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Abatable Announces Creation of Technical Advisory Board

Published: 13 May 2022
Last updated: 3 Jul 2022

At Abatable, we are thrilled to announce the formation of our Technical Advisory Board. We have assembled a group of leading carbon scientists and policy experts in the field of forestry and carbon removal solutions. The advisors will help us develop and iterate on a framework for how to evaluate high quality carbon credits and carbon project operators across different reduction and removal solutions.

We will benefit from the diversity of their insights and complementary skill sets developed due to their on-the-ground experience as investors and operators in developing markets and on regional carbon policy topics. We believe their experience will be critical to understand key risks and opportunities of various GHG emissions reduction and removal projects.

We are pleased to welcome to our initial technical advisory board:

Abatable Technical Advisory Board
  • George Tarus is currently the Senior Conservator of Forests Climate Change Unit at the Kenya Forest Service where he provides expert technical support in the implementation of climate change strategies and interventions aimed at sustainable management of forestry resources in Kenya. He is also a Technical Advisory Member to Plan Vivo Foundation and the Forest Innovation Working Group of the VERRA Group. He also serves as a Member of Greenhouse Gas Inventory (GHG), REDD+ and Forest and Landscape Restoration Technical Working Groups in Kenya, and is a Certified expert on Environmental Impact Assessment and Audit and UNFCCC Expert on FULO and REDD+.
  • Shauna Matkovich is a sustainability forester with more than 15 years of experience in forest management, investments and ESG and impact assessments. She has experience in the development and management of high impact forest carbon strategies for reforestation programs in Africa and Latin America.  She is now a Founder of The ForestLink, a consultancy and advisory business, focusing on connecting forests, sustainability, finance and business to help its clients lead the bioeconomy through forest-linked nature-based solutions. Previous to The ForestLink, she has worked as an operational forester in Canada and New Zealand and as an Investment Manager and Sustainability Manager at the International Woodland Company, where she focused on frontier forest investment geographies.
  • Na'im Merchant is a consultant specialising in carbon removal. He has worked with advocacy groups and nonprofits including Carbon180, Clean Air Task Force, CarbonPlan, and ClimateWorks Foundation on strategies to scale up carbon removal and carbon utilisation approaches. He writes about carbon removal and the new carbon economy in his newsletter The Carbon Curve.

Lastly, since the inception of the Technical Advisory Board in February 2022, Juan Camilo Barreneche has decided to join us full time as a senior consultant in Colombia. We are delighted to welcome Juan Camilo as part of our team and continue to benefit more directly from his experience.

Juan Camilo Barreneche has 17 years of experience in environmental management in organisations in the public, mining, industrial, development banking, impact investment and international sectors. He was also National Manager for the GCF Readiness Program in Colombia, where he led the last stage of the implementation of the program by UNDP in Colombia. He has also served as an advisor to UNEP, within the UN REDD Program, providing technical support in aspects of climate finance and private sector to Latin American countries. His experience includes projects of different types in countries such as Paraguay, Panama, Peru, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

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