Duncan Macqueen

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’.

Duncan 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.