William Sunderlin

William Sunderlin "is a Senior Researcher working with the Rights and Resources Group (RRG). His work at RRG involves monitoring poverty and forest tenure trends, analysis of the relationship between human wellbeing and forest resources, and research on alternatives to the concession system.  He got a PhD in rural sociology from Cornell University in 1993.  His PhD thesis was on the Indonesian state and equity in the Java Social Forestry Program.  In 1993 he did a post-doctoral fellowship at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management on subsistence fishing in the context of resource decline in the Philippines.  From 1994 to 2006 he worked at the Centre for International Forestry (CIFOR) in Indonesia.  There he conducted research on the underlying causes of tropical deforestation (1994-1999), took a sabbatical leave to write the book Ideology, Social Theory, and the Environment (2000-2001), and then investigated the potential for poverty alleviation through use of forest resources (2001-2006). He was Program Leader of CIFOR’s Program on Forests, Society and Policy in 2002 and in 2003-2006 he coordinated CIFOR’s research on poverty alleviation. He has conducted field research in Nicaragua, Honduras, Cameroon, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam."