Samuel Mawutor works on the Africa campaigns at Mighty Earth. Before joining Mighty Earth, Sam was a campaigner at Civic Response and coordinated Forest Watch Ghana, the largest forest civil society coalition in Ghana. For over seven years, he led campaigns targeting government ministries and agencies and worked to end illegal logging, reform forest governance, and defended communities negatively impacted by logging and mining activities. Sam was instrumental in securing significant forest legislation changes that improve transparency and civil society representation at high policy-making levels. He also worked on climate governance and sat on the National REDD+ Working Group, the National Steering Committee of the Dedicated Grants Mechanism for Local and Indigenous Groups, and the National REDD+ Safeguards Working Group. Sam was also instrumental in shifting Ghanaian forest civil society to focus on deforestation and farmer rights problems in the cocoa sector, prior to starting his post-graduate education.
He completed his Masters in Forest Ecosystems and Society from Oregon State University, Corvallis Campus, and focused his thesis on community-based natural resource management systems in Ghana through a political ecology lens. He has an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of Ghana.
