Jeremy Russell-Smith
Jeremy Russell-Smith has over 35 years of experience researching savanna fire ecology, carbon market, ecosystem services, and associated livelihood opportunities for land managers and Indigenous (Aboriginal) communities in northern Australia and neighbouring countries.
Over the past 20 years he has been involved with ongoing development of Australian Government-sanctioned savanna burning greenhouse gas emissions abatement, and associated carbon sequestration, methods in northern Australia. Registered commercial projects currently occur over 25% of Australia’s 1.2M km2 northern savannas.
He is currently involved with the development of similar methodological approaches for application in southern African savannas. From 2014 he has been the lead researcher for a suite of projects undertaken under the ‘Northern Hub’ of Australia’s Bushfires and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNHCRC), focused on ‘building capacity in north Australian remote Indigenous communities’.
A key output of that work was recently published by Taylor and Francis, Sustainable land sector development in northern Australia: Indigenous rights, aspirations, and cultural responsibilities. He gained a PhD in 1986 from the Australian National University, Canberra. Currently he holds the position of Professor of Fire Ecology at Charles Darwin University, Darwin.