Caleb Stevens is a Senior Advisor on Governance and Natural Environment. He focuses on the intersection of land and resource governance and climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and pathogen emergence and leads the LRG Division’s research and evaluations portfolio, which includes twelve ongoing impact evaluations. Caleb also supports USAID through the generation and application of high quality (low risk of bias) evidence to improve the effectiveness of interventions to mitigate climate change, conserve biodiversity, and reduce zoonotic disease risk.
Educational Background
Mr. Stevens is a licensed attorney. He holds a master’s degree from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland and a law degree from the University of Illinois.
Regional Experience
Mr. Stevens’s work focuses on areas of high mitigation potential and conservation value, including Mexico and Central America, Amazon basin, West Africa, and Central Africa, among others.
Previous Experience
Prior to joining USAID, Caleb was a Property Rights Specialist with the environmental think tank World Resources Institute, where he was lead author of Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change, one of the first reports to synthesize the counterfactual evidence linking climate change mitigation with secure land and resource rights for indigenous peoples and local communities. The report has been cited and discussed in the New York Times, Economist Magazine, and World Development, among others. Previously, Caleb also served as Legal Advisor to the Liberian Land Commission, where he led a multi-stakeholder policy reform process and was principal drafter of Liberia’s Land Rights Policy (2013). That policy marked the first formal recognition of full property rights for local communities in Liberia’s history.
Publications and Presentations
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- Wineman, A., Jayne, T.S., & Stevens, C. 2022. The Relationship between Medium-Scale Farms and Deforestation in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Caleb Stevens, Christina Faust, Heather Huntington, Cara Brook, Colin Parrish, David Wilkie, Sara Carlson, Andrew Tobiason, Mary Rowen, Ioana Bouvier, Yuliya Panfil, & Tim Robustelli, Governance, Land Use Change, and Mitigating Viral Zoonotic Risk at the Human-Environment Interface: A Review and Recommendations for Applied Research (2021).
- Stevens, C., Panfil, Y., Linkow, B., Hagopian, A., Mellon, C., Heidenrich, T., Kulkarni, N., Bouvier, I., Brooks, S., Lowery, S., and Green, J., LAND AND DEVELOPMENT: A RESEARCH AGENDA FOR LAND AND RESOURCE GOVERNANCE AT USAID (2020).
- Caleb Stevens, Adi Greif, & Dieter Bouma, Do Companies Care About Sustainable Land Governance? An Empirical Assessment of Company Land Policies, INT’L J. SUSTAINABLE DEV. & WORLD ECOLOGY (2019).
- Thom Jayne, Milu Muyanga, Ayala Wineman, Hosaena Ghebru, Caleb Stevens, et al., Are Medium-Scale Farms Driving Agricultural Transformation in sub-Saharan Africa? AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS (2019).
- T.S. Jayne, Milu Muyanga, Ayala Wineman, Hosaena Ghebru, Caleb Stevens, et al., SYNTHESIS REPORT: THE CHANGING FACE OF AFRICAN FARMLAND IN AN ERA OF RURAL TRANSFORMATION (2019).
- Benjamin Linkow, Caleb Stevens, & Jennifer Lisher, Reporting on SDG Indicator 1.4.2 for High Income Countries: The Case of the U.S., paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 25-30, 2019.
- Ioana Bouvier, Stephen Brooks, Jeremy Green, Sarah Lowery, & Caleb Stevens, Using Participatory Approaches and Innovative Technology to Empower Communities in Securing their Land, paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 25-30, 2019.
- Caleb J. Stevens, Nomos and Nullification: A Coverian View of New York’s Habitual Offender Law, 1926 to 1936, 56 AM. CRIM. L. REV. 427 (2019)
- Alexandra Hartman, Heather Huntington, Adi Greif, Kate Marple-Cantrell, & Caleb Stevens, Community Land Protection in Liberia: The Impact of Neocustomary Norms and Institutions, paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 19-23, 2018.
- Kate Marple-Cantrell, Caleb Stevens, & Sarah Lowery, Can Strengthening Community Land Governance Achieve Development Objectives? Findings from an Evaluation of Namati’s Community Land Protection Program in Liberia, paper prepared for XVI Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons, Utrecht, Netherlands, July 10-14, 2017.
- Kate Marple-Cantrell, Aidan Schneider, Caleb Stevens, & Heather Huntington, Land Use Rights, Land Governance Institutions, and Tenure Security Indicators in a Pastoral Community, paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 20-24, 2017.
- Caleb Stevens & Chad Dear, Reducing Risks and Safeguarding People Amid Complexity, Uncertainty, and Change, paper prepared for Annual Conference of the Development Studies Association, Oxford University, September 12-14, 2016.
- Caleb Stevens & Chad Dear, GUIDELINES ON COMPULSORY DISPLACEMENT AND RESETTLEMENT IN USAID PROGRAMMING (2016).
- Thom Jayne, Mercedes Stickler, Caleb Stevens, & Sarah Lowery, The Role of Land Policy in Agricultural Transformation and Inclusive Economic Growth: Implications for Africa, paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 14-18, 2016.
- Caleb Stevens & Dieter Bouma, Assessing Private Sector Adoption of New International Standards on Land Tenure, paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 23-27, 2015.
- Stanley N. Toe & Caleb Stevens, Land Reform in Liberia: Developing the First National Land Policy, paper prepared for Conference on Land Policy in Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, November 11-14, 2014.
- Caleb J. Stevens, The Legal History of Public Land in Liberia, 58 J. AFRICAN L. 250 (2014).
- Caleb Stevens, Katie Reytar, & Sarah Jane Ahmed, Measuring the Influence of Community Tenure on Deforestation and Climate Change: Which Bundle of Rights Is Best?, paper prepared for UNITAR-Yale Conference on Environmental Governance and Democracy, September 5-7, 2014.
- Caleb Stevens et al., SECURING RIGHTS, COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE: HOW STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY FOREST RIGHTS MITIGATES CLIMATE CHANGE (2014).
- Caleb J. Stevens et al., Community Rights and Forest Conditions: Analysis of the Contribution of Strengthened Community Tenure to Climate Change Mitigation, paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 24-27, 2014.
- Paul De Wit & Caleb J. Stevens, 100 Years of Community Land Rights in Liberia: Lessons Learned for the Future, paper prepared for World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, March 24-27, 2014.
- Caleb J. Stevens, Hunting a Dictator as a Transnational Legal Process: The Internalization Problem and the Hissène Habré Case, 24 PACE INT’L L. REV. 190 (2012).