René Boot is director of Tropenbos International, a Dutch foundation governed by an international board. The foundation aims to improve governance and management of tropical forests through research, capacity building and promoting dialogue. The foundation funded by the Dutch government, EU and other donors works in Indonesia, Vietnam, Ghana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Suriname, Guyana and Bolivia.
He is Adjunct professor in Sustainable tropical forest management at Utrecht University, The Netherlands where he teaches research policy linkages to MSc students and supervises PhD students in forest ecology and forest dependent livelihoods. René Boot studied ecology and graduated (PhD) in 1990 at Utrecht University.
After graduating he worked fifteen years in research and capacity building projects in the field of sustainable forest management in Guyana and Bolivia. He is member of the editorial board of the Journal Tropical Ecology. He further is Chair of the Treub Maatschappij and Vice Chair of the Tresor Foundation. The Treub Maatschappij is a Dutch society that promotes academic research in the tropics, the Tresor foundation manages a tropical forest reserve in French Guyana.