Chris Reij

Chris Reij is a Sustainable Land Management specialist and a Senior Fellow of the World Resources Institute in Washington. He supports the work of the Global Restoration Initiative. He has worked in Africa since 1978. Although he has maintained a focus on the West African Sahel, he has also been involved in numerous studies and consultancies in other parts of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

His main fields of research and writing are related to restoration of degraded land in semi-arid regions, farmer innovation in agriculture, long-term trends in agriculture and environment and analysis of successes in agriculture and land management in Africa. He is the facilitator of "African Re-greening Initiatives", which supports farmers in adapting to climate change and in developing more productive and sustainable farming systems. This initiative was launched to help scale up proven successes in re-greening by individual farmers and communities. It is operational in Burkina Faso and Mali, and is expanding to other African countries. It collaborates with VU University’s Network Institute in a Web Alliance for Re-greening Africa.

He was honored by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as Global Drylands Champion 2013.