Carolina Policarpo

Carolina is a second-generation Mozambican of Portuguese origin, who grew up in the bustling coastal city of Maputo. They remember their enthusiastic biology teacher at high school, Mr Evaristo Kashoma, as one of their early influences on seeing the deep connections across the natural world. Since then, Carolina has found it hard to separate people from nature and believes there is a lot to learn with nature's patterns. In 2017, Carolina started a Bachelors degree in the interdisciplinary field of Environmental Sciences at Griffith University, in Meanjin (Brisbane, Australia). From the loud laughs of the Kookaburras to the laziness of koalas high up in treetops, studying in an urban forest, where Griffith University’s Nathan Campus is located, led to an appreciation of the importance of remnant native vegetation for native fauna and human wellbeing in cities.

In 2020, following an internship in one of the largest government-led conservation programs in Mozambique (MozBio 2), Carolina started working as a monitoring and planning officer. During that time, Carolina developed a broader understanding of the legal and management aspects of conservation in Mozambique and learned how to apply conservation tools such as the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) and Social Assessment for Protected Areas (SAPA). In  2023, with the intention of deepening their knowledge of biodiversity conservation and embracing new experiences, Carolina applied for a field course in ecology and conservation, organized by the Tropical Biology Association in Djalicunda, Guiné-Bissau. As the first of its kind carried out in a Portuguese-speaking country, the program allowed Carolina to learn about some of the common challenges faced by like-minded aspiring young scientists eager for change. In the same year, Carolina participated in a short course on the Right to the City, organized by the Centro de Direito do Ambiente, da Biodiversidade e Qualidade de Vida at the  Eduardo Mondlane University, and learned more about the legacies of Portugal’s colonial urban planning, Maputo’s urban environment and the national and global legal frameworks guiding contemporary urban governance in Mozambique.

In 2024, Carolina did their Honours in Environmental Science at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. They took this opportunity to combine two of their biggest interests – urban ecology and ornithology – by conducting a study on the presence and numbers of invasive bird species in the Greater Maputo Metropolitan Area. Driven by a desire to contribute to an urban ecology of the Global South and to enhance the conservation sector in Mozambique, Carolina is now pursuing the MSc in Conservation Biology at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology.,