The Yale Forest Forum is excited to announce their spring 2021 speaker series, which will focus on community-based forestry. This week’s speaker is Chris Buss, who is the director of the forest conservation program at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Chris has over 20 years of experience in a range of natural resource management and rural livelihood programmes; and holds an MSc in Environmental Forestry from the University of North Wales, UK. He has worked long term in Botswana, Tanzania and Malawi, with short term work in over 25 countries on forest governance, sustainable forest management, rural livelihoods, protected area management, and forest enterprise programmes in the role of programme manager and/or specialist advisor. Since 2009, Chris has been working for IUCN and is currently Deputy Director of the forest programme responsible for the operational aspects of the programme and technical delivery of the programme and project portfolio with a particular focus on achieving results on the ground. This work is centered on three mutually supporting themes of Forest Landscape Restoration, slowing the rate of deforestation through use of IUCN’s PA categories, and Locally Controlled Forests.