Pacific, Climate & Environment Profile Series: Pierre Tarik Elias

As AFRAN celebrates 10 years of connecting people, knowledge and expertise across France, Australia and the Pacific, our Pacific, Climate & Environment Profile Series continues to showcase the diversity of people working towards a more sustainable and resilient region.

Today, we are pleased to feature Pierre Tarik Elias, a computer engineer, consultant and project manager whose career brings together technology, forest conservation and community participation across the Pacific.

Based in Brisbane for the past 15 years, Pierre is also the CEO and Co-founder of Fair Grade Forests, where he develops digital tools and approaches to support forest conservation and Indigenous sustainability. His work is built around a fundamental principle: technology can help us understand and protect forests, but it cannot do so without the people who live in and care for them.

From technology to forest conservation

Originally trained as a computer engineer, Pierre's career has progressively brought his technological expertise into the environmental field. His connection with the Pacific began through New Caledonia, where he recently spent three years, and later expanded to Papua New Guinea, where he has worked regularly for more than 15 years. He remains actively involved there today, particularly through the Managalas conservation programme.

Through these experiences, his work has evolved around the protection of primary forests and forest communities, combining environmental monitoring, forest management, carbon credits and digital technologies. At Fair Grade Forests, this includes developing technological and certification approaches to support both forest conservation and Indigenous sustainability.  

When technology meets local knowledge

Technology is playing an increasingly important role in understanding what happens to forests. Satellite imagery, digital data and Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems can help track forest cover, measure change and provide evidence for conservation initiatives and carbon projects. But for Pierre, data alone is not enough. A satellite can provide information about a forest from above, but it cannot replace the knowledge of the people who understand that forest from within. Local and Indigenous communities hold knowledge built through generations of living with and managing their environments. Their experience is therefore essential not only to understanding forests, but also to determining how they should be managed and protected.

“The people who live in and care for forests need to be part of the solutions to protect them.”

Pierre's approach therefore seeks to connect scientific and technological tools with local knowledge, ensuring communities can participate in measuring, managing and protecting their own forests.  

Connecting forests with climate action

Forest conservation also places Pierre's work within a much broader global conversation about climate change.

Through his involvement in forestry initiatives in Papua New Guinea, he has contributed to bringing Pacific forest issues and projects to international climate discussions, including COP26 and COP30. These experiences provide an opportunity to highlight the role Pacific forests can play in climate action, but also the communities behind their protection. Carbon credits, monitoring systems and international climate mechanisms can provide new tools and opportunities for conservation. Yet their effectiveness ultimately depends on how they translate into action on the ground—and whether the communities managing these environments are genuinely part of that process. For Pierre, strengthening the voice of local communities and tribes in decision-making is therefore an important part of building more effective and lasting approaches to conservation.

The Pacific as a place for innovation

Pierre's career also illustrates how the Pacific can bring together different forms of expertise. Environmental challenges in the region require scientific knowledge, technology and data, but also an understanding of local realities and community priorities. Rather than treating these as separate worlds, Pierre's work demonstrates the value of connecting them: using technological innovation where it can make a difference, while ensuring that environmental solutions remain grounded in the knowledge and participation of the people concerned.

In this sense, the Pacific is not simply a place where environmental and climate challenges need to be addressed. It is also a region where new approaches can emerge from the intersection of technology, conservation and local knowledge.

Building connections through AFRAN

For Pierre, creating those connections also means connecting people. He values AFRAN as a platform for both formal and informal networking, strengthening relationships between France, Australia and the Pacific and creating opportunities for people with different expertise to meet and develop projects together. But his approach to networking goes beyond developing his own collaborations. He particularly values helping others build their networks and projects across the Pacific, reflecting a broader belief in collaboration as a way of turning expertise into action.

As AFRAN celebrates its first decade, Pierre's story reminds us that responding to climate change does not require choosing between technological innovation and traditional or local knowledge. The strongest solutions can emerge when the two work together. Because protecting forests is ultimately not only about monitoring trees or measuring carbon. It is also about empowering the people who know those forests, depend on them and care for them every day.

AFRAN - Pierre Tarik Elias.pdf

Download PDF • 897KB