Based in Spain and frequently travelling the world, Mateo is responsible for our global forest management certification and climate services.
The last decade has seen strong, transparent, participatory systems increasingly gaining a footing in forestry, and I'm very pleased to see the results that are now showing. This is visible for example in cork production, where the special values of the endangered Mediterranean Cork Oak ecosystem have been brought to the front. Today, FSC certified cork is in high demand by the industry.
Mateo is our top expert within forest management certification and climate services, and leads our service development for those areas.
He also helps to keep our staff and clients up to speed on important developments within related certification systems. A seasoned trainer and speaker, he frequently delivers training and updates on these topics externally and internally.
He has a solid backround for these roles. He has gained extensive experience within FSC certification since 2004, developing national standards, building capacity of government officers, FSC National Initiatives, NGOs and consultants, and auditing forest operations in temperate and tropical countries around the world.
Mateo has also delivered REDD carbon trainings in Europe, Africa, and South America, and has been involved in auditing forest carbon projects in different stages in 12 developing countries in Africa and South America. Mateo has been appointed as a member of the Plan Vivo Technical Advisory Panel.
He holds a Master's degree in Forestry and has gathered additional qualifications through comprehensive continuing training. Amongst other credentials, he passed Rainforest Alliance's FSC Lead Auditor training course in 2005. He has also passed Preferred by Nature's LegalSource Expert and Carbon Footprint Management certification courses, forest carbon verification training provided by the Rainforest Alliance, and formal ISO 14001 training offered by Bureau Veritas.
- Auditing and certification processes
- FSC Forest Management and Chain of Custody
- Forest Carbon projects (CCB, VCS, CarbonFix, Plan Vivo, Gold Standard)
- Carbon Footprint Management (CFM) certification
- Trainer on the above
- Spoken languages: English, Spanish, French and Portuguese
- Countries worked in: Cameroon, France, Morocco, Italy, DR of Congo, Portugal, Spain, UK, Mexico, Latvia, Italy, Uruguay, Czech Republic, Kenya, Uganda, Guatemala, Comoros Islands, Mozambique, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Malaysia, Bolivia, and Brazil.