Panel III - Sustainable Development and Tropical Forests

Fabíola Zerbini

Director of Forest, Land Use and Agriculture

WRI Brasil

Fabíola Zerbini’s work in the socio-environmental field has been recognized for more than 25 years, especially in promoting value chains and catalyzing public-private partnerships for the economic, integrated and sustainable development of key Latin American territories concerning agriculture, forests and land use agenda. Fabíola holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law, a specialization in Education for Sustainable Societies (Esalq-USP) and a PhD in Environmental Science (Procam/USP). She has been executive director of multi-stakeholder coalitions, such as FACES do Brasil and FSC Brasil, acting on agendas as Fairtrade, Responsible Forest Management. More recently, she has worked as Latin America Director at Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA) – an alliance hosted by the World Economic Forum to eradicate the deforestation linked to commodity production and to build bridges among producers, buyers and players from the private sector, governments and the organized civil society, and now is the current Forest, land Use and Agriculture Director of WRI Brasil.

Milagre Nuvunga

Co-Founder & Executive Director

MICAIA Foundation

I am a Mozambican citizen, born and brought up in Mozambique, and trained as a forester. After 15 years in government in positions that included Director of Forestry Research and National Director for Forestry and Wildlife in Mozambique, I worked internationally for 10 years, including with the UN in New York, supporting forestry work in African and Latin American countries, and the Ford Foundation, working on environment and community development issues in Eastern Africa. I moved back to Mozambique in 2008 as co-founder of the MICAIA family of institutions (comprising a Mozambican foundation and a social enterprise, as well as a UK based charity run by a volunteer board), where I serve as Executive Director of MICAIA Foundation.

My main professional interest is the development of approaches to strengthening community control over land and the natural resources that support local livelihoods, and ensuring women’s powerful participation in decision making, as well as engagement in gainful activities.

I am currently exploring governance arrangements that will bring communities and other actors (government/private sector) to adopt sustainable landscape development principles and inclusive business approaches, seeking a balance between conservation and local development objectives.

Interesting fact: I was the first female national director for forestry and wildlife in Africa.

Andika Putraditama

Head of Rimba Collective

Lestari Capital

Andika leads the implementation and strategy development of Lestari Capital’s flagship initiative, the Rimba Collective. He brings over 10 years of experience working on sustainable land use issues and sustainable commodities in Southeast Asia. Prior to Lestari Capital, he served as the Deputy Program Director of the World Resources Institute Indonesia where he played a leading role in establishing WRI’s office in Indonesia, and managing WRI Indonesia’s agriculture, forest, and land use portfolio. This includes overseeing the development of satellite-based supply chain monitoring system, policy advocacy works on responsible supply chain, nature-based solution, climate-smart agriculture, as well as project design, proposal writing, and grant management. He is an awardee of USAID/CIFOR Master’s Degree Fellowship where he received his Master of Science in Forestry from the School of Forestry at Northern Arizona University with a published thesis on the deforestation impact of social forestry program in Indonesia.