Chen focuses on forest product trading and investment, especially forest certification and timber legality. She has contributed to the development of China's Timber Legality Verification Scheme and Standard and the Chinese Due Diligence System, providing her expertise in international and national forestry policy and her insight into China's timber manufacturing sector.

 

Unwin is a lawyer with ClientEarth, an EU based, public-interest environmental law organisation. She leads ClientEarth's work on addressing the drivers of deforestation, which focuses on supporting the improved design and operation of relevant EU laws. Working in the EU and internationally, over the last three years Unwin has had a particular focus on the implementation and operation of the EU Timber Regulation in the EU, and on communicating its implications and the opportunities it creates for government, industry and civil society internationally. This work also aims to support legal reform in forest governance, and in particular the role of civil society in that reform, especially in the context of Voluntary Partnership Agreements. She has previously worked as a commercial, corporate and regulatory lawyer and she holds degrees in Geography, Law and International Environmental Law.

Hinrichs is a forester working at Germany's Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Food since 1997. He has been responsible for different topics, from forest reproductive material to rural development. Since 2010 he has been working at the European and International Forest Policy division. He is in charge of the EU Forest Policy and one of his main tasks is the national implementation of the FLEGT Regulation and the EU Timber Regulation.

 

Furones is a governance and communications expert at the EU FLEGT Facility. She has worked on forest governance and human rights for more than15 years, with a focus on multi-stakeholder processes, policy development, international advocacy and capacity building. She has extensive experience in forest-rich countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and has previously worked with Global Witness, where she pioneered Independent Forest Monitoring initiatives in Honduras and Nicaragua, implemented an international project calling for increased transparency in the forest sector, and engaged on climate change negotiations. She holds an MSc in Conservation and a degree in Environmental Sciences.

Busink is senior policy advisor international forest policy affairs at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. He was involved as lead negotiator in negotiating the EU timber Regulation (2007-2010) and its implementation (2010-2012). In addition to these activities he was also involved in discussions on forest finance and in negotiations on Legally Binding Agreement on Forest In the Paneuropean region. Last year he was Chair of the International Tropical Timber Council, the governing body of the International Tropical Timber Agreement. He is currently chair of the FAO European Forestry Commission. Busink is tropical forester. He trained at Wageningen Agriculture University.

Feehan is a forest sector and natural resource management specialist who works on the European Investment Bank's portfolio of investments in the forestry and agriculture sectors. Throughout her work she has an interest in sustainable land use and the challenge of meeting future primary resource needs in an increasingly resource-constrained world, and in the cross-sectoral task of understanding and meeting the investment needs that arise from this. Prior to joining the Bank Jane worked with the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen, where she specialised on impacts of climate change on biodiversity; agri-environmental policy design; and policy effectiveness analysis. She has also worked with the Irish Environmental Protection Agency and the European Commission (DG ENV). 

Kate Horner is the Director of Forest Campaigns for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) US in Washington, DC. She oversees a team that together conducts investigations of illegal timber trade, supports local partners' capacity strengthening and advocates for enactment and implementation of demand side measures. Previously, she was the Trade and Forest Policy Analyst at Friends of the Earth US, where she served as an expert at multiple United Nations and World Bank meetings and as an advisor to several developing country governments. She also served on the Citizen Trade Campaign's Executive Committee, guiding national trade policy advocacy strategies. She has authored several policy papers related to forest and climate policy as well as on the negative impacts of trade and investment agreements. She has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and The New York Times. She also has experience as a political campaign manager, community organizer, researcher and editor.

Rupert Oliver is Lead Consultant to the FLEGT Independent Market Monitoring (IMM) Project. IMM is a multi-year project supervised by the International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO) and financed by the EU to support VPA implementation. The IMM objective is to monitor how the EU and wider international market for FLEGT licensed timber develops during the life of the VPA. IMM also aims to build on the opportunity presented by the development of legality assurance systems to improve the quality of timber trade statistics and effectiveness of timber market development programmes for timber from VPA countries. Rupert Oliver has been an independent consultant to the international timber industry for 20 years, specialising in analysis of trade flows, consumption patterns and impacts of policy instruments to promote legal and sustainable forestry practices.