Gary Dunning
Executive Director, The Forest School; Executive Director, The Forests Dialogue
Gary is the Executive Director of The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment. His primary responsibilities center on strategic planning, institutional collaborations, communications, and programming. Gary also lectures at the School on stakeholder engagement, leadership in the forest sector and timely issues in forestry.
He is the founding Executive Director of The Forests Dialogue (TFD). TFD was created in 2000 to provide global forest leaders with a neutral, multi-stakeholder dialogue (MSD) platform and process focused on developing mutual trust and a shared understanding while working towards collaborative solutions to the challenges in achieving sustainable forest management and forest conservation around the world. Gary previously served as the Director of the Yale Forest Forum from 1998-2000. He holds an MF degree from the Yale School of the Environment and a BA in Geography & Natural Resources from Humboldt State University.
Background on The Forests Dialogue
The Forests Dialogue (TFD), formed in 1999, is an outgrowth of dialogues begun under the auspices of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, The World Bank and The World Resources Institute. These dialogues converged to create TFD when leaders decided there needed to be an on-going, civil society driven, multi-stakeholder dialogue platform to address important global forestry issues. Its mission and purpose is to bring key leaders together to build relationships based on trust, commitment and understanding and generate substantive discussion on key issues related to achieving sustainable forest management around the world. TFD's dialogues offer a transparent forum to share aspirations and learning and to seek ways to take collaborative action on the highest priority forest conservation and management issues. TFD's Steering Committee, comprised of international forest and biodiversity leaders, oversee the governance of TFD and the planning and execution of its dialogues. There are 22 members of the TFD SC from the major stakeholder groups including private landowners, forest products industry, ENGOs, retailers, aid organizations, unions, and academia. TFD is developing and conducting international multi-stakeholder dialogues on the following issues:
- Forest Certification
- Illegal Logging and Forest Governance
- Intensive Forest Management
- Forests and Biodiversity Conservation
- Forests and Poverty Reduction
More information at www.theforestsdialogue.org or info@theforestsdialogue.org
Education
BA, Humboldt State University, 1991
MF, Yale University, 1996