Virni Budi Arifanti is a researcher at the Research, Development and Innovation Agency of the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry (FOERDIA).  She specializes in tropical mangrove ecosystems, wetlands ecology, blue carbon, climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives. She has a keen interest in carbon dynamics of tropical mangrove ecosystems. She earned her PhD at Oregon State University, USA, in forest ecology, and her MSc from Ghent University, Belgium, in forest management and spatial information techniques.