Dr. Emmanuel Nuesiri

Dr. Emmanuel Nuesiri obtained his doctoral degree from St. Antonys College and the Geography Department of the University of Oxford, England, in 2010. His research interests were on global transformations, environmental governance and social justice, while his doctoral dissertation was on the political ecology of decentralised forest management in Cameroon. Since then he has been a postdoctoral research associate with the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy (SDEP) initiative at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. At Illinois, Dr. Nuesiri was involved with the Responsive Forest Governance Initiatitive (RFGI) Project, which focused on the relationship between democracy, political representation, forest governance and climate change mitigation. In this regard, Dr. Nuesiri carried out a two-year study on political representation in the UN-REDD Programme and how this was operationalised during the design of the Nigeria-REDD Programme.

At the University of Potsdam, Dr. Nuesiri's research interest include questions of political representation in climate change and forestry initiatives such as REDD+. In this regard, Dr. Nuesiri examines the representation of local people's interests in institutions such as the UN-REDD and the ITTO. Given that NGOs are accorded observer status in the decision-making organs of these global institutions and based on the premise that NGOs represent local interests, Dr. Nuesiri's research investigates how these NGOs ensure that they are responsive and accountable to the local communities they are standing and acting for.