Neil Byron - Commissioner

Neil Byron

Commissioner

Neil is currently Commissioner for the Inquiry into Government Drought Relief.

Since joining the Productivity Commission at its inception in April 1998, he has presided over nine inquiries:

He has assisted on four other inquiries:

He led the commissioned study, Industries in the Great Barrier Reef Catchment and Measures to Address Declining Water Quality. He has also helped direct the environmental economics program (e.g. Harnessing Private Sector Conservation of Biodiversity) and international benchmarking studies (e.g. Arrangements for Setting Drinking Water Standards and Arrangements for Defining, Allocating and Enforcing Water Rights).

His career began in a quite different direction. After completing a B.Sc (with first class Honours) in Forestry at the ANU, in Canberra, Neil was employed as a forester in the Queensland Department of Forestry, (Jan. 1972 - Aug 73) engaged in inventories of natural forests and plantation management He then undertook postgraduate research at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver Canada, leading to an M.A. (Economics) in 1975 and Ph.D. (Forestry and Economics) in 1976.

After a brief postdoctoral period back at ANU, he was appointed Principal Research Officer (Jan 1978 - April 79), then Officer-in-Charge (April 1979 - May 80) Forestry Economics Research Section, then Senior Economist (May 1980 - Aug 80) at the Bureau of Agricultural Economics in Canberra. He supervised agricultural economics research teams in many sectors of the Australian rural economy, including studies of commodity markets and international trade in primary products.

In 1980 Neil was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Forestry, ANU, teaching and conducting research in resource and environmental economics and development economics. In July 1982, he was seconded to the United Nations to be Chief Technical Adviser of an FAO/UNDP Project, "Supply and Demand of Forest Products and Future Development Strategies" in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He advised the Planning Commission and Minister of Agriculture & Forests re development priorities and projects, including cost/benefit and environmental impact analysis and co-ordinated international donor assistance to the sector.

In January 1985 he returned to ANU as a Senior Lecturer in Resource Economics, then concurrently Executive Director, Centre for Forestry in Rural Development. He co-ordinated multi-disciplinary studies of the role and contribution of various types of forestry activities to rural development; providing consultancy services to national and international agencies, especially in the preparation, appraisal and evaluation of rural development projects; and conducting training courses in environmental planning and project management. He was also Deputy Project Director and economist, Nepal-Australia Community Forestry Project (from Nov 1988 to June 1991).

He was the founding Director of the graduate program in Environmental Management and Development in the National Centre for Development Studies, A.N.U. Canberra (Jan 1992 to Sept 1993). There he was responsible for administration, research, teaching and supervision, in resource and environmental economics and policy, particularly for developing countries. During this period Neil was also appointed as a part-time Associate Commissioner for the Industry Commission's Inquiry into Adding Further Value to Australia's Forest Products.

In September 1993, Neil moved to Indonesia to become the founding Director of Policy Development, then Assistant Director General (Jan. 1995 - July 98) of the Centre for International Forestry Research. His duties there included directing and supervising international research programs into social and economic aspects of forestry and land use, and policies to contribute to alleviation of rural poverty and improved environmental conservation.

Neil has served on numerous Boards: Greening Australia (ACT); China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (Forests and Grasslands Taskforce); Procitropicos in Costa Rica and the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. He was Chairman of the Trust for Nature Foundation. He has published widely in the international literature and was a Lead Author for the U.N. Milleneum Global Ecosystem Assessment (1998-2005). He serves on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, International Forestry Review (Oxford), the Journal of Forest Economics (published in Sweden), Forests, Trees and Livelihoods (published in Scotland). In 2005 he was appointed to the World Commission on Protected Areas of the IUCN (World Conservation Union).

Neil is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and also an active private pilot in general aviation.