Ms. Hanneke Van Lavieren is the Coastal Ecosystems Programme Officer at the UNU Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH). She has a masters in Marine Biology and Ecology from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and worked for the Netherlands Institute for Fisheries Research where she studied catch composition and population dynamics of fish species in the Dutch beam trawl fishery. She was (coastal/marine) Technical Advisor for a conservation project in the Philippines for the Netherlands Development Agency and joined the United Nations Environment Programme’s Regional Seas Programme in Kenya dealing with issues such as small islands, MPAs, coastal biodiversity, climate change and marine invasive species. Since 2006 she has been managing and coordinating coastal projects for UNU-INWEH, together with Dr. Peter Sale.