Christopher Armitage is a business development specialist, with demonstrated skill in designing and coordinating collaborative multi-sectoral approaches to large-scale land restoration and sustainable agricultural development. He played a key role in establishing both the EverGreen Agriculture Partnership and the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance. In the 18 months prior to the establishment of the Global EverGreening Alliance, he coordinated the development of an 8-country GCF proposal for UNEP which sought to support 1.25 million small-scale farmers to adopt EverGreening practices, and he managed the European Commission-funded, ‘Reversing Land Degradation in Africa by Scaling-up Evergreen Agriculture‘ project through its inception phase, a collaborative program to scale-up EverGreen Agriculture to 500,000 farming households across 8 Sahelian countries. He is also a Senior Advisor to Landcare International, and a Board Member of The Wilderness Society (Vic)
Dr. Dennis Garrity is a systems agronomist and research leader whose career has focused on improving small-scale farming systems in the tropics. He has served as Drylands Ambassador for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, emphasising the role of agroforestry, evergreen agriculture and landcare for sustainable land management. From 2001 to 2011, he served as Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre. He also chairs Landcare International, a worldwide effort to support grassroots community-based natural resource management.
From a farming background in Queensland, Australia, John took up international research and development with FAO commencing in Iran, then Ethiopia (FSR), Rome as Chair, Agroforestry Working Group, Nepal (farming systems national survey), Thailand (sustainable development of marginal communities across 8 Asian countries) and Zimbabwe (innovations in research and extension methods in 9 east and southern African countries). Later, he was Director at CIMMYT, with responsibilities for targeting, impact assessment and systems agronomy/conservation agriculture, then Principal Regional Coordinator for Africa and South Asia and Principle Adviser Research at ACIAR. He also has honorary positions with the University of Queensland, Australian National University and he is a Board Member of the USAID-funded Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab.
