Jean Balie

Jean Balié has over two decades of experience in leadership and expertise developing policies for agriculture, food, and rural development.

Dr. Balié is currently the Director General of the International Rice Research Institute, and the Regional Director for South East Asia and the Pacific of the CGIAR. As Director General of IRRI, he sets the global strategic direction of the institute and manages its affairs in accordance with the policies and decisions of the IRRI Board of Trustees.

Louis Verchot

Dr. Louis Verchot is a Principal Scientist and Lead of the Land Restoration Group at the Alliance Bioversity – CIAT, based in Colombia. He has been working throughout the tropics on forestry and agriculture issues with a climate change focus for the past 35 years. His work in Asia focuses on deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, land-use change, peatland degradation, and REDD+, among others. He has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2003, and recently was a lead author on the Special Report on Climate Change and Land.