Dr. Plinio Sist is the director of the Research Unit Forests and Societies at Cirad gathering 45 researchers and 30 master and PhD students. He is also the coordinator of the unit “Tropical and subtropical silviculture” of Division 1 at IUFRO. He is a tropical forest ecologist with more than 25 year experience in South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Costa-Rica) and South East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia). He obtained a PhD in 1989 in tropical Biology of the University of Paris 6. He introduced and tested
Reduced-Impact Logging in Indonesia in the early 90’s in East Kalimantan. His main interest is to understand the impact of forest ressource harvesting on the ecology of tropical forests in order to recommend sustainable forest management practices. He has more than 150 publications and conference presentations on this issue.