My personal and professional objective has always been to contribute effectively to the conservation of the environment, to try to make a change in our world era. Therefore, I always aimed at acquiring the most and most useful skills to be able to succeed in this task. Right after high school, I acquired by my means all the necessary certifications to be able to work independently and safely in the field, always by my means I left to work on research and conservation projects in Australia, I was awarded a scholarship to study in the US where I was able to work on monitoring of MPAs, fish population replenishment, fishery and climate change, then I left again when I was awarded a PhD scholarship in France which, even if terrible for a biologist at the beginning, gave me skills most marine biologist are missing and are starting to become very important now. I was able to attend some of the best universities of the world. Then I left again for some short term researches where I always worked on conservation related matters even if again not in the field but with Universities, the Ministry of the Environment and other important Institutes, and in the meanwhile I wrote a research project who was funded by the French spatial agency to see if we can use satellite data for biodiversity studies and conservation. I continued working in Biodiversity Observation Networks, European Research Infrastructures, valorisation of research outputs, international programs, and so on.
I feel I moved a lot, giving up a lot in terms of personal life too and I put my head into a lot of things and I would sacrifice everything again if I could have some sign that it is worthwhile, that in this way there will be a change. But it seems to me I’m missing the original point, or at least I’m missing ‘something’. I feel like research is not doing enough for that and I don’t know how to stay in research being able to accomplish my objective, and I also feel public institutions just respond to government laws setting up practical regulations that are based on consensus rules that have their origins in studies made decades before, therefore most of the time inadequate to reach some effectiveness. I started looking at innovative approaches by think tankers and big companies and international agencies but I still do not see a breakthrough. I do not see that all these organisations have a transformative impact on our precious resources in a time frame that would be effective to save them.