Irfan Bakhtiar

• Function: Director
• Company: Strengthening Palm Oil Sustainability (SPOSI), Biodiversity Foundation (KEHATI)

Irfan is the Director of the Strengthening Palm Oil Sustainability in Indonesia (SPOSI), a program managed by the Biodiversity Foundation (KEHATI). This program is an FCDO-UK-funded program promoting the improvement of palm oil governance in Indonesia. Several key areas of the program are supporting the Government of Indonesia to revamp the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO), settlement of palm oil in the forest area that produces the “Jangkah Benah Strategy”, Smallholder Capacity Building that produces “SAWIT KITA” learning system, and micro-level jurisdictional sustainable development through village land use planning.

In SPOSI, Irfan is working closely with the different ministries of the Government of Indonesia, such as the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Environment and Forestry, and others. SPOSI is also working with the CSOs, and universities, such as INSTIPER, IPB University, and Gadjah Mada University.

Before leading the KEHATI program on Sustainable Palm Oil in 2017, Irfan was also involved in the development of Indonesia’s mandatory certification for timber legality and sustainability assurance system, known as SVLK. As the Deputy Program Director of the Multi-stakeholder Forestry Program 2 (MFP 2), a DFID-funded program managed by KEHATI from 2010 – 2013, Irfan worked with the GOI, CSOs, Universities, and wood-based Small and Medium Enterprises in piloting the early face of SVLK Implementation.

Irfan is also having experience working with several US-funded programs, such as USAID BIJAK (2016 – 2017) as the Component Leader of Land Use and Forest Governance and Millennium Challenge Indonesia (MCAI) as program Manager for Community Based Natural Resources Management (2016), and Orangutan Conservation Service Program (2009 – 2010) as regional coordinator for Kalimantan.

Irfan was starting his experiences in working on development programs and projects in 1998 when he joined ARUPA, a Yogyakarta-based NGO working for forest advocacy. From 2002 – mid-2007, Irfan moved from ARUPA and worked for the DFID – MFP as Facilitator. The program mainly promoted collaboration among stakeholders to empower the forest-dependent poor, leading to poverty alleviation and addressing the forest land tenure and access reform issues. In mid-2007 Irfan continued his carrier by working with Partnership for Governance Reform (KEMITRAAN) as a Program Manager on Forestry and Climate Change as a part of the Forestry Governance Program until the end of 2008, when he decided to have his political experiment, ran as a parliament member candidate.

Irfan achieved his bachelor’s degree in forestry in 2001 from Gadjah Mada University. He got advanced multi-stakeholder facilitation skills since he joined training on Facilitating the Multi-stakeholder process and social learning at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, in 2004. Irfan got his master’s degree from The Magister of Political Science at the APMD School of Rural Community Development (STPMD – APMD) Yogyakarta.

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