Odette Rouvet

Odette has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. She has focused her work on environmental and climate change projects for developing countries, with a special focus in Latin America.

She started her career as a research assistant, where she found her passion and commitment for identifying conflicts and finding opportunities to solve them. She has worked in the public sector at both the legislative and executive levels, where she was focused on environmental and climate change policy. She has conducted research projects, such as the Overexploiting Aquifers Strategy; a case study integrating documentation of natural resource conflicts from 2000 to 2012 in Mexico through national journal documentation; and a paper on closing environmental and policy information gaps between voters and legislature in Mexico. Later she joined the United Nations Environment Programme in Mexico and Paris, where she promoted international cooperation programs to reinforce institutions and promote peaceful and sustainable development. She worked with brick-making communities in African, Asian and Latin American countries to identify and understand emerging or latent conflicts driven by factors such as urbanization, growing demand for households, air quality and health impacts, child labor, and lack of gender approach on local policies. She has also worked on climate change and development projects under private sector consultancy offices worldwide.

As a Rotary Peace Fellow, she is interested in serving her community and region to promote sustainable peace. Upon completing the program, she would like to assist developing countries in addressing conflict and fragility, due to environmental challenges, focusing on water and energy projects. Her interest in climate change as a new global threat has pushed her to strengthen her understanding on peacebuilding and conflict resolution in order to improve the impact on people´s lives. Upon completion of her programme she looks forward to working with an international organization that provides opportunities to engage at the global, regional and local levels of action.