Meet Your Instructor

Dr. Juan Pulhin

Hello! My name is Juan Pulhin (you can call me John), and I am your instructor for this course.
I am the former Dean of College of Forestry and Natural Resources in the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). Currently, I am the Chair of UPLB Interdisciplinary Studies Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Environment Management. My expertise are in social forestry and natural resource governance, human geography, and climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation. I started working as a researcher in the Forestry Development Center, a forest policy research unit in the College of Forestry and Natural Resources. I then joined the Department of Social Forestry and Forest Governance as faculty, and later became its Chair in 1998.

Currently, I am involved in various research projects which aim to promote sustainable forest management. I also uphold Jack Westoby’s famous quote, “Forestry is not about trees, it is about people. It is only about trees insofar as trees meet the needs of the people.” Thus, I am firmly pushing to its extent the importance of the human dimension in forestry, particularly in sustainable forest management.