Dr. Anil Panolil Chirikandoth, President , Forest First is a post graduate in Ecology from Salim Ali School of Ecology and holds a PhD in Forest Ecology and Management from Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, India. Anil PC is a VCSA approved AFOLU Expert and Technical Expert for VCS- J&N REDD Initiative. He is also a Member of Expert Committee constituted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India for developing C&I for sustainable management of plantations in India.
Dr. Anil is engaged in forest research and action for the past eighteen years. His major area of involvement is forest degradation, biodiversity conservation, Non Wood Forest Products and sustenance of forest dependent livelihoods. For the past eight years, he is also engaged in exploring and utilizing climate change mitigation market instruments/mechanisms, both from the compliance and voluntary markets for forest and biodiversity conservation and management. He has worked as Project Scientist in Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI), as Senior CDM Consultant in the CDM wing of Federation of Indian Chambers Commerce and Industries (FICCI), New Delhi, as Lead Verifier for Bureau Veritas Certification (BVC, Malaysia) for validating two Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) methodologies for availing GHG benefits from avoided logging of tropical rainforests. He has also assisted BVC in CDM Forestry validations as a Forestry Expert and as a self employed Consultant for various public, private, community/individuals/organizations for identification and initiation of forest based offsets towards various stages of UNFCCC registration and for meeting voluntary offset standards. Working with the KFRI team as a Consultant, executed 10 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) projects for forest land conversion due to proposed developmental projects. With the KFRI team involved in a consultancy project for testing and developing Criteria and Indicators for sustainable forest management and in various other research projects funded by international and national funding agencies like BCN- USAID- WWF, Mac Arthur- UNESCO, French Institute of Pondicherry, CIFOR, MoEF, etc.
