About us

IUFRO's Special Programme for Development of Capacitiesis managed by a small group of people working at the IUFRO Headquarters in Vienna, Austria.


Michael Kleine, Coordinator of IUFRO-SPDC, is a forestry graduate of the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria. He obtained his Doctoral Degree and Habilitation in Silviculture from the same University. Since 1985 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 has also worked as free-lance forestry consultant on various short-term assignments in auditing of sustainable forest management of natural forests and timber plantations (forest and land-use planning, growth and yield modelling, silviculture, forest certification and carbon accounting), training and education, project evaluations for national and international agencies in Asia and Central America as well as forest organization and forest policy for the German Development Agency GIZ, the FAO and the European Commission, among others. Michael Kleine has been Coordinator of IUFRO-SPDC since 2001 and since 2010 holds the position of Deputy Executive Director of IUFRO.


Janice Burns, Deputy Coordinator of IUFRO's Special Programme for Development of Capacities (SPDC), also holds the position of Thematic Networking Manager at IUFRO, where she plays an active role in building and maintaining relationships with IUFRO’s partners. Janice has experience in various regions with specializations ranging from remote sensing and fire management to forest landscape restoration and forest education. She formerly held roles as a professional wildland firefighter and aviation coordinator in Canada. Janice served as deputy coordinator of the Joint IUFRO-IFSA Task Force on Forest Education from 2016-2018. In 2018, she led an effort by IUFRO and the World Bank Program on Forests with the aim of improving the understanding of the complex interrelations between wildfire, climate, and land management, and of identifying urgently required response strategies and actions. In 2019, she helped coordinate a major scientific analysis of the progress in forest landscape restoration in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Madagascar, Mongolia, and Peru. Over the past five years she has organised multiple international events, e.g. in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Rwanda and Sri Lanka, connecting forest practitioners, scientists, and policy makers to share knowledge needed for restoring degraded forest landscapes and managing them sustainably in future. She holds a joint Masters degree in European Forestry from the University of Eastern Finland and AgroParisTech, France, and a Bachelor’s degree in Forest Resources Management from the University of British Columbia, Canada.


Support staff:
Eva-Maria Schimpf
Administrative and support activities involve project management, accounting, travel arrangements, meeting organization, communication and publications including proof-reading and translation in English and Spanish.