Arild Angelsen

Arild Angelsen is a professor of economics at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and a senior associate of CIFOR. He has done extensive research and published on causes of tropical deforestation, and its interaction with poverty, tenure and government policies. Since 2007, his main focus has been on the REDD+ initiative: global architecture (in particular national reference levels), national strategies and policies, and the design and evaluation of local projects. He has edited four REDD+ books that have become standard references in the debate. Angelsen was global coordinator of the Poverty Environment Network (PEN), a CIFOR-led research programme collecting detailed information from 8 000 households in 24 developing countries on forest uses and management. More recent work uses field experiments to study human behaviour and the impact of policy interventions for sustainable resource use. He has broad field experience from Southeast Asia and Eastern Africa, and is editor of a book on field research methods. Angelsen has lived in Norway, Uganda, Indonesia, the USA, Australia and Spain.