Frans Bongers is professor of tropical forest ecology at Wageningen University. He is a specialist in forest dynamics and succession, forest regeneration and rehabilitation/restoration. He has 30 years of experience, mainly in Latin America (Mexico, Bolivia, Guyanas), West Africa (Cote d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Ghana) and the Horn of Africa. He leads international research programmes with a focus on (applied) forest ecology, directed at improved forest management and sustainable forest use.

Gernant Magnin is working at the Protected Areas Networks & Species Conservation department of WWF Netherlands.  From 2004 to 2009 he was the director of Eurosite, a network organisation of European institutions for the management of nature conservation sites. Since 1985, Gernant has worked especially in the NGO sector, and his work for BirdLife International and WWF kept him abroad (mainly in Turkey) for nearly 15 years. His work for the WWF Global Freshwater programme in particular implied introductions to issues of sustainability in some of the largest river basins of the world eg the Yangtze, Mekong and Orinoco.

Kees Faber was the former President of the Faber Halbertsma Group, until his retirement in 2006. From the 1950's on he built this family owned company in production and pooling of pallets, to what it is today; several companies in Europe, 700 employees and 250 million turnover. Kees presently holds a position in the company's Advisory Board.

The group consumes 500.000 m3 of wood annually and is involved to do this in a sustainable way. For this reason Kees Faber is co-founder and presently Chairman of the Platform Hout Nederland and Chairman of Stichting Kringloop Hout; both focusing on issues of the sustainability of the use of wood in the Netherlands mainly at a political and economical level. Beside these activities, Kees Faber is also a member of the Advisory Board of Stichting Probos.