Benjamin Boateng

Final-year MPA graduate specializing in Urban Management, with hands-on experience in urban forestry and sustainability initiatives. Proficient in geospatial analysis and ecosystem service assessments, complemented by human resource and project management skills in the extraction industry. Collaborated with the City of Edmond, the City of the Village, and the UCO Sustainability Office for UCO's designation as a Tree Campus Higher Education, and other policy-informed urban design.

• Urban Tree Canopy Expansion, Edmond, OK, Conducted spatial analysis using i-Tree Canopy and i-Tree Landscape to assess land cover and identify urban heat islands on the UCO campus, developed data-driven recommendations for expanding tree canopy, and quantified ecosystem services such as stormwater runoff reduction, carbon sequestration, and air pollutant removal to inform urban forestry planning.
• City of the Village Sidewalk Enhancement Project, Developed landscape and sidewalk recommendations to improve accessibility to parks and increase urban greening.
• Building Capacity to Crosslink Coastal Pollution with Climate Change (BC5), Collaboration between Norwegian University of Science and Technology, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and University of Ghana. Investigated pollution drivers in the Ankobra River basin through policy and stakeholder analysis.

• Tree Campus Advisory Committee Member, UCO, Student representative to work for UCO to achieve the Tree Campus Higher Education designation by the Arbor Day Foundation.
• Central Chi Alpha Leadership Cohort, UCO
• Broncho Bites volunteer, Recognized as a Top 5 Volunteer for promoting food security among students.
• Nominated participant, Youth Empowerment in Climate Action - Ensuring Gender Equality & Fair Transition in the Triple Planetary Crisis, Nordic Council of Ministers, UN City, Copenhagen
• National Projects Manager, United Nations Students Association, Norway
• Project Leader, United Nations Students Association Theme Week on Sustainable Earth, NTNU, Trondheim
• Capacity Building Working Group, Nordic Youth Biodiversity Network

• CMAO Winter Conference Presentation, Edmond, 2026, Making a Difference Project
• President’s Honor Roll, UCO, Fall 2025
• President’s Honor Roll, UCO, Spring 2025
• Outstanding First Year Graduate Student in Political Science, Fall 2024
• President’s Honor Roll, UCO, Fall 2024
• Graduate Diversity Global Scholarship, University of Central Oklahoma, Fall 2024
• Research support from NORAD, Building Capacity to Crosslink Coastal Pollution with Climate Change (BC5), NTNU grant # 71762, 2023
• Sparebanken Midt-Norges research grant for fieldwork, 2023
• Conference Travel Award, Youth Empowerment in Climate Action - Ensuring Gender Equality & Fair Transition in the Triple Planetary Crisis, LSU, Nordic Council of Ministers, 2023
• Project Funding, United Nations Students Association, Norway, National Sustainability Conference, 2023
• Project Funding, United Nations Students Association, Theme Week on Sustainable Earth, $1,500, 2022

• Journal, In development, Boateng, B. and E.S. Barron, The old is new again: Reifying existing power structures in new collaborative small-scale mining policy framework., Journal of Political Ecology
• Research, City of Edmond Urban Tree Canopy Expansion Project on University of Central Oklahoma Campus, https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.30794.63680/1
• Thesis, Boateng, Benjamin, 2023, Role of Collaboration in dealing with Ankobra River Pollution. Investigating the power structures responsible for the pollution in Adelekezo and Eziome, Western Region of Ghana., Master’s thesis in Natural Resource Management - Geography, NTNU, https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3080608
• Book, Boateng, Benny, 2025, Chaos to Glory: Understanding Life, Entropy, and Redemption, Amazon: WordSculpt Consult, https://a.co/d/a85Jaz5