Speakers Profile - Sabah International Expo - Sabah's Premier Trade Fair

Datuk Sam Mannan is the Director of Sabah Forestry Department. His current portfolio includes logging monitoring in all Natural Forest Management harvesting areas under the Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) approach together with Global Forestry Services (M) Sdn Bhd, silviculture, rehabilitate and restore degraded areas in northern Ulu Segama and south-west of Danum Valley, within the Ulu Segama Forest Reserve in Sabah. Datuk has involved in Deramakot Forest Reserve which has been served as a benchmark towards achieving good forest management. Deramakot Forest Reserve remained the first and longest FSC (Forest Stewardship Council - the gold standard for forest management) certified tropical rainforest in the world. Based on more than 20 years hands-on experience in Deramakot, Datuk will provide his insight into good forest governance and conservation: the challenges of economic and financial sustainability.

Datuk holds Bachelor of Forestry Science, 2nd Class Honours, Division One, graduated from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand in 1979.

Maree Candish served as the Director of New Forests Asia, specializing in forestry and eco product asset evaluation and management. She has 20 years experience in managing forestry operations and provides advisory services on forestry investments in Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, China and South America. She led Poyry's Australian consulting team before joining New Forests, which undertook numerous due diligence, forest evaluation and forest carbon related assignments. In addition, she also provides forest policy advice throughout the Asia- Pacific region. She holds a Bachelor in Forestry (First Class Hons) from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, Masters in Forestry and Land Use from Oxford University and a Masters in Business Administration from Melbourne University.

Dr Waidi Sinun, also known as hydrologist and the first Malaysian Scientist, is a Group Manager of the conservation and environmental management division of the Yayasan Sabah Group. The Division main activities area is to manage the Protected Areas under Yayasan Sabah, to name a few namely Danum Valley and Maliau Basin as well as to Implement international collaboration related to forest rehabilitation activities related.

Dr's professional and career interests include protected area management, hydrologic and geomorphic processes, forest rehabilitation and restoration, biodiversity conservation, forest certification and carbon offsets and other GHG issues. Dr has presented papers in a course organised by Swedish International Development Agencies on Development of National Forest Policy and Strategies and proceedings of 1st International Conference on Hydrology and Water Resources in Asia Pacific Region.

Dr holds Bachelor of Applied Science in Applied Geology at Queensland University of Technology, Australia and Master of Science at University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Later, Dr was awarded a PhD by the University of Manchester, studying hydrologic and geomorphic impacts of forest conversion in the Gunung Kinabalu Highlands Sabah Malaysia.

Mr Stephen Dickey, is the founder of Services Ltd (CDRS) and Redd Forests. He has worked on climate change issues for the past 4 years firstly with Oxfam and WWF-Australia and latterly as consultant to Climate Friendly.

Stephen's broad based international commercial experience combined with his depth of knowledge on the science and practicalities of climate change give him a rare set of capabilities and perspectives to lead Redd Forests. The Redd Forests project, demonstrates the commercial viability methodologies to replace activities that degrade or destroy the world's forests.

Coupled with the knowledge of the role of natural forests in the global carbon cycle, Stephen will share his views on how to Monetizing the forest- Conservation and Profit Making.