THE TEAM

RACHEL WYNBERG

Rachel Wynberg began her research journey as a marine biologist, but despite her passion for this work, became frustrated with its lack of a social perspective and human dimension. Her long-held concern for environmental issues led her to pursue an environmental career at the time of the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where she was one of a handful of South Africans participating.

The heady years in the 1990s of a post-apartheid South Africa drew her to initiatives both to help the newly elected democratic government to transform land, biodiversity and environmental policies, and to strengthen the voice of civil society. She developed a keen research interest in biodiversity policy and its interface with social justice and became strongly involved in the revisioning of biodiversity laws and policies, initially in South Africa, and later elsewhere in the world.

Growing attention to the economic potential of biodiversity and the so-called “bio-economy” has led her to increasingly question the social and environmental implications of these approaches. Her research has thus evolved to focus on bio-politics, the commercialisation and trade of biodiversity, access and benefit sharing, and wider questions about governance, livelihoods, rights to resources and traditional knowledge. She also has a strong interest in agroecology and alternative agricultural futures.

Rachel is based in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town where she holds a South African Research Chair focused on Environmental and Social Dimensions of the Bio-economy. With a background in the natural and social sciences, she has a strong interest in interdisciplinarity and policy engagement across the humanities, arts and sciences. Her primary interest is to bridge the gap between theory and the real world of environmental, inequality and poverty challenges.

Co-Director

SARAH LAIRD

A forester and ethnobiologist by training, Sarah Laird’s interests cover a range of inter-related issues, including forest-based traditional knowledge, livelihoods, conservation and governance, and the commercial use of biodiversity.

Since the mid-1990s, Sarah has collaborated with local communities around Mt Cameroon on ethnobiological research and knowledge exchange programs to support and conserve threatened traditional management practices and cultural forests.
Sarah also works on the international trade of non-timber forest products (NTFPs), including their governance, certification, markets, and sustainability, and since 1990 on the ethical and conservation implications of the commercial use of biological and genetic resources, including through the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Her policy work today focuses on two pressing challenges: the implications of transformative scientific and technological advances for conservation and sustainable development; and unintended negative consequences for indigenous and rural communities of some biodiversity conservation and sustainable development law.

Co-Director

GABRIELA ALVAREZ

Based in Mexico, Gabriela Alvarez is a linguistic anthropologist and photographer. She is currently working on a manual for community-based sustainable management of non-timber forest products in collaboration with the Non-Timber Forest Products Exchange Program for South and Southeast Asia (NTFP-EP), the Non-Timber Forest Products Network in Mexico (Red-PFNM, Conacyt), and the Tropical Research Center of the University of Veracruz (CITRO-UV).

Producer

STELLA ASAHA

Stella Asaha is the coordinator, and a staff researcher, at Forests, Resources and People (FOREP), a Cameroon-based non-profit organization. Stella is a social forester with a research background in rural livelihoods, food security, and non-timber forest products. She received her BSc in Botany from the University of Calabar, Nigeria in 1996, and in 2005 a Masters Degree in Environment and Natural Resource Management at the Pan African Institute for Development, West Africa in Buea, Cameroon.

Stella has worked as a researcher and manager on a range of national, regional and global projects including the Landscape Mosaic Project (2007-2010), which included contributions to the book Collaborative Governance of Tropical Landscapes. Stella has a strong interest in engaging and training young people in rural development and natural resource management, and has mentored many students from the University of Buea and elsewhere over the years.

Research Associate

ABDON AWONO

Abdon Awono is a Cameroonian national, holding a PhD from the University Paul-Valéry of Montpellier (France). He has been working on forestry and agricultural value chain development in West and Central Africa for about 20 years. Recruited in 1997 by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) as a Research Assistant, he became Research Officer in 2007 and Senior Research Officer in 2010. Abdon has carried out numerous consultancies with many international institutions on rural development and natural resource management.

To date, he has published more than 15 papers in peer-reviewed journals, six book chapters and three edited books and many other scientific reports. Presently his impact factor (H-index) amounts to 14. He received an honour of citation of excellence in 2017 from Emerald Publishing. At CIFOR, he designed and led numerous projects across Central and West Africa. All of these projects have included administrative, financial and security management, which has allowed him to acquire planning, management and reporting skills in these fields.

Local Coordinator

ANNA DAVIS

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Anna Davis is a senior consultant who has lived and worked in Namibia for 24 years. She has worked extensively in the field of community and organisational development in Namibia, with a focus on environment and health sectors. Her work involves training and facilitation with community-based, government, non-government and private sector organisations.

Her specific areas of expertise include the design and implementation of processes and systems related to organisational development (visioning, strategic thinking and planning), monitoring and evaluation (of organisations and programmes), project design, training, materials development and organisational learning and reflection.

M&E Consultant

GRAHAM DUTFIELD

Graham Dutfield is a Professor of International Governance and founding director of the LLM in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. His research on intellectual property crosses several disciplines, including law, history, politics and philosophy. More general scholarly interests include the law, science and business of creativity and technical innovation from the enlightenment to the present, especially in the life sciences. Other research areas include intellectual property and access to knowledge, human rights, sustainable development, health, agriculture, genetics, biotechnology, traditional knowledge and bioprospecting. Graham has published numerous articles and several books including Global Intellectual Property Law (with Uma Suthersanen), and Intellectual Property Rights and the Life Science Industries: Past, Present and Future. He has a DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Intellectual Property Advisor

GUY EKANE

Guy Christol Ekane Ekome is a post-graduate student who studied Economics and Management Sciences at the University of Yaounde II. In 2017, he received a Masters Degree in Environmental Economics, Rural Development and Agribusiness with a major in Sustainable Development and Climate Change. He currently undertakes research, writes scientific articles, and plans to enter a PhD program in the near future.

Researcher

LÈANDRE ONANA ENAMA

Léandre Onana Enama is originally from Nkolntsiba in the central region of Cameroon. After completing his primary studies at the Voa 2 Catholic School, he obtained his Secondary School certificate in Mathematics, Life and Earth Sciences in 2010 from Ngoumou High School. The same year, he joined the Earth Sciences Department in the Faculty of Science at the University of Yaoundé, where he attained his Bachelor Degree in 2014. He holds a Masters Degree in Geosciences with a dissertation titled “Applied Geophysics to Hydrogeology” which he defended at the University of Yaoundé in 2017. In addition, his education has been enriched by a training seminar in the framework of the MINFORCAM/ GEOFORAFRI project at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in December 2014. He is currently completing an online course on sustainable development.

Researcher

JOSEPH FUMTIM

Joseph Fumtim is an editor, writer and film director. He is in charge of communication at the French Research Institute for Development in Cameroon where he has produced a number of scientific documentaries. Joseph Fumtim is a founding member of the IFRIKIYA Publishing House, where he directs a collection named “Interlignes”, specialised in essay and biography editing. He is also a founding member of the monthly magazine called “Mosaïques”, which features arts and cultures in Africa. Until 2017, he was the director of publication of “Mosaïques”. To date, Joseph has published several books and scientific articles focused on cultural industries (music and cinema), communication and scientific advocacy and culture. He was awarded the “Mil d’Argent” prize in Burkina Faso in 2011 for his documentary film entitled “L’ulcère de Buruli entre Sciences et Croyances”.

Videographer

MYLES JEWELL

Myles David Jewell is a freelance filmmaker and content creator who splits time between Brooklyn, NY and Burlington, VT. He runs Pennington Productions and works independently on both feature documentaries and narrative films.

Experimenting with form and content, Myles feels it is important to have a relationship between theory and practice. To engage with film theory, Myles teaches at the University level as well as for a cultural institution, The Vermont Folklife Center where he helps to build out the education program, Discovering Community, as a digital media instructor, media literacy advocate, and educational outreach consultant.

Myles earned a Master of Arts in Cinema Studies from New York University and an Advanced Certificate from The Program in Culture and Media. His scholarship focuses on the tension between fiction and non-fiction and is rooted in Ethnographic approaches to media. He believes firmly in the ethics of representation and collaborative approaches to media production, while his practice fluctuates between minimal resource filmmaking and larger more technical productions.

Filmmaker

CITLALLI LOPEZ

Citlalli Lopez (Mexico), anthropologist, coordinator of the Tropical Research Center, CITRO, of the University of Veracruz, Mexico. Citlalli has published the series of books Riches of the Forest, the first CIFOR publication aimed at civil society. Currently she collaborates with several NGO, research centers and local associations on socio-cultural issues and related to the management of natural resources in Mexico, especially in the context of crafts.

Local Coordinator

VUYISWA LUPUWANA

Vuyiswa Lupuwana is passionate about using film for social change in society, particularly because there are voices which continue to remain absent from the media landscape. She believes that film can become a powerful tool not only for storytelling but for empowering communities who have been disadvantaged historically. Vuyiswa is currently undertaking her PhD in Archaeology at the University of Cape Town, this will be based on a documentary on Khoesan identity in South Africa. On Voices for Biojustice, Vuyiswa is responsible for filming the video and webinar footage from South Africa.

Videographer

STHEMBILE NDWANDWE

Sthembile Ndwandwe comes from KwaXimba – a rural town in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She completed her Masters Degree in Agricultural Extension and Rural Resource Management at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her research focused on the contribution of indigenous knowledge practices to food security in five villages in KwaZulu-Natal. She then joined the Environmental Leaders Programme at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), South Africa. At WWF she worked with the Labour Unions, and for the large part of the programme she was involved in the Biodiversity and Wine Initiative (Sustainable Agriculture). For the past three and half years she was coordinating the implementation of the National Recordal System in the Western Cape. This project is a Department of Science and Technology initiative which documents indigenous knowledge held by communities for its protection, utilisation, preservation and promotion. Sthembile is very passionate about peoples’ interaction with the environment, especially within the contexts of economic production and rural development. Her PhD focuses on the mass cultivation of indigenous biological resources for commercialisation.

PhD Student

ANDRÉ NDZIE

André Marie Ndzie Ndzobo is a Cameroonian postgraduate student. He studied Economics and Management Sciences at the University of Yaounde II Soa, and received a Masters Degree in Environmental Economics, Rural Development and Agri-food. For the last year, he has worked on food security, and undertaken research on environmental product value chains.

Researcher

PANGRACE NGONO

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Pangrace Ngono is a Cameroonian postgraduate student born in Nkoltsogo in the central region of Cameroon. After her primary school studies in Yaoundé, she went to the Government High School Mballa 2 where she obtained her Baccalaureat (GCE A Level) in Biology in 2009. The University of Yaoundé II Soa opened the doors to her, where she studied Economics up to 2017. She obtained her Masters Degree in Environmental Economics, Rural Development and Agri-food from Yaoundé II Soa University. She is attached to the unit on Sustainable Economics and Climate Change. Her dissertation was carried out on: “The Contribution of Non-Wood Forest Products in food security: the case of raphia larva in the East Region”. She is currently writing a journal article based on her Masters thesis and hopes to have it published soon.

Researcher

KAREN NOTT

Karen Nott is a Namibian and is passionate about the Namib Desert and its plants. She is married with two children and lives in Omaruru, Namibia.

Karen has been employed by IRDNC since 2001 and has worked mostly in the conservancies and community forests adjacent to the Skeleton Coast National Park. She is currently the technical advisor for the IRDNC Indigenous Natural Products teams providing training and technical support to producer and processor groups in these remote rural areas of northern Namibia.

Karen started her career within the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia and much of the focus of her work has been on desert plants. She is the author of a wide range of educational materials and has been involved in both formal and informal training programmes throughout Namibia. She has also been involved in environmental training and development work in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa and Botswana.

IRDNC Representative

MICHELLE NOTT

Michelle Nott is a Masters student in the Environmental and Geographical Science Department at the University of Cape Town. She completed her Honours degree at Rhodes University in 2015. Her passion and appreciation for the environment originated from a very young age, but it was only when she visited Namibia in 2014, that she realised that natural resource use was of great interest to her.

This visit fuelled her enthusiasm to understand the use of natural resources by local communities and how this contributes to their livelihoods and ecological sustainability. For her Honours project she looked at fuelwood preferences, use and availability in #Khomani San resettlement farms in the southern Kalahari, South Africa. Currently, her interests are focused on the commercialisation of natural resources and how the “benefits” from their use are distributed among different actors along various value chains.

Her Masters study is closely linked to the Voices for BioJustice project because it focuses on access and benefit sharing (ABS) and the commercialisation of the resurrection bush (Myrothamnus flabellifolia), exploring value chains associated with the plant and the range of ABS approaches adopted across Southern Africa.

Masters Student

NOEL OETTLÉ

Noel Oettlé is the Rural Programme Manager for the Environmental Monitoring Group and is based in the village of Nieuwoudtville in the Northern Cape. He attended university in Cape Town, and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Agricultural Development from the University of London.

His work focuses on facilitating learning processes to enable marginalised rural people to improve the quality of their lives by enhancing their livelihoods through the sustainable use of natural resources, local institutional development and improved market access.

This includes providing support to small-scale producers to conserve biodiversity in their production systems, adapt their land use practices to climatic variability, establish co-operatives and enter global markets with organic and Fairtrade certified products. Noel also supports capacity development of practitioners facilitating adaptation by communities affected by climate change.

EMG Representative

TSAFACK DONKENG ROMARIC

A Cameroonian national, Tsafack Donkeng Romaric holds a Masters Degree in Economics, Sustainable Development and Climate Change from the University of SOA. He has been working on forestry value chains, especially the evaluation of the contribution of NTFPs to the livelihoods of forest-based communities around the Dja Faunal Reserve. Recruited in September 2017 by Tropical Forest and Rural Development as a research assistant, he has been working on the publication of two articles respectively titled: “An integrated model of the sustainable valorisation of NTFPs on the livelihood assets of local people at the northern periphery of the Dja Faunal Reserve”, and “Analysis of sustainable cocoa intensification on the livelihoods of farmer families at the periphery of the Dja Faunal Reserve in the eastern region of Cameroon”. Tsafack also has skills in carrying out socio-economic research and the development of business plans.

Researcher

DANIEL SEDAS

Daniel Sedas (Mexico), self-taught videographer and Photography graduate from the University of Veracruz, Mexico. As a photographer he has dedicated several years to documenting the progressing urbanization of his hometown. He mainly works with video production; his most recent and important projects involve the documentation of leftwing governments in Bolivia and Venezuela among other commercial, artistic and musical productions.

Videographer

DINGHA ANNETTE TOHYONGHA

Dingha Annette Tohyongha is a holder of a BSc in agriculture from the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Buea and is currently enrolled for an M. Sc. Degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Management at the Faculty of Science, University of Buea.
She has been actively involved with Forests, Resources and People (FOREP) for over 3 years, first as a volunteer and more recently as a research assistant. In addition to carrying out research, she has been involved in community outreach and livelihoods development projects in rural communities across the South West region of Cameroon.

Student Researcher

JACI VAN NIEKERK

Jaci van Niekerk completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Stellenbosch, majoring in zoology and genetics. After that she set off to travel and work her way around the world, spending a total of seven years exploring countries, languages, cultures, and particularly cuisines (!) in Europe, the Middle East, Australasia, and Asia. She returned to South Africa in 2007, whereupon she completed an MPhil Degree in Environmental Management at the University of Cape Town.

Her Masters dissertation examined the contribution of the international trade in an endemic medicinal plant – Pelargonium sidoides, to rural livelihoods in South Africa and Lesotho. She started working at the Environmental Evaluation Unit in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science (EGS) in 2009, conducting research into the commercial use of southern African biodiversity and traditional knowledge, and investigating ways in which to protect, promote and enhance the rights of small-scale farmers.

Currently a Junior Research Fellow in the EGS Department, she has recently started her PhD which will examine the role of wild edible plants in the foodways of marginalised people in the Cederberg mountains. As part of the organisational team for the Voices for BioJustice project, she will be involved in the coordination of activities and meetings and the compilation of progress reports.

Project Coordinator

THE TEAM

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