Alison Hoare is a senior research fellow at Chatham House, with expertise in international forestry policy, forest governance, and natural resource use and trade. Prior to joining Chatham House in 2006, Alison worked with a number of environmental organizations on community forestry and forest management and planning.
David Young is a forester by training and an expert in local civil society’s role in forest governance. He has over 30 years’ experience in the management of development projects in the UK, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, covering social forestry, policy reform and anti-corruption. He has been a senior forestry specialist at Global Witness for 16 years and since 2013 has worked freelance as a researcher and technical adviser supporting local civil society groups.
Thiago Uehara is a research fellow at Chatham House, with expertise on the political economy of welfare and livelihoods, and the political ecology of land use, trade and development. Thiago started his career in São Paulo in 2005, working on forest restoration and climate change policies. Before joining Chatham House, he advised the Office of the President of Brazil, taught at its National School of Public Administration, was senior consultant to a leading think-tank, and a researcher with an intergovernmental body.
Mustapha Kaluwe Seidu is the executive director and co-founder of the Nature and Development Foundation (NDF). He has expertise in natural resources and environmental governance, the legal regime of natural resource use, and conservation and project management. Prior to forming NDF in 2013, Mustapha worked with several organizations including WWF on legal and sustainable resource utilization.
Gene Birikorang is a natural resource economist and chief consultant of Hamilton Resources and Consulting in Ghana. He has over 30 years’ consulting experience in the forest sector, including a six-year tenure with the DFID Forest Sector Project Phase 2 in Ghana as a consultant, policy facilitator and DFID adviser (to the non-tax revenue commissioner at the Ministry of Finance). He was also the Ghana country consultant in the Chatham House forest policy assessments in 2009, 2013 and 2018.
Laurence Wete Soh is an environmental lawyer and community rights advocate with expertise in law compliance monitoring and capacity-building. She currently works for FODER, a Cameroon-based CSO, as a project coordinator. She has led several forest governance and forest dependent community rights projects.
Justin Kamga Kamga is a forest engineer with a BSc in forest management and has expertise in FSC certification audits. He has been FODER’s chief executive officer since December 2017. Prior to that, he was programme coordinator at FODER and led several projects in FODER and Nature+, a Belgian NGO. Justin has worked for some 15 years in community forests and forest governance in the Congo Basin and West Africa.
