IUCN Oil Crops Inter-Commission

Erik Meijaard is a conservation scientist best known for his work on orangutans, tropical land-use, and the sustainability of vegetable oils. He is Managing Director of Borneo Futures, a science-driven consultancy he co-founded to improve conservation outcomes in Southeast Asia, and he serves as an Honorary Professor with the University of Kent’s Durrell Institute of Conservation & Ecology.

Since the early 1990s Meijaard has lived and worked across Borneo and wider Indonesia, combining field ecology with policy and private-sector advising. He helped shape debate on palm oil and other oil crops as co-chair (and earlier, chair) of the IUCN Oil Crops (formerly Oil Palm) Task Force, which assesses cross-crop sustainability trade-offs and routes to better production. 

Meijaard’s research spans wildlife ecology, forestry, and conservation planning, with influential studies on great-ape declines. He co-authored the landmark 2018 Current Biology analysis showing that more than 100,000 Bornean orangutans were lost from 1999–2015, work that reframed how hunting, logging, and land conversion interact to drive population change. He has also published on the historical range and drivers of decline for the Tapanuli orangutan.