Matt Leggett

Matt has eight years' experience of managing small and large scale conservation initiatives in the tropical forests of South East Asia, Latin America, and the South Pacific. An anthropologist by training, an early career in tropical forest exploration led perhaps inevitably to a passion for forest conservation. Since completing an MSc in Environment and Development at the University of Edinburgh in 2009, Matt's principal research interests have been focused on REDD+, payments for environmental services, and indigenous land tenure, and how these concepts and policies at the international scale influence, and are influenced by, forest dependent peoples. Matt returned to the UK in late 2011 after several years working in Papua New Guinea on REDD+ and climate policy issues, including time spent as an advisor to the Government's Office of Climate Change.