Esa Puustjärvi, holds a master’s degree in forest economics (MSc For) from the University of Helsinki (1985).

Esa Puustjärvi is a specialist in forest and natural resource policies and forest economics with extensive field experience. He has been a team leader in several short and long-term missions involving project preparation, implementation and evaluation. Puustjärvi's specialisation areas include the design and analyses of sectoral policies; institutional reforms; forest law enforcement, governance and trade; and the management and implementation of policy formulation processes. He is presently the Chief Technical Adviser of the Sustainable Forestry Development for Rural Development project in Lao PRD.

He is fluent in Finnish, English, French, Spanish, Swedish and Estonian.