Thaís Linhares-Juvenal

Thaís Linhares-Juvenal

Team Leader Sustainable Forestry, Value Chain Innovation Stream; Secretary of the International Commission on Poplars and Other Fast-Growing Trees Sustainning People and the Environment (IPC), Forestry Division - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Smallholder Planted Forest and Trees for Climate, Restored Landscapes and Livelihoods

Virtual Event

January 17, 2023 - 12:15 PM

It is estimated that 75% of all people outside urban areas live within 1 km of a forest. It is also estimated that 4.35 billion ha of forest and farm landscapes, i.e. approximately 31% of global land, are controlled (owned or managed) by smallholders, local communities, and Indigenous Peoples. Such estimates indicate the need of considering socioeconomic benefits and, in particular, smallholder producers when advancing environmental and production goals. Planted forests are instrumental to support the expansion of the bioeconomy, restoring ecosystems, and achieving carbon neutrality. However, planted forests are only 7% of global forest area and the rate of increase in planted forest area has declined in recent years. Expansion of planted forests at the scale needed to meet the global objectives will necessarily include smallholders, due to physical feasibility (area availability, participation of smallholder properties in degraded ecosystems) and social legitimacy (net benefits at ground level). Assessing the opportunities, challenges, and available means of implementation (policies, technology, and finance) to expand forest and tree planting in smallholder property if the objective of this Yale series. This presentation will introduce an overview of the topic bringing the most recent global evidence to contextualize smallholder forest and tree planting.

Speaker Biography

Thaís Linhares-Juvenal, Brazilian, economist, Senior Forestry Officer and Team Leader of the Sustainable Forestry Value Chain Innovation and Investment stream in the Forestry Division of FAO. As part of her portfolio, Thais is the Secretary of the International Commission on Poplars and Other Fast-Growing Trees Sustaining People and the Environment (IPC), a treaty-based statutory body within the framework of the FAO, with the objective of reducing poverty and improving ecosystem services worldwide by fostering the sustainable management of fast-growing trees. Thais is also the FAO leader of the initiative “Sustainable Wood for a Sustainable World” (SW4SW), which articulates governance, economics, finance, and scientific evidence to promote inclusive sustainable wood value chains and increase forest contributions to the SDGs and climate change objectives.  

Thais’ career has a mix of experiences in finance, national policy-making, and global environmental governance for forests and climate change. She joined FAO in 2011, initially serving as Senior Officer of the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat, directly in charge of the UN-REDD Global Programme, from 2011 to 2015. She then moved to FAO’s Headquarters to lead the Forest Governance and Economics team. Before that, in Brazil, she served as Director of Climate Change at the Brazilian Ministry of Environment, leading the development and implementation of some of the pillars of the Brazilian climate change governance: the Amazon Fund, the Brazilian Climate Change Strategy, the National Climate Change Fund, as well as the national consultations for the formulation of a national REDD+ strategy.  As Director of the Brazilian Forest Service responsible for planning, forest development, and climate change, she was responsible for the National Annual Program for Forest Concessions, the National Commission for Public Forests, and the National Forest Commission, and served as Executive Secretary of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Amazon Fund. During her tenure at the Ministry of Environment and the Brazilian Forest Service Thais served as lead negotiator for REDD+ in the UNFCCC, and represented Brazil in the World Bank Climate Change Funds Committee. In the first phase of her career, Thais worked for 14 years at the Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), in several executive positions, including in the environmental, regional, and forest industry departments.

Thais holds an MSc in environmental governance and regulation from the London School of Economics and Political Science – LSE, a graduate degree in economics from the University of São Paulo, and a bachelor’s degree in economic science from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Event Video