Prof Olavi Luukkanen

Member, Board of Trustees
Finland
Joined: April 2009

Since 1984, Prof Olavi Luukkanen, has worked as professor of tropical silviculture at the University of Helsinki, where he is the director of the Viikki Tropical Resources Institute (VITRI), which he established first as a tropical silviculture research unit in 1980. He has more than 30 years of forest-related professional experience as university teacher and researcher. He has consulted for development projects in Asia and Africa - including the Kenya Forestry Master Plan for 1995-2020.

Olavi Luukkanen has a D.Sc. (Agr.&For.) degree in silviculture and separate M.Sc. degrees in forestry and genetics from the University of Helsinki, as well as an M.Sc. degree in forestry/tree physiology from the University of Wisconsin, USA. His previous assignments include an acting professorship in botany (1980-1982) and an associate professorship in silviculture. He has published about 280 scientific publications, since 1980 mainly on tropical forest ecology and silviculture, agroforestry systems (especially for tropical drylands) and biodiversity.

Olavi Luukkanen has since 1989 been a senior advisor on forestry and agroforestry for the International Foundation for Science (IFS); he has also been the president of the Finnish Society for Forest Science and the chairman of the European Tropical Forest Research Network (ETFRN). In 2005 he was elected Trustee Board Member of the NGO "Desert Greening Foundation" in Sudan and awarded the Neilein Decoration First Class for achievements in forestry training and research for this country.