Cathrien de Pater is in april 2024 gepromoveerd aan de Wageningen Universiteit. Haar promotie-onderzoek betrof de relatie tussen spirituele waarden en bosbeheer, ofwel ‘bosspiritualiteit’1. Daarmee haalde ze zelfs het dagblad Trouw (6 mei 2024). Ze werkte dertig jaar als bosbouwadviseur voor de Verenigde Naties en de Nederlandse overheid, en de laatste vijftien jaar specialiseerde zij zich op de opkomende academische discipline Religie en Natuur. De wereldwijde variatie aan vormen en belevingen van ‘bosspiritualiteit’ is haar voornaamste inspiratie in leven en werk.
About Cathrien / Catharina
Catharina de Pater obtained an MSc in tropical forestry at Wageningen University in 1979 and an MA (with honours) in Interreligious Spirituality Studies at the Radboud University Nijmegen (2007). She also holds a 4th dan in Aikido, a non-competitive martial art.
In the course of her forestry study she completed an internship in the then Soviet Republic of Georgia (1975) and carried out fieldwork for tropical sylviculture in Cape Verde (1977). She majored in tropical sylviculture, added a minor in vegetation science, and another minor on the deforestation of Kalimantan (Indonesia) and its ruinous effects on the local Indigenous people in that region.
After graduating in 1979 she returned to Cape Verde for reforestation planning on the island of Santo Antão. In 1982 she became an associate forestry expert for FAO. She first worked in the Multiple-Use Forest Management Project in the Philippines for the establishment of forest management plans in Luzon. Meanwhile, the concept of social forestry had begun to emerge in this country and elsewhere. In 1983 she joined the Nepal-FAO Community Forestry Development Project. She spent two years in Ilam District, where she assisted in the development of village forest nurseries, plantations, woodstoves and community forest management planning. She then moved to the Agricultural University of Nicaragua in Managua (1985-87) as part of a cooperation programme with Wageningen University, where she assisted the Forestry Department in introducing social forestry, wood fuel development and agroforestry in higher education.
In 1987 she became a forestry adviser for the Dutch government at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV). There she joined the Forestry and Biodiversity Support Group for delivering technical support to the Ministry of International Cooperation to ensure the technical and social quality of forestry cooperation projects and programmes. She travelled extensively, mainly in Asia, where she worked with local and Indigenous farmers, foresters, administrators and policy-makers in the field and also in international conferences. Her work in that period was fuelled by the flow of newly emerging approaches to international forestry cooperation, such as biodiversity conservation, sustainable forest management, gender equity, endogenous development and grassroots empowerment.
During all these years, she became gradually aware of the importance of religion and spirituality in people-nature relationships. When she obtained a part-time position at LNV (2001), she also embarked on a master’s study in Interreligious Spirituality at Radboud University Nijmegen (RU), during which she explored the world’s religions on their views on nature and forests in her assignments. She graduated with honours on a thesis on Dutch forest managers’ spiritual concerns (2007).
After her study, she co-ordinated a Radboud University conference on ‘Religious Studies and Theology Exploring Sustainable Development’ (2007), participated in the RU programme ‘Indigenous Spirituality and Sustainable Development,’ with courses and a book chapter on Indigenous spirituality and forest management (2007-2009), joined the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (ISSRNC), participated in the organization of the 3rd ISSRNC Conference on Religion, Nature and Progress (Amsterdam, 2009) and wrote several publications. Meanwhile, she continued working part-time at LNV on biodiversity communication and, from 2012 onward, on forestry again. She participated in the EU Forestry Commission and assisted in the introduction of the EU Timber Regulation in the Netherlands. In 2014, she retired from LNV. After a period of searching and probing, she came into contact with FNP where she was welcomed as a PhD candidate in 2016 and graduated in 2024 on her thesis about forest spirituality.
PhD thesis
‘Spirit in the Woods, The Grounding of Spiritual Values in Forest Management’ at Wageningen University (2024), https://edepot.wur.nl/649526).