Who we are

Daniel Nepstad
Chief Program Officer, Environmental Conservation Programs, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Former Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center, USA; Lecturer, Yale University, USA; Scientist and Visiting Professor, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil. A tropical forest ecologist, Nepstad has studied Amazon forests and strategies for their conservation for the last 21 years. His research includes forest fires and "savannization", the analysis of public policies to conserve the Amazon's natural resources, the prediction of future trends of Amazon forests and people, and the environmental certification of the region's cattle ranchers and soy farmers. In 1995, he co-founded the Amazon Institute of Environmental Studies (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia), which is now the largest independent research institution in the Amazon region.

He has published more than 75 scientific papers and several books on the Amazon. His received his doctorate in forest ecology from Yale University and in 1994 was named a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment.