Omar Pidani

Omar is an experienced academic (a lecturer and researcher at Haluoleo State University in Southeast Sulawesi Indonesia) and currently on leave to pursue a PhD in Environmental Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra. His academic excellence has been acknowledged in several recent invitations to address international conferences. He has had a long career as a civil servant (Resource Management) and prior to that working with International NGOs. A key element of his work has been the support of development of sustainable forest management strategies by drawing on experiences from Indonesia as well as from other Southeast Asian and Pacific regions. He has now broadened his attention to the related issues of artisanal and small-scale mining in eastern Indonesia using an Anthropological perspective.

This move from Social Forestry to Anthropology draws on his long experience with government and non-government and government agencies, providing inputs in areas such as community empowerment and participatory planning in natural resource management, integrating community planning into sub-district and district planning frameworks and facilitating the development of continuous learning networks. His work has focused on designing and managing a range of community driven programs in the natural resource sector.