About Community Forestry International Fri, Oct 19 2007

Who We Are - What We Do - Board of Directors - Contact - CFI Annual Reports

Board of Directors

Mark Poffenberger, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Community Forestry International and the former founder and Executive Director of Asia Forest Network. Dr. Poffenberger specializes in natural resource management with an emphasis on community forestry. He draws upon a number of disciplines in his work including agro-ecology, anthropology, forest practice, public administration, land use planning, and economics. His perspective on development has been shaped by twenty years of residence in Asia, five of which have been in villages in Nepal, India, and Indonesia. He has conducted research, designed, evaluated, and implemented development programs in the fields of forest and water management, agro-ecology, population dynamics and rural employment. He has worked extensively with government agencies, universities, local and international non-governmental organizations, bilateral donors, and multinational development banks.

From 1961-1973, Dr. Poffenberger lived and studied in India and Nepal. From 1987-1991 Dr. Poffenberger was a Ford Foundation program officer based in New Delhi, responsible for assisting with the development of India's JFM policy and program initiative. Throughout the 1990s, Dr. Poffenberger continued to work closely with the Office of the Inspector General of Forests, GOI and published widely on India's evolving JFM program. He has written numerous articles addressing CFM issues and has recently published Community Forestry in Southeast Asia (2006). Other books include Village Voices, Forest Choices (1996), Keepers of the Forest (1990), and Patterns of Change in the Nepal Himalaya (1980).