Opening Plenary

Juliette Biao

Director

Secretariat of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF)

Dr Juliette Biao Koudenoukpo is a national of Benin and a Canadian Citizen. She has a wealth of experience in international development and 32 cumulative years managing complex initiatives across Africa, Latin America, and Canada focusing on the environment, community livelihood, and gender equality. She has worked with a range of international organizations developing, managing, and mobilizing resources. As the first female forester in West Africa, Dr. Biao pioneered ground-breaking initiatives including participatory management of protected areas.

Dr. Biao joined UNFF from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, where she served for over six (6) years as the Director and Regional Representative for Africa. She worked with Canadian Crossroads International as the Director of Programs. She also served the Canadian Centre for International Studies and Cooperation as the Regional Director for Africa, as well as with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Regional Office for West Africa. She worked for 7 years with a private sector organization. She also served as Benin’s Minister of Environment and Nature Protection as well as Acting Minister of Family and the Child.

She holds an M.Sc. in Forestry economics, a PhD in Public Policy and Administration, and numerous other certificates for which she gained academic accolades. She has won the Global Women’s Leadership and Green Future Leadership Awards and was named Commander of the National Order of Merit.

Pablo Pacheco

Global Forests Lead Scientist

WWF

Pablo Pacheco is WWF’s Global Forests Lead Scientist, based in Washington DC. He is a member of the WWF’s Global Science Team and Forest Practice Core Team. He supports the design of strategies, action frameworks and impact monitoring linked to efforts for halting deforestation, enhancing sustainable forest management, and accelerating forest restoration. He participates in several working groups and platforms supporting global forest conservation, sustainable development, and forest governance. He holds a PhD from the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, a Msc in Agricultural Economics, and a BA in Sociology. Before joining WWF, he was Principal Scientist and Team Leader at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia and coordinated comparative research on sustainable value chains and investments under the CGIAR Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). His main research areas focus on community forestry, land and forests governance, drivers and dynamics of land use change, landscape transformations, sustainable and resilient livelihoods, inclusive value chains, and area-based conservation. His work has primarily focused on the tropics, mainly in the Amazon and Southeast Asia. He has published extensively in these topics.