Michael V. Galante

Michael V. Galante is a forestry professional specializing in sustainable timber production from natural tropical forest, forest certification and climate change mitigation through forestry.

Michael has developed Forest Management Plans and Comprehensive Harvest Plans for various companies throughout Asia, drafted the Code of Forest Harvesting Practice for the Sabah Forestry Department for Crawler Tractors, Log Fisher and Helicopters and spearheaded the Reduced-Impact Logging (RIL) demonstration trials for the State of Sabah, Malaysia.

 Michael has carried out forest auditing for FSC and ISO 9001 compliance and advises intergovernmental organizations, governments, private companies and NGOs on forestry and forest management issues including climate change mitigation through forestry.

Michael is currently the Administrator to the Oversight Organization (biocarbon consult) to the Global Conservation Standard (GCS) where he is responsible for technical management and coordination of GCS activities.

Michael has appointed to the Advisory Board of the FSC Carbon Working Group (FCWG) in 2010 and has been on the UNFCCC CDM Afforestation / Reforestation Roster of Experts for Methodologies since 2005. Michael has written numerous technical papers on climate change and forestry and recently won the Sustainable Growth Group climate change scholarship award.

Michael holds a Masters of Science in Tropical Forestry Resource Management from the University Putra Malaysia and is currently pursuing his Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh focusing on the development of carbon methodology options integrating reduced-impact logging, forest certification and climate change mitigation. Michael is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.