Adelina Santos-Borja

Philippines

Chair, Southeast Asian Limnological Network (SEALNet)　

Ms. Adelina C. Santos-Borja has more than four decades of experience in various aspects of integrated lake basin management (ILBM), with expertise on limnology, water resources development and management, environmental impact assessment and stakeholder participation. She devoted most of her professional career to the Laguna Lake Development Authority until her retirement in 2020 as the Manager of the Resource Management and Development Department where she established strong partnerships with local and international organizations in the field of collaborative research and projects, capacity building, conservation of aquatic resources and the   promotion of citizen science. She was instrumental in the advancement of science-based policies and continues to advocate demand-driven research to support policy formulation. She earned her M.Sc. Biology (1984) and M.Sc. Environmental Science (2009) from the University of the Philippines and received specialized trainings in Limnology at the Institute of Limnology in Austria (1984), Lake and River Water Quality Management at ILEC (1990), Resource and Environmental Management at the Australian National University (1993), Water Leadership at the Lew Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore (2011) and in the Summer School on Plastics in Marine and Freshwater Environment at the German Federal Institute for Hydrology (2017). She has participated in numerous international conferences and has received the Ibaraki Kasumigaura Award during the World Lake Conference in 1997, 2003 and 2016 for her work on lake conservation and management. Her achievements were recognized with an Environmental Science and Management Award given during the First Philippine Symposium on Freshwater Biodiversity and Environment in 2016. She serves as a reviewer for peer-reviewed journals and has published articles as principal author or co-author. In 2005 she became a member of the ILEC Scientific Committee and was appointed as Bureau Member from 2007-2015 and as one of the Vice Chairpersons since 2016. She is a founding member of the Philippine Society for Freshwater Science and the Southeast Asian Limnological Network (SEALNet). As its current Chairperson, she is actively pursuing the establishment of a community of practice on ILBM among stakeholders of tropical lakes in Southeast Asia.