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Bruce Cabarle
Managing Director Global Forest Program
Education
- MF - Masters of Forestry, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
- BS - Natural Resource Management, Rutgers University
Areas of Expertise
- Forest conservation and management in the Amazon Basin, Congo Basin, Southeast Asia and Russia
- Forest certification and international trade
- Combating illegal logging and promoting trade in certified forest products
- Public-private partnerships focused on environmental and social responsibility
- Forests and climate change
"Forest product companies, and the global markets they drive, are the single most influential force affecting the well-being of the world's forests."
About Bruce Cabarle:
Bruce joined WWF in 1998 to lead our international efforts to protect, manage and restore the world's forests. He set off by leveraging his stewardship experience to co-found the Global Forest Alliance - a partnership between WWF and The World Bank - that has contributed to a doubling of the world's new forest protected areas and the establishment of independently certified forestry operations comprising 45 million acres in 12 countries.
He is also a principal architect of WWF's Global Forest & Trade Network - private sector partnerships with companies such as IKEA, Johnson & Johnson and Citigroup as well as the United States Agency for International Development - to combat illegal logging by increasing the amount of certified forest products on the retail market and establishing networks of responsible producers in countries including Brazil, Cameroon, Indonesia and Russia. "Everyone said it was impractical and would never work," he recalls. "But we changed conservation standards worldwide within 10 years."
Bruce worked as a forester in Idaho and for Puerto Rico's Department of Natural Resources before heading to Washington, DC where he led the World Resources Institute's Forestry & Land Use Program. During this time he also co-founded the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the first organization to independently certify environmentally and socially responsible practices in the forest products industry.
