Nicolle Etchart

Nicolle Etchart is a PhD student in the Department of Geography. She studies environmental governance related to conservation policy mixes in Latin America. She earned her B.S. from the University of Florida and her M.A. in Anthropology in Ecuador at FLACSO-Ecuador, where she studied the politics of petroleum extraction and environmental injustice in Ecuador’s northern Amazon. During the five years that she lived in Ecuador, she also worked as an interpreter for indigenous organizations and an environmental nonprofit dedicated to bringing awareness to contaminated oil sites abandoned by Texaco in the 90s. Nicolle’s interest in political, economic and regional geography is strongly shaped by her family background. Raised by a Cuban mother, a Chilean father, a Chinese-Jamaican stepfather, and a Peruvian stepmother in Miami, Florida, she is a product of political and economic changes across the globe. With support from a Scott Kloeck-Jensen award, her current research focuses on the emerging effects of forest conservation economic incentives on the enforcement practices of environmental laws within protected areas facing high deforestation pressure, and on the ways that forest dwellers residing in these areas procure their livelihoods. Through this research, she hopes to better understand how these novel forms of hybrid environmental governance–combining economic conservation incentives with restricted-use policy instruments–can help countries address the challenge of balancing their conservation and development goals.