Joe Morrison

Joe Morrison is the Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Land Council, Australia, an independent statutory authority responsible for assisting Aboriginal peoples in the Top End of the Northern Territory to acquire and manage their traditional lands and seas. Mr Morrison was born and raised in Katherine and hasDagoman and Torres Strait Islander heritage. He was the founding Chief Executive Officer of the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance. Mr Morrison nurtured the development of NAILSMA from a small unit within a large western science-focused research institution, to the nationally recognised Aboriginal institution operating across tropical northern Australia.Mr Morrison has authored and co-authored many articles relating to Indigenous rights, management of country,  economic development and northern Australian development.

Jeremy Russell-Smith

Professor Jeremy Russell-Smith is is a consultant ecologist with 25 years’ experience in northern Australia. He coordinates fire research programs for the Darwin Centre for Bushfire Research and works on other natural resource management projects in South-East Asia. He has an abiding interest in the ecology, biogeography and management of monsoon rainforests and sandstone heaths. He often works with Indigenous people on landscape and resource management issues. Professor Russell-Smith has authored several articles and book on traditional and methodology based fire management and is a leading global expert in this field.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and an indigenous leader from the Kankanaey Igorot people of the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. She is a social development consultant, indigenous activist, civic leader, human rights expert, public servant, and an advocate of women’s rights in the Philippines.

Ms Tauli-Corpuz was the former Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2005-2010). As an indigenous leader she got actively engaged in drafting and adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. She helped build the indigenous peoples’ movement in the Cordillera as a youth activist in the early 1970s. She helped organize indigenous peoples in the community level to fight against the projects of the Marcos Dictatorship such as the Chico River Hydroelectric Dam and the Cellophil Resources Corporation. These communities succeeded in stopping these.

Ms Tauli-Corpuz is the founder and executive director of Tebtebba Foundation (Indigenous Peoples’ International Center for Policy Research and Education). She has founded and managed various NGOs involved in social awareness raising, climate change, the advancement of indigenous peoples’ and women’s rights. A member of the Kankana-ey Igorat peoples, she was the chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She is an Expert for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and has served as the chairperson-rapporteur of the Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations. She is also the indigenous and gender adviser of the Third World Network and a member of United Nations Development Programme Civil Society Organizations Advisory Committee.

Pieter Van-Lierop

Mr. Pieter Van Lierop is a Forestry Officer responsible for the Fire Management Program within the Food and Agriculture organisation of the United Nations. Mr Van Lierop is based in FAO’s Rome office, with experience implementing FAO’s fire management related activities across the world.

Ad Hoc Expert Members

José M.C. Pereira

José M.C. Pereira is Full Professor at the Department of Natural Resources, Environment , and Land, School of Agriculture (ISA) , Technical University of Lisbon (UTL) where he teaches courses in forest ecology and management, and environmental remote sensing. He has an undergraduate degree in forestry from ISA/UTL and a Ph.D. in Renewable Natural Resources Studies from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on remote sensing of burned areas, landscape ecology of fire, estimation of emissions from biomass burning, and global pyrogeography.

Guido van der Werf

Professor Guido van der Werf is a University Research Chair at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He has developed the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California (Irvine) and NASA. This database aims to estimate emissions from fires at continental and global scales using satellite data. His group explores the impact fires have on climate and air quality, and he is interested in better understanding the spatial and temporal dynamics of fires in general, and of savanna fires in particular.