Marlito Bande is an Associate Professor and former Director of the Institute of Tropical Ecology and Environmental Management at Visayas State University (VSU) in the Philippines. He is a leading proponent of Rainforestation, an agroforestry strategy that integrates native forest trees, which was developed at VSU. He has published widely in scholarly books and peer-reviewed journals on agroecology, community-based forest restoration, rainforestation, and biodiversity conservation. He is an agroecologist by profession, and holds a Doctorate in Agroecology from the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany.