Assistant Professor
Department of Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Research Themes
Critical agroforestry | Forest–farm nexus | Power, decoloniality and justice in environmental governance | Land-use and agricultural supply-chain governance (cocoa, coffee) | Political ecology of conservation | Land access and equity
Geographical Area(s) of Research
Global South | Ghana | Kenya | Ethiopia | EU | United Kingdom
Top Three Research Questions on Biodiversity Solutions and Sustainable Coexistence of People and Nature
1. Under what conditions do biodiversity and land-use interventions — agroforestry, protected areas, deforestation-free supply chains — deliver equitable coexistence at the forest–farm nexus rather than redistributing land access and power in ways that dispossess smallholders?
2. How do unilateral, trade-based environmental policies (e.g., the EU Deforestation Regulation, certification schemes) reshape biodiversity governance across global value chains, and how can they be designed to avoid reinforcing historical inequities for Global South producers
3. How can negotiated landscape arrangements, such as food security corridors, reconcile smallholder food security and livelihoods with forest and biodiversity conservation in contested frontier landscapes?
Bio
Eric Mensah Kumeh is an Assistant Professor in Forest Resources Management and the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. An interdisciplinary scholar of critical agroforestry and land-use and supply-chain governance, he uses political ecology, decoloniality and equity frameworks to examine how power shapes who governs and benefits from the forest–farm nexus across the Global South. He holds a doctorate from the University of Hohenheim, Germany, was a postdoctoral researcher at the Natural Resources Institute Finland, University of Oxford, England and is a former development practitioner who has implemented FAO-, EU- and NORAD-funded projects.