Affiliates
Affiliates are people- researchers, technicians or activists- who work with Steering Committee members on specific projects. The Affiliate program enables like-minded individuals with common interests, visions and approaches to establish links with each other, accross different regions.
Alex Álvarez (Peru) is an anthropologist specializing in indigenous resource management, governance, development and property rights. He is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, based on his research on indigenous environmental governance and property rights in the Amarakaeri Comunal Reserve, Madre de Dios, Peru. He serves a voluntary advisor to the regional indigenous federation, FENAMAD, since 2006, on matters relating to land rights, cultural landscapes and resource conservation, particularly in the context of ongoing oil and gas development.
Elysa Hammond (United States) is an ecologist working at the organic nutrition Clif Bar & Company, Berkeley, California. She is founder of the company's sustainability program and oversees company efforts to reduce its environmental impact. Elysa is the editor of the Clif Bar Moving Toward Sustainability newsletter and serves as an advisor to the Clif Bar Family Foundation environmental grant program. She is part of the National Teach-in on Global Warming Solutions council, dealing with issues relating to climate change. Elysa has a Masters in Forestry from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she is currently a doctoral candidate. She has conducted research on traditional agricultural systems in Peru and Indonesia.
Rebecca McLain (United States) is a natural resource policy analyst and cultural geographer specializing in participatory governance structures, environmental justice, and the links between natural resource tenure and environmental management practices. She has an interdisciplinary PhD from the College of Forest Resources at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. She is co-founder of the Institute for Culture and Ecology, a nonprofit organization that specializes in research and education on the social aspects of environmental management issues.
Heather McMillen (United States) has a PhD from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i at M'noa. Her foci are medical anthropology, environmental anthropology, and ethnobotany. Over the last decade her research in Tanzania, East Africa has explored the intersections of local ethnomedical practitioners and biomedical practitioners, medicinal plant management and trade, and conservation. Heather teaches ethnobotany at the University of Hawaii and is the Secretary for the Society for Economic Botany. For a selected list of Heather's publications, click here.
Dario Novellino (Italy) is an anthropologist and an honorary research fellow at the University of Kent’s Department of Anthropology, with with a long-standing involvement with indigenous communities in Palawan and Southeast Asia. He is currently collaborating with PPI’s Cultural Landscapes Program as part of a broader initiative, linking local peoples from different parts of the world and using participatory video to allow their voices to be heard at a policy level (for more information, click here). For a selected list of Dario's recent academic publications, click here.
Alan Pierce (United States) is an independent researcher specializing in forest policy, subsistence use of forests and ecological literacy. He is a PhD candidate at Antioch University New England. His doctoral research examines contemporary gathering traditions in Vermont and the reasons for their persistence or decline. Over the past 15 years Alan has worked as a consultant with a number of international NGOs to create policy frameworks for the sustainable harvest and trade of non-timber forest products.
Louis Putzel (United States) is a scientist based at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia. His main research interests relate to the economic botany of tropical timber and the connections between logging, smallholder forest management, and global markets. In Peruvian Amazonia, as a New York Botanical Garden/City University of New York doctoral student, he studied the structure of Chinese timber supply chains and their implications for the regeneration and management of Shihuahuaco (Dipteryx spp.), a key export timber. Louis is now working on a project to understand the forest-related effects of Chinese trade and investment in the Congo Basin, and is contributing to work about informal logging and trade in the context of changing international norms. For additional details on China-in-Africa, click here. For a selected list of Louis’ publications, click here.
Daniel Rodriguez (Spain) is an anthropologist actively involved on a broad range of issues relating to indigenous rights in the Madre de Dios river basin in SE Peru. Most of his work has been developed within indigenous organizations, in particular advising FENAMAD (Federación Nativa del Madre de Dios) on the impacts of gold mining and oil and gas concessions, and mining on voluntarily isolated indigenous peoples. He has worked with the Ese Eja people in Peru and Bolivia and PPI's Cultural Landscapes and Resource Rights Program since 2005.
Tamara Ticktin (United States) is an ethnoecologist, and associate professor of Botany at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Her interests center on the relationships between human communities and biological conservation. Her work focuses on assessing the ecological impacts of local and indigenous resource management practices and their implications for the conservation. Most of her work involves close collaboration with local communities and participatory research methods. She has carried out collaborative research in parts of Latin America, Asia, Africa and Hawai'i, and is Senior Associate Editor of the journal Economic Botany.
Tarin Toledo’s (Mexico) interests lie mainly in the research and development of ecological bases from which to implement sustainable forest management practices. In 2006 she undertook a PhD in Forest Ecology from University of Aberdeen, UK during which she evaluated the effects of lianas on the regeneration of commercial tree species in tropical forest in Ghana. She has worked for Smart Wood / CCMSS conducting evaluations of forest certification in various communities in Mexico.
Rachel Wynberg (South Africa) is a natural scientist and environmental policy analyst, specialising in the commercialization and trade of biodiversity, and the integration of social justice into biodiversity concerns. She holds a PhD from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow and is currently based at the Environmental Evaluation Unit, University of Cape Town. Over the past 15 years Rachel has worked closely with governments and NGOs in southern Africa to formulate appropriate policy frameworks for biotrade, access and benefit-sharing; intellectual property rights and traditional knowledge; and community-based natural resource management. She is actively involved in civil society movements, and is trustee and founding member of two South African NGOs, the Environmental Monitoring Group, and Biowatch South Africa.