About us

BioClimate Research and Development

BR&D is a non-profit organisation, which promotes actions to reconcile human development and environmental change. This is achieved by a variety of mechanisms including through the Plan Vivo system. BR&D are responsible for the development and maintenance of the Plan Vivo system and register and certify the projects as they become accredited.

Visit the BR&D website.

The Directors of BR&D are:

William McGhee - BSc.

Willie is a forest ecologist whose work in social and environmental forestry has influenced the direction of community and native woodland initiatives in Scotland. He has worked for the last ten years in the field of land use, climate change and poverty alleviation in developing countries such as Uganda, Mozambique and Mexico; firstly as a founder Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management (ECCM) and latterly as a Director of BR&D. He has recently worked in the field of bioenergy and biomass for a London based company called Greenergy Bioenergy Ltd.

Willie is the executive Director of a community based environmental charity based in the south of Scotland, Borders Forest Trust (BFT); which manages ecological restoration, community woodland support and ancient woodland conservation. He is a Trustee of the Scottish Forestry Trust, Scottish Power's Green Energy Trust, and the Tweed Forum. His publications include jointly authored papers for the OECD, the United Nations FAO (State of the World's Forests 2001) and World Wide Fund for Nature. He has recently co-authored two chapters for a book on Restoring Natural Capital to be published by Island Press.

John Marshall - BSc., MBA.

John is currently an IT consultant, and is also company secretary for BR&D. He was co-founder of ECCM. Previously he was a senior programme manager for advising PwC businesses across Europe on technology strategy. He also was a lead programme manager on a number of e-learning and knowledge management projects in PwC.

Dr. Jeremy Woods - BSc., PhD.

Jeremy is a research fellow in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College, London. He has developed research interests into the interplay between development, land-use and the sustainable exploitation of renewable and non-renewable resources, in particular biomass energy. He is a partner in an EU-funded 'cane resources network for southern Africa (CARENSA)' and co-ordinates an ICSU/SCOPE research project on 'the sustainable use of southern African savannas'. Over the last 11 years, he has continued to research the use of sweet sorghum for bioenergy production in the EU, Africa and Asia, and is a consultant to the FAO. He lectures on the Global Environmental Change and Energy Policy modules of the Environmental Technology MSc at Imperial College London.

Dorothy McIntosh BSc., MBA.

Dorothy joined the directors in 2007. She is currently a Climate Change - Policy and Coordination Officer for Mercy Corps; one of the largest global humanitarian aid agencies. She is part of the Climate Change unit which is helping Mercy Corps to address climate change in three ways: adopting a range of in-house measures to reduce the agencies' carbon emissions and improve its "footprint"; conducting research into appropriate adaptation measures for communities in countries most at risk and piloting a range of market driven solutions to what is a market based problem. Prior to working with Mercy Corps Dory McIntosh was the Executive Director of a UK NGO which had a heavy emphasis on environmental programming and was involved in the development of international standards such as the Forest Stewardship Council and the equivalent standards for fisheries and marine products. She was the Company Secretary of a not-for profit trading organisation dealing in FSC certified timber, volatile oils and ethically sourced plants with pharmaceutical potential. She has a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Aberdeen and an MBA from the University of Edinburgh.

Pauline Nantongo

Pauline is the Executive Director of Ecotrust - the Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda, and joined the directors in late 2007. Pauline has 12 years experience in Natural Resources Management in the areas of: administration, fundraising, project planning and management, team supervision, capacity building, community mobilization and communication. Pauline is currently working as Executive Director of ECOTRUST prior to which se worked as Executive Director for NatureUganda and was responsible for supervision of staff and volunteers. Through these posts she developed communication strategies for several community-based natural resource management projects in collaboration with ECOTRUST and NatureUganda. Examples include the Development of a Conservation Communication Strategy for the BirdLife International East Africa Sub-region May 2002.

Ray Victurine BSc., MSc.

Ray is the director of the Conservation Finance Programme from the Wildlife Conservation Society of America. His experience spans many disciplines including policy and planning and has experience working in sustainable financing for an environmental Proramme in Uganda. He has also worked in Latin America namely as Environmental Officeer and Rural Development Programme Director for a USAID project in Bolivia.

BR&D:

Sarah Carter - BSc., MSc.

Sarah has worked as Plan Vivo co-ordinator since September 2006. She has a BSc. in Environment, Economics and Ecology and a MSc. in Resource Management focusing on forestry.

Alexa Morrison LLB, MSc.

In October 2007 Alexa joined the Plan Vivo team as Head of Governance. She has an LLB in Scots Law and an MSc. in Environmental Sustainability from the University of Edinburgh, and recently completed her dissertation on the ethics of carbon offsetting.

Contact information:

For more information contact Sarah Carter: info@brdt.org

The Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management

ECCM is an independent consulting company which provides specialist expertise relating to project development in terms of assessing carbon sequestration, and monitoring uptake as well as assessing the social and ecological impacts of projects.

Visit the ECCM website.

Plan Vivo technical advisory team:

Dr. Richard Tipper - BSc., MSc., PhD.

Richard led the development of Plan Vivo, is one of the founders of ECCM and is Director of Carbon Systems. He acts as lead advisor to several major companies on climate change strategies and on the development of low carbon processes. He has extensive knowledge of UK and International Climate Change Policy development with specific expertise in the application of policy options. He is a leading expert on project baselines in the agricultural and forestry sector and in implementing systems to facilitate the generation of carbon credits from emission reduction projects.

He has worked as a consultant to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, IEA, OECD and DETR on the quantification and economics of carbon assets. Recent and ongoing work includes: an analysis of carbon sequestration options in the CDM, a study for the IEA on the economics of large-scale carbon sequestration by forestry and peer review of the validation and verification process of a potential LULUCF CDM project.

Prof. John Grace

John is head of the department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences in the University of Edinburgh, School of GeoSciences. He is lead researcher on the Miombo research project of carbon sequestration in Mozambique. His research interests and field of expertise include the uptake of carbon dioxide by rainforests and savannas and the long term environmental impact on forests and vegetation.

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