CHRISTIAN-YVES DAVID AMATO-ALI

  • Christian-Yves Amato-Ali is a PaCE-SD student currently pursuing a PhD in Climate Change at USP. He has a background with an Environmental Science degree and a Postgraduate Diploma in Climate Change, both obtained from USP and is a 2021 USP Gold Medal recipient. He hails from Oinafa in Rotuma and is an alumnus of Marist Brothers High School. He joined ACIAR as a PASS-CR scholar coming from the University of Fiji, where he worked as a research assistant in their science faculty.

    Christian began his ACIAR candidature in 2022 where his master’s research project focused on reducing food loss within Tonga’s taro farming systems, exploring innovative strategies through Conservation Agriculture-based Sustainable Intensification (CASI). In the same year, he was a recipient of the inaugural PASS-CR Future Thinkers Award, allowing him to delve deeper into researching the connection between food loss and climate resilience. In 2024, his candidature was upgraded to a PhD, building on the progress achieved through additional fieldwork funded by the Future Thinkers grant and with the strong support of his supervisors. His PhD is titled “Enhancing Food Security and Resilience in Taro and Dairy Farming Systems: Investigating Strategies to Minimize Food Loss in Samoa, Tonga, Australia, and Fiji.”

    He believes in a climate change perspective towards food loss and hopes in broadening the scope of food loss in the Pacific, by establishing linkages past the norm of food loss to economic loss. Linking food loss directly to resilience is something totally new in the Pacific but something that Pacific Islanders desperately need; and Christian-Yves hopes that his candidature research will help shed light into this new horizon.

  • • Climate Change
    • Food Loss
    • Food Security
    • Climate Resilience

  • PhD
    Project Title: Enhancing Food Security and Resilience in Taro and Dairy Farming Systems: Investigating Strategies to Minimize Food Loss in Samoa, Tonga, Australia and Fiji.

    ACIAR Project - CROP/2020/186
    Conservation Agriculture and Sustainable Intensification Systems for Transformational Climate Adaptation and GHG Mitigation in Pacific Island Countries.

    CS/2020/191 - Adopting a gender-inclusive participatory approach to reducing horticultural food loss in the Pacific.

    Supervisor: Dr Hilda Sakiti-Waqa, PaCE-SD, USP
    Co-Supervisors: Lau Dr. Viliamu Iese and Dr Gayathri Mekala, University of Melbourne

    Click here for more information (available on the ACIAR website).

  • Twitter: @BisketChris
    LinkedIn: Christian-Yves Amato-Ali
    ORCiD: 0000-0002-4075-9594

Christian is a 2022 PASS-CR Scholar completing a PhD at The University of the South Pacific, Fiji. His PhD research covers the reduction of food loss in Tonga and Samoa Taro farming systems as well as in Fiji and Australia dairy farming systems; where he looks at farming system innovation through resilience building mitigations, highlighting the link between food loss and climate resilience in the Pacific.