Chair, EverGreen Agriculture Partnership
Dr. Dennis 
Garrity was the former Director General of The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) (2001-2011) and the current Drylands Ambassador for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification Drylands (UNCCD). He chairs in the Steering Committee for Landcare International, as well as the EverGreen Agriculture Partnership. Dr. Garrity is a systems agronomist whose career has been focused on the development of small-scale farming systems.
He served as the Regional Coordinator of the Southeast Asia Programme of the World Agroforestry Centre, based in Bogor, Indonesia, and was the head of the Agroecology Unit at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. Dr. Garrity has a PhD in crop physiology from the University of Nebraska.
Administrative Assistant
Winnie Achieng’ assists in the effective coordination and development of the EverGreen Agriculture Partnership agenda through contributing to the completion of secretariat tasks as well as the development of processes and foundations of the secretariat operations.
She provides valuable administrative, operational and Human Resource support to the Partnership by working on specific projects in EVAP scaling up activities and acts as a liaison between the Partnership team and other colleagues. Winnie has a background in Business Administration (Human Resource Management) and is experienced in various administrative and logistical capacities with a good command of management practices.
Research Fellow
Erick Otieno assists in collating all scientific based evidences and reviews on EverGreen Agriculture. He facilitates in creating the science to scaling up EverGreen Agriculture (with a focus on fertilizer trees) in crop fields, developing extension materials for EverGreen Agriculture systems as well as in building strong partnership with various partners and farmer groups for the scaling up programmes. Erick holds BSc. Forestry from Moi University and currently pursuing MSc. Environmental science at Kenyatta University with special interest in Evergreen Agriculture, fertilizer trees in particular.
Communication Assistant
May is a young communicator extraordinaire hailing from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. Her background is in Public Relations and Corporate communication. In addition to managing the communications of the EverGreen Partnership, May has a particular interest in grassroots instituional arrangements, policy processes, rainwater harvesting and the participation of youth and women in agricultural decision making in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Senior Science Policy Advisor
Patrick Worms, our Senior Science Policy Adviser, is based in Europe and is working especially on building up our Evergreen Agriculture platform.
Interested in ways that we can collaborate to use biochar for land restoration in smallholder Gliricida and agroforestry systems. I remember the gliricida powered gasifier that Ray Wijewardene installed in Sri Lanka in about 1985. The Ankur downdraft gasifier he used can be run to produce about 15% biochar, which, as Dr. Tom Preston has demonstrated in Cambodia and Colombia, can bue used to enhance crop production.
Rob Wheeler, Global Ecovillage Network, met Dr. Garrity at the IRENA side event and suggested that were contact you.
Rob Wheeler, Global Ecovillage Network, meet Dr. Garrity at the IRENA side event at COP23 and suggested that we contact you. International Biochar Initiative is interested in ways in which we can help promote the use of biochar from gliricida and other crops to help reclaim degraded land and improve smallholder agriculture.
We are helping to support the recently formed African Biochar Partnership and efforts to increase biochar use in Africa. John Lewis and AliceLeBlanc are at COP23 and may contact Dr. Garrity.
Kind regards,
Tom Miles, Chair, International Biochar Initiative