Marine Science, Certificate IV in Coastal Fisheries and Aquaculture Compliance from the University of the South Pacific.

He is a Yale Emerging Climate Leaders Fellow and has participated in several global leadership programmes, including the UN One Ocean Expedition, Archipelagic and Island States Forum Innovator, KOICA-CIAT and the Young Pacific Leaders initiatives.