Falika Ranil Senanayake

Ranil has a long history in applied biological research. From 1964 -1970 he was a Field Associate of the American Museum of Natural History where he pioneered work on species habitats and developing field keys to amphibia. He was also a 1976-79 Research Associate of the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, California. Where signal transmission in amphibians was examined as a taxonomic character. In 1988, He was appointed the Senior Ecologist at the Centre for Farm Planning and Land Management, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, Melbourne University, which was instrumental in setting up the national Australian Landcare’ program. In Australia, work in Organic agriculture led him to be appointed the International Crops Inspector for the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia, Sydney in 1989.

In 1993 he took the position of Executive Director, Environment Liaison Center International, Nairobi, Kenya. An organization networking the NGO’s working under issues arising from UNEPs AGENDA 21. The extension and application of global knowledge became important at this time and from 1997 – 1995 acted as a consultant for UNEP, UNDP and the World Bank on matters of biodiversity and forest rehabilitation. In 1997 he took the positon of Scientific Director, of Counterpart Intl. Washington D.C. and directed Analog Forestry programs in Guatemala, Mali, Viet Nam and the Philippines. He developed the certification system for ‘Green Gold’ for responsible mining operations in the Choco, Colombia and is the author of the standards for the Certification of Forest Garden Products (FGP’a) a system that evaluates the affectivity of applying Analog Forestry restoration projects and has been accepted globally.

Ranil had developed the concept of Analog Forestry (www.analogforestry.org) that has generated a worldwide following in ecological restoration. As a systems Ecologist he has brought a new thinking to forest restoration

He has an extensive knowledge of marketing of organic products having developed and served as the chairman of Sri Lanka's largest organic product export company Lanka Organics Ltd. (www.lankaorganics.com)

Currently Ranil is working on adding value to Primary Ecosystem Services (PES) that can be deposited as positive externalities into the Global Commons. The value of such transactions are recorded through the development of an electronic ledger. This process is expected to increase the income potential of the rural population, while adding to the sustainability of the local area.(www.restore.earth)