Nature-based solutions, from the science to the finance.

I work with companies, investors, funders and governments on forests and their biodiversity, land restoration and carbon markets. Jurisdictional REDD+ is at the centre of my work.

Get in touch Read my work

Dense forest canopy climbing a mountainside to a grass-covered summit — Nimba Mountains, Guinea. Photograph: Danae Maniatis

Now

Independent adviser. Member of Science for High Integrity Frameworks to Transform Carbon Markets (SHIFT-CM), led by Yale University and The Nature Conservancy

Before

FAO and UNDP, including the UN-REDD Programme, between 2009 and 2019

Science

DPhil, University of Oxford. Published in Science and Nature Climate Change

Languages

I work in English, French, Italian and Dutch, including with government teams at ministerial level

What I work on

Jurisdictional REDD+, land restoration, and nature and carbon claims

A valley of rice paddies, cleared hillsides and remaining forest under a blue sky — Forest, farmland and rice paddies, Madagascar. Photograph: Danae Maniatis

Jurisdictional REDD+ and high forest, low deforestation countries

In my experience, the path from forest data to a credit that sells tends to break where one step hands over to the next. I work across the whole of it: the reference level, the programme under ART's TREES or Verra JNR, the audit, and the commercial strategy.

Reference levels and MRV · audit readiness · CORSIA, Article 6.2 and the voluntary market · how jurisdictional REDD+ and the TFFF fit together

Restoring land, from the tropics to the drylands

One of the questions I work on is how we grow back, and not just plant, trees and forests that can adapt to a changing climate. That question looks different in a tropical landscape, a Mediterranean one and a hyper-arid one, and I work on all three, including in the Gulf and the wider Middle East. Restoration lasts when it brings back biodiversity as well as tree cover, and when the local communities and Indigenous Peoples who depend on the land are part of it from the start.

Restoration strategy · land degradation baselines and monitoring · finance for restoration · Mediterranean, arid and hyper-arid regions

Checking nature and carbon claims before they are published

Most companies now say something about forests, nature or carbon credits in their reporting, and the rules on what can be said have tightened. I read the claim against the standard it cites, before it is published, and say what stands and what does not.

Credits and how they are used · neutrality and removal claims · nature claims · safeguards and consent

Programme readiness review

A review of your programme against ART's TREES or Verra JNR, delivering a gap report and a roadmap.

Price on request

Ask about a review

Writing

Recent and selected

2026
Mapping the future of carbon durability: from scientific progress to global policy
Susan Cook-Patton, Carl Kish and Danae Maniatis · Nature4Climate
2026
The carbon portfolio is a balancing act
Michael Denner and Danae Maniatis · Ecosystem Marketplace
2025
Pioneering sustainable land management: prioritizing advanced technologies for hyper-arid regions
Arthur D. Little report, Bou Harb, Ghanem, Moreno, Takchi, Vatsa and Maniatis
2017
The extent of forest in dryland biomes
Bastin et al. · Science 356(6338): 635-638

More publications

About

Dr Danae Maniatis

I started as a forest scientist, spent more than six years as staff with FAO and UNDP, and have worked as an independent adviser since 2019.

More about me

A young bonobo lying on its back in the grass — Bonobos, Democratic Republic of the Congo

A black and white indri clinging to a tree trunk — Indri, Madagascar

Elephants in savanna at the forest edge — Elephants at the forest edge, Gabon

From the field. All photographs: Danae Maniatis

Enquire

Get in touch

A few questions first, so the first conversation can start where your work is.

What happens next

The first conversation is a 30-minute call, at no charge, and it ends with a view on whether I am the right person and what it would take. Work then takes one of four shapes: a fixed-scope review, advisory priced by the day or by the output, such as a document reviewed or a brief written, a defined period in a role, or facilitation priced per event. A proposal sets out the scope, the price and what you receive before anything starts. You work with me directly throughout: I do the work myself.