Theme : Forests, Societies and bioeconomy
Tuyeni Heita Mwampamba is a native Tanzanian who was trained as an ecologist at the University of California Davis, USA. She is currently the Science Director for Africa of The Nature Conservancy. Prior to joining TNC, she was a tenured research professor at the Institute for Ecosystems and Sustainability Research (IIES) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) where she headed the Ecology and Social Dimensions of Community Forestry Laboratory. Over the past 20 years, Prof. Mwampamba has focused on describing and measuring social and ecological sustainability of charcoal systems in Mexico and East Africa and studying the effects of dominant charcoal narratives on energy and environmental policies. Consistently on the hunt for ways to increase community involvement in natural resource management and decision-making, she has co-developed participatory methodologies and assisted numerous national and international NGOs, communities and local governments to meaningfully involve local communities in assessing the value of proposed interventions, particularly REDD+ programs. Comfortable with both ecological and social science methods, her interests have recently expanded to explore all dimensions of plurality in knowledge generation, including indigenous research methods and to understand the challenges of knowledge integration in socio-ecological research; decolonizing tropical ecosystems and conservation science; and increasing stakeholder participation in scientific processes through transdisciplinary research. In 2019 she was awarded the Beacon Award in recognition of her contributions to conservation with communities. She is a Earth Leadership Fellow and has served as Fellow and Coordinating Lead Author in IPBES Assessments. She is currently the president of the Association for Tropical Ecology and Conservation.
Theme : Forest ecology and management
Born on the slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Professor August Basil Temu enjoyed his early childhood in the neighbourhood of forests and practiced the famous Chagga home gardening better known as agroforestry. It is therefore no surprise that on completion of his high school Education he chose to study forestry at Makerere University in Uganda, graduating in 1973. He was immediately recruited to serve as a tutorial assistant in Forestry at the then University of Dares Salaam (UDSM) campus based in Morogoro, Tanzania. In 1975-76 he studied for his Master of Science (Forestry) degree specializing in Forest Resources Assessment in a sandwich programme at the then Agricultural University of Norway and the University of Dar es Salaam. In 1977 he embarked on PhD studies at The University of California Berkeley specializing in forest statistics and inventory, and graduated at the UDSM in 1980. He was then appointed as the first Tanzanian Head of the Forestry Division at UDSM, for the period 1980-84. In 1984he was elected as the first Dean of the Faculty of Forestry at the newly established Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA). In July 1987 he was appointed as FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) expert to help establish Forestry Education at the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. He later served as the project’s Chief Technical Advisor. In 1990 he re-joined SUA to teach forestry and was additionally tasked to serve as the first director of the university’s computer centre. In December 1992 he joined ICRAF as the Global Leader of Training and Education in Agroforestry. He focused his work on the development of curricula and learning resources for universities and technical colleges. For this, he established networks of educators in agroforestry and related sciences, most notably the African Network for Agroforestry education (ANAFE), the South East Asian Network for Agroforestry Education (SEANAFE) and the Latin America Network for Agroforestry Network (LANAFE). To communicate effectively in these global networks he learnt to communicate in various additional languages, mainly French and Spanish. At ICRAF he was elevated to the position of Deputy Director General in 2010, a position he held until he retired in 2014. He was immediately tasked to lead the organization and management of the third World Congress on Agroforestry in New Delhi, India. At this conference, the International Union for Agroforestry (IUAF) was launched for the first time. In 2018-2019 he was engaged by FAO to review Tanzania’s Forest Policy. From 2017 to 2024 he served as the Board Chair of the College of Forestry Wildlife and Tourism at Sokoine University of Agriculture.
• 1981 to date: Served as IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) global mentor of forestry students.
• Certificates of distinguished service in forestry education in 1996 by Makerere University (Uganda), in 1998 by Sokoine University of Agriculture (Tanzania)
• 2000 - Formally admitted as a permanent fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA) a lifetime honour
• 2006 The University of Ibadan nominated me to deliver a public lecture under Special Rockefeller Foundation Lecture Series
• 2012-2018: Served as chair of Global Steering Committee, Forest Farm Facility, FAO.
• 2015-2020: Certificates of distinguished service: by ICRAF, African Forest Forum and ANAFE.
• Publications: Over 70 professional publications in forestry and educations, and many more writings (books, reports and proceedings of conferences).