A project co-created by WRI in 2017 has been recognized with a prestigious Mulago Award in light of its invaluable contribution to forest legality.
Jade Saunders, Executive Director of World Forest ID (WFID), is the recipient of the Mulago Foundation’s Henry Arnhold Fellowship, which recognizes individuals with groundbreaking ideas and the leadership capabilities to implement them effectively.
World Forest ID was created by WRI, the Royal Botanic Gardens-Kew, USFS-International Programs and others, bringing together expertise in science, traceability and forestry to create a new approach to species and origin verification for forest risk commodities, including timber. Initially a consortium, WFID became an independent non-profit organization in 2021 with staff and partners working in 48 countries.
WFID creates comprehensive reference data and unique origin models to enable traceable and transparent forest-connected supply chains. It made global headlines in June 2024 for its role in helping authorities seize hundreds of tons of Russian and Belarussian timber that had entered the European market illegally, in violation of EU sanctions.
Saunders has served as Executive Director at WFID since 2022. Under her leadership, organizational funding has more than doubled as a result of rapid donor diversification and a growing range of dynamic and quantifiable real-world impacts. She has worked on forest governance, trade and environmental crime for over 20 years, most notably as an Associate Fellow of the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House. Saunders also held policy analyst roles at the European Forest Institute and Forest Trends.
In reference to the Mulago Award, Saunders said, “Traceability is so often seen as a technical endeavor, something that happens behind closed doors, in proprietary systems — rather than a concept that, if delivered through objective science, at the landscape scale, and for the common good, has the power to transform entrenched inequalities in the global commodity system.”
“WRI and the other organizations that came together to found World Forest ID understood that opaque and unaccountable supply chains hurt foresters and farmers as much as they hurt responsible consumers and investors, and that recent innovations in science, tech and data meant that a landscape scale approach was suddenly viable,” Saunders added.
WRI continues to collaborate with WFID on several projects, including building scientific testing capacity in Indonesia and supporting key partnerships with governments such as Norway and the United States. WFID is also a founding member of the Nature Crime Alliance.
Dr. Charles (Chip) Barber, Director for Natural Resources Governance and Policy at WRI, as well as a member of the WIFD board, said, “Seeing WFID go from strength to strength since its inception in 2017 is extremely rewarding, and is testament to WRI’s vision in supporting scientific solutions to nature crime, including illegal timber trafficking. Jade has been a key driver in this success, and we are delighted that she has been recognized by the Mulago Foundation.”
Previous WRI awardees of the Mulago Award include former Global Forest Watch Deputy Director Rachael Petersen (2016), former Global Forests Program Director Nigel Sizer (2019) and the current Global Director for Food, Land and Water, Crystal Davis (2016).