A Pursuit of Passion for the Planet and its People

Mercy Borbor-Córdova’s ’99 interest in the environment began in the varied landscape of her native Ecuador.

Her mother was raised in the highlands of central Ecuador, an area of panoramic vistas of the Andes mountains. But her father grew up near the Pacific Coast, where fishing villages and broad bays dominate the view. For vacations, Borbor-Córdova’s family would return to her father’s native region, taking a scenic drive through the countryside to spend time at the beach.

“I had this opportunity to travel from the highlands to the lowlands. It was amazing,” she said. “We were traveling by car, so we watched the countryside change as we drove by. It’s my first memory. This makes an impression on a child.”

That formative experience led Borbor-Córdova to a bachelor’s degree in oceanography at Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city. Wanting to expand her credentials, she pursued a Fulbright Scholarship that brought her to Syracuse, New York, for graduate degrees at ESF. And later, she did post-doctoral work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado . Her career led her back to South America, where she began to weave science and policy, focusing on environmental quality and public health concerns, into her professional life. Her research and collaborations have taken her to Russia to participate in the fourth International Polar Year and twice to the Antarctic on expeditions to King George Island and Greenwich Island.

She has served as vice minister of the environment for Ecuador, province director of risk management and chief of environmental control of the city of Guayaquil, and lead author for the sixth assessment report issued by the Mitigation Working Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, completed in March 2022. 

Borbor-Córdova now serves as an associate professor at ESPOL, associate researcher at the Antarctic Institute of Ecuador and, this past fall, joined the board of directors of the Galapagos Conservancy, which focuses on protecting and restoring the ecologically rich Galapagos islands. Her work includes research in oceans and human health, urban climate resilience, and the interaction of climate, environment and health.

One of her primary professional goals is to provide decision-makers and practitioners with knowledge that will improve the well-being of local communities. The solution, she notes, is an interdisciplinary approach that includes socio-ecological monitoring to fight vector-borne illnesses such as Zika and dengue fever, or assessing the vulnerability of a city to flooding. With their ties to climate change, water resources and development issues, these illnesses present a complicated challenge.

Borbor-Córdova said she was drawn to ESF as a Fulbright Scholar because of the relevance of the college’s environmental programs. And — believe it or not — the weather. “I was curious about the four seasons,” she said. Her mentor at ESF was Dr. Charles Hall, a widely known systems ecologist with an extensive research and publications record in the realm of economics, energy, and ecology. She earned her M.S. in environmental science in 1999 and stayed at ESF for her Ph.D. with support from the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). 

“I learned a lot studying for my master’s but I knew I needed more to be able to go back to Ecuador and build the capacity needed to make improvements there,” she said. 

Less than a week after successfully defending her dissertation, an ESF connection drew Borbor-Córdova back home to serve as chief of environmental control in Guayaquil. In that position, which she learned about from a former ESF classmate, Borbor-Córdova became involved in community health issues and their relationship to the environment; mothers who lived in the city told her their children were getting sick and they suspected the illnesses were linked to air pollution from a nearby power plant. Supported by a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Borbor-Córdova teamed up with social and health practitioners from the municipality of Guayaquil and spent two weeks in Brazil studying the links between the environment and human health. 

“That was the beginning of my effort to include the human health aspect in all my work,” she said. 

In 2006, She moved on to a post-doctoral position with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, researching air quality and human health in Latin America, and vector-borne diseases issues in Ecuador. “I started working as a part of the municipality, really on the ground. I had a relationship with the people, the university and the local government,” she said.

In 2010, Borbor-Córdova was invited to join the national government of Ecuador, and she served three years as deputy minister of the environment. She worked on national environmental and climate change policy and worked with the country’s 24 provinces on a range of issues including climate change, mining, forestry, pollution, and protected areas. “That was a wonderful period of my life. In addition to dealing with the environmental conflicts, I had the opportunity to get to know my country and its protected areas. We have a small country, but it is so beautiful. Even a lot of Ecuadorians don’t know what we have.”

After an intense three years with the national government, Borbor-Córdova returned to university work to focus on health-related research. And she encountered another ESF connection when Hall introduced her to Anna Stewart-Ibarra, an ESF alumna who is now the scientific director of the IAI. At the time, Stewart-Ibarra was beginning her Ph.D. research at ESF. A mutual interest in vector-borne diseases led the two to a collaboration that has now lasted more than 10 years. Currently, Borbor-Cordova is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the IAI.

The most recent addition to her resume — the appointment in October to the board of the Galapagos Conservancy — came at the invitation of ESF Distinguished Professor James Gibbs, who has collaborated extensively with the organization while doing research in the Galapagos. Borbor-Córdova said the islands face a unique set of challenges because of their ecological diversity and isolation. “We have to balance protection of the system with the fact that tourism has a big economic impact.”

As with all of her work, she sees the need for a solution that works for policymakers as well as for the people living in affected communities.

“Everything is connected. These problems require an interdisciplinary approach — clean air, clean water, risk management, energy needs,” she said. “There is no one solution to the challenges of climate change and human health. In each case, we have to consider the local aspect and come up with an approach that works for local people. We have to understand what their needs are. Then we can enhance the local government’s capacity to improve their own environment and the well-being of their people.”