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> Natural Resources research group

Duncan Macqueen

Principal researcher and leader (forests), Natural Resources

Duncan Macqueen is an expert on forest enterprise issues and local to global governance processes that affect forests. He is currently the team leader on forests within IIED, overseeing work under an overall goal of ‘resilient forests, prosperous people’.
Full biography

Duncan Macqueen is an experienced forest research and development practitioner. He has delivered impacts in collaborative programmes across 30-plus countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

He has been a conceptual pioneer in the design and implementation of programmes to sustain locally-controlled forest business. Impacts have included new: (i) agroforestry system improvements; (ii) funding facilities for forest and farm producer organisations; (iii) training tools and programmes for business start-up development, risk self-assessment and business incubation; (iv) labelling options for fair trade forest businesses; (v) tiered organisational structures between producer groups that aggregate product and power; (vi) effective policy advocacy positions; and (vii) knowledge and learning products for a range of audiences.

Over the last 27 years he has authored academic, practical and policy outputs covering agroforestry tree improvement, locally-controlled forest business, forest-linked organisations, value chain developments (in timber, non-timber forest products, biomass energy and ecotourism), forest climate strategies, forest governance and forest development ethics. Recent books include titles such as ‘Democratising Forest Business’ and ‘Forest Business Incubation’.

A forest botanist by training, his interests lie in ‘diverse, creative, solidarity’. By this he means work that empowers varied local groups to articulate their own hopes for prosperity, design enterprise models to pursue those hopes, and stand together to represent their hopes in policy and decision-making processes. He set up and helps manage the Forest Connect alliance that shares knowledge on how best to support locally controlled forest enterprises.  

He is currently both principal researcher and team leader of the forest team, and acts as knowledge manager within the co-management team for the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) together with partners from FAO, IUCN and Agricord.

Expertise

Forest business incubation approaches for locally controlled forest enterprises; access to finance for such enterprises; risk self-assessment processes; forests and climate action; governance tactics and approaches for improving locally controlled forestry; innovations in forest ethics.

Before IIED

Deputy programme manager for the UK government Department for International Development’s (DFID) Forestry Research Programme; DFID technical cooperation officer assigned to Embrapa Amazonia Oriental in Brazil; student of theology; research ffficer for the Oxford Forestry Institute operating in Central America.

Education
MSc in Forestry and its relation to land use from Oxford University (Magdalen College); MA in Botany from Oxford University (Magdalen College); two-year diploma in theology from Oxford University (Wycliffe Hall).

Current work

Organisational structures for business, policy representation, forest restoration and social and cultural service provision that can best serve the needs of local forest producers; access to finance for forest producer groups; prosperity for forest producer groups and the role of youth transitions to work and migration in delivering prosperity.

Duncan Macqueen's picture
Telephone: 
+44 (0) 131 300 0166
Email: 
duncan.macqueen@iied.org
Twitter: @DuncanMacqueen
ResearchGate
Google Scholar
 
Languages: English, Portuguese and Spanish (basic)

Duncan Macqueen's projects

The Forest and Farm Facility is now working with Ecuador forest farm producers such as this bamboo production business

Forest and Farm Facility Phase II

Project, Mar 2019
Ghanaian women working in a micro enterprise shell cocoa, one of the commodities driving deforestation in western Ghana. These enterprises need targeted access to finance to adopt sustainable production systems that can contribute to halting deforestation and improving livelihoods (Photo: Tom Blomley)

Evaluation and Learning Partnership on Financing Forest-Related Enterprises

Project, Feb 2018
Reforestation program in Guatemala (Photo: Enrique Varahona)

Forest and Farm Facility Phase I

Project, May 2014
Two forest farmers from Ghana, including the head of a local community forest group, alongside some cocoa beans (Photo: Duncan Macqueen/IIED)

Integrating forests into the post-2015 development framework

Project, May 2014
Lush forests in Ghana – one of the focus countries where REDD+ is relatively new. (Photo: Neil Palmer/CIAT)

Designing REDD+ to promote sustainable development and reduce poverty

Project, Sep 2013
Women discuss forest management at a Community Forest User Group meeting in Nepal. Photo: WOCAN

Gender and REDD+

Project, Sep 2013
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Latest publications

Unseen Foresters: An assessment of approaches for wider recognition and spread of sustainable forest management by local communities

Places to prosper: engaging with youth migration in forest landscapes

Prosperity in place: meaningful work for mobile youth that enhances forest landscapes

IIED’s management response to the independent evaluation of the CoNGOs project

Thriving in diversity: smallholders organising for climate resilience

Options for sustainable community forestry business incubation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

View more publications by this author

 

Duncan Macqueen's blog posts

Women preparing tapioca

Tapioca tech in Togo – how producers are organising to transform lives and land

Blog, Feb 2020
Rows of small dishes containing various types of vegetable seeds, including beans and grains

Madagascar needs agroforestry businesses in its response to climate change

Blog, Sep 2019
A trolley load and shelves of cinnamon dry inside a special drying facility

Vietnamese forest and farm producers work towards more resilient livelihoods and landscapes

Blog, May 2019
Bolivian family farming organisations show a poster about their award-winning coffee business development activity at the World Rural Forum in Bilbao, Spain (Photo: Duncan Macqueen/IIED)

Modern food systems to emerge in new decade of family farming

Blog, Apr 2019
A community-owned Mexican sawmill in Oaxaca (Photo: Duncan Macqueen)

Incendiary observations from the 4th FLARE conference

Blog, Oct 2018
The community owners of a furniture factory pose for a photo

Locally controlled forest enterprises are the whole enchilada

Blog, Sep 2018
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Links to other sites

Innovations towards prosperity emerging in locally controlled forest business models and prospects for scaling up

World Development, August 2018

 
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