Dr Bentval Ravindra Prabhu

The CFA is pleased to announce that the winner of the Queen's Award for Forestry 2005 is Dr Bentval Ravindra Prabhu of CIFOR, Zimbabwe.

Dr. Ravi Prabhu has made outstanding contributions to work on the Criteria and Indicators of Sustainable Forest Management, both globally and in many specific countries. He has also been a pioneering champion of moving from a rule based approach to forest management to an adaptive approach, where how one manages a forest changes over time as the objectives, context, and condition of the forest change. Dr. Prabhu has a firm commitment to and belief in transforming public sector forestry institutions into more dynamic, transparent and accountable, learning–based organizations. He works tirelessly to encourage and mentor young developing country scientists, and many young leaders in Asia and Africa have benefited greatly from their relation to him. His work has taken him to many countries; and in each one the forestry professionals always speak highly of him. He is well known in international forestry circles, and organizations such as FAO, ITTO, and the World Bank. That is one reason that he was recently appointed to be a member of the task force on environmental sustainable of the United Nation’s Millennium Project, established by Koffi Annan and led by Jeffrey Sachs. He is a good and prolific writer, but an even better speaker, teacher, and facilitator. While he has a classical forestry training, he is truly multidisciplinary himself, and an excellent leader of multidisciplinary teams. Although he has worked with industrial forestry, community forestry, and government bureaucracies, he is at his best when he works on how to bring these different groups together. He is truly creative and is always looking for new 'out of the box' ways to do things, which often prove successful. Since finishing his doctoral degree at the University of Gottingen in Germany in 1994, Dr. Prabhu has spent most of the last ten years at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), where he is widely acknowledged to be one of the Center’s leading figures, who has been responsible for many of its most important achievements. Dr. Prabhu is Indian by birth and nationality, but he has also contributed greatly to the forestry sectors of a number of other commonwealth countries, including Ghana, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.

Click here for more information on the Queen's Award for Forestry.