About us
IUFRO's Special Programme for Developing Countries is managed by a small group of people working at the IUFRO-Headquarters in Vienna, Austria, the Secretariat of APAFRI at the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and at CATIE, in Turrialba, Costa Rica.
Michael Kleine, Coordinator of IUFRO-SPDC, is a forestry graduate of the University of Agricultural Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria. He obtained his Doctoral Degree and Habilitation in Silviculture from the same University. Over sixteen years he has participated in natural forest research and management through residential assignments in Austria, Pakistan and Malaysia. His work focused on forest growth and yield, ecosystem modelling and systems analysis, forest management planning, and silviculture under forest conditions ranging from central Europe, through seasonal Asia, into perhumid South East Asia. He also worked as free-lance forestry consultant on various short-term assignments in auditing of sustainable forest management, growth and yield modelling, training and education, and project evaluations for national and international agencies in Asia and Central America. Michael Kleine has been Coordinator of IUFRO-SPDC since 2001.
Sim Heok-Choh, Regional Coordinator for Asia Pacific, is a mechanical engineering graduate from the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He obtained his Master and Doctoral Degrees in Forest Products from the University of Idaho, USA. Dr. Sim has been an active researcher in forest products for more than twenty years. His work focused on wood processing and utilization, and production management in forest products enterprises. He has also been involved in short term assignments in a number of countries, including Peru, Chile, the Philippines, China and Laos. He moved on to head a unit administrating consultancy and technical services of FRIM for about four years, and was also responsible for several research management activities for a couple of years before assuming the current position as Executive Director of APAFRI in 2002.
Bastiaan Louman, Regional Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, has an Ir-Degree in Agricultural Sciences with specialization in tropical silviculture and forest ecology of the Wageningen Agricultural University in the Netherlands. He has worked in training and research in tropical forest management in Papua New Guinea and Central and South America for almost 20 years. Being involved for two years in a project that assists forest concessions in Peru to achieve forest certification, he now has returned to the Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica. As associate researcher at CATIE he participates in research, education and advisory work related to forest economics, policies and management, with special emphasis on certification, model forests and the understanding of illegal logging and its implications for the forest sector in different countries in Latin America.
Regional Coordinator for Africa – N.N.
Support staff:
Margareta Khorchidi and Eva-Maria Schimpf
Administrative and support activities involve project management, accounting, travel arrangements, communication and publications including translation in English, French and Spanish.