New Reports: Lagging Progress on Forest Protection Efforts Poses Risks to the Climate

Land Gap Report (2022) - For Immediate Release

Link to final report URL: https://www.landgap.org/

Forest Declaration Assessment (2022) 

Forest Declaration Assessment Themed Reports: 

Interview Opportunities:

To set up an interview, please write to Susan Tonassi at [email protected].

Forest Declaration Assessment Report Author

Erin Matson is a Senior Consultant at Climate Focus. She co-coordinates the annual New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) Progress Assessment, a collective effort of 28 research organizations and NGOs who track progress toward global forest goals. A former organic urban farmer, Erin has over a decade’s experience in sustainable food systems. Her work focuses on sustainable supply chains, climate and forest policy, and forest conservation and restoration.

Additional authors are available for interviews upon request. 

Land Gap Report Authors

Kate Dooley is a Research Fellow at Melbourne University’s Climate & Energy College. Kate has policy expertise on forest governance, climate change and carbon accounting and has almost two decades experience advising government and non-government organisations. Kate has worked globally with environmental movements and non-governmental organisations, focussing on the intersection of forest governance and climate policy. She has been following the UN climate negotiations since 2009, focusing on the role of forests and land-use in climate mitigation, and how human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples are central to these efforts. Kate has published on rights-based approaches to ecosystem restoration, the politics of forest carbon accounting, and land-use for sustainable development. She is currently researching the potential for ambitious restoration of natural ecosystems to remove and lock up atmospheric carbon.

Jens Friis Lund is an associate professor in forest governance in developing countries at the University of Copenhagen. His research has focused on natural resources governance in developing countries, in particular community forestry processes in Tanzania and Nepal. He has also done research on the political economy of timber governance in Ghana. Lastly, in a Danish context, he has done research-cum-advisory work on economic and social issues of hunting and other recreational uses of forests and natural landscapes. His research has featured in, among others, the journals World Development, Ecological Economics, Public Administration and Development, Conservation and Society, Biodiversity and Conservation, Society and Natural Resources, Environmental Conservation, Ecology and Society, International Forestry Review, Forest Policy and Economics, and Journal of Forest Economics. Present research interests focus on social equity concerns in forest management; conservation impact of popular participation in forest management; the political economy of high timber management and; the role of decentralisation of natural resources management in state-citizen relations. Jens is presently involved in a number of project activities in Asia and Africa as well as in Denmark.

Anne Larson conducts research on multiple aspects of forest and landscape governance policy and institutions, including property rights, climate change, decentralization, indigenous territories and gender, from local to international scales. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Environmental Science from Stanford University and her PhD in 2001 from U.C. Berkeley in Wildland Resource Science, with an emphasis on resource policy and institutions. She is a member of the council of the International Land Coalition (ILC, 2019-21) and represents CIFOR to the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). Current research priorities include forest land and resource tenure; women’s rights to land in communal forests; multilevel governance and multi-stakeholder processes; and climate change. She coordinates fieldwork in Peru, Brazil, Ethiopia and Indonesia. Language Capabilities: English, French, Spanish

Brendan Mackey is Director of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon, Griffith Climate Change Response Program, and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University.  He has a PhD in ecology from The Australian National University. The primary foci of Professor Mackey's current research are: climate change adaptation and mitigation, science-based policy for climate change, conservation and sustainable development and the application of decision support systems to environmental problems. He has special expertise in climate change, forest ecosystems, biodiversity conservation and terrestrial carbon dynamic and has expertise in the application of Geographical Information System, remote sensing and environmental modelling to problems of environment and climate change.

Georgina Catacora-Vargas is PhD in Agroecology. She has practical experience - mostly in developing countries - on agroecology, sustainable local food systems, and environmental policy and governance (international and national) of biodiversity, genetic resources, and biosafety of emerging genetic applications. She is the president of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology, and faculty member of the Academic Peasant Unit Tiahuancu of the Catholic Bolivian University.   

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