Ana Carolina Marciano is a Programme Officer supporting sustainable small-scale fisheries and biodiversity governance through a rights-based approach, gender-equality, and conflict perspectives across policy and practice

Ana Carolina Marciano works in SwedBio’s Small-Scale Fisheries, Governance, and Livelihoods thematic area, contributing to policy and practice for aquatic and coastal socio-ecological systems, with a strong focus on small-scale fisheries and biodiversity conservation and management. Her work centres on monitoring, analysing, and engaging in international policy processes, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI), and the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and translating these into practice at operational and strategic levels.

Marciano collaborates with rights holders, local partners, and organizations to facilitate interactions among coastal communities, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers, supporting inclusive, evidence-based governance. Her work includes coordinating across diverse knowledge systems to foster dialogue and learning processes, and conducting policy analysis with particular emphasis on sustainable small-scale fisheries.

Using a rights-based, gender-responsive, and conflict-sensitive approach, Marciano supports efforts to strengthen governance, participation, and sustainable livelihoods, promoting equity and poverty reduction in aquatic and coastal systems. She has been responsible for strengthening the organization’s Human Rights-Based Approach, Gender Equality, and Conflict-Sensitive policies, ensuring they are coherent and integrated across programmes.

Marciano holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), with a focus on sustainability, natural resource governance, and the social dimensions of environmental change, and an MBE in Social Responsibility and the Third Sector from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She is currently taking a GenderPro Capacity Building Certificate Programme at the Global Women’s Institute at George Washington University.

She has extensive experience in multi-stakeholder facilitation, fisheries governance, and integrating traditional and local knowledge into policy and practice. Her professional experience spans interdisciplinary and international settings, supporting programmes that connect policy with practical implementation.

She has worked extensively in multi-stakeholder processes, including facilitation and mediation, policy-relevant research, environmental and social studies, community engagement, capacity building, and fisheries governance. A key part of her work involves facilitating and mediating dialogue among actors in high-tension contexts to address environmental and social challenges, and increasing the participation of traditional and rural communities, including Fisher peoples and Quilombolas, in decision-making processes.

Her facilitation approach is rooted in popular education and also informed by training in methodologies such as the Theatre of the Oppressed, as well as other participatory methods adapted to the specific power dynamics and context of each process. She has strong competencies in managing complex projects and fostering collaboration across sectors and scales, from local to global, including end-to-end project management from design and planning through implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. Overall, her work is grounded in an applied rights-based approach and a commitment to inclusive, equitable, and effective natural resource governance.