Jeffrey A. McNeely
Following his training in anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Jeffrey A. McNeely went to Thailand as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1968. He stayed in Asia for twelve years, working in Thailand, Nepal and Indonesia, among others. He co-authored Mammals of Thailand and designed a system of protected areas for the Lower Mekong Basin of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Viet Nam (with FAO/UNDP). Drawing on his work in Asia, he wrote several books about the relationship between people and wildlife, wildlife management in Southeast Asia, and conservation and agriculture in the lower Mekong basin.
Jeffrey A. McNeely has been at The World Conservation Union (IUCN) since 1980, and has been Chief Scientist since 1996, responsible for overseeing all of IUCN's scientific work. At IUCN, he has designed numerous programs, advised governments and conservation organizations on conservation policy and practice, and produced a variety of technical and popular publications. As the Director of IUCN's Biodiversity Program, he contributed to all of the major global biodiversity initiatives, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Global Biodiversity Strategy, the Global Biodiversity Assessment, Chapter 15 (on biodiversity) of Agenda 21, A Guide to the Convention on Biological Diversity, and National Biodiversity Planning: Guidelines Based on Early Experience from Around the World. He has advised over 50 governments on their biodiversity strategies and action plans, was a founder of the Global Biodiversity Forum, and has published a book with the Asian Development Bank entitled Mobilizing Broader Support for Asia's Biodiversity: How Civil Society Can Contribute to Protected Area Management. As Secretary-General of the IV World Congress on National Parks and Protected Areas (Caracas, 1992), McNeely helped develop new concepts relating people to protected areas, and in this capacity edited Parks for Life, the official report resulting from the Congress.
More recently, McNeely has been working to develop new concepts to build a more positive relationship between conservation and agriculture. His 2003 book, Ecoagriculture: Strategies to Feed the World and Save Wild Biodiversity, has presented numerous case studies and practical guidelines on how farmers can improve their relationship with wild nature, and how nature contributes to improving the lives of rural people. He is also working on energy issues, particularly on how new forms of energy affect biodiversity. He has produced several books relating to the increasing problem of invasive alien species, including the Great Reshuffling: Human Dimensions of Invasive Alien Species, Invasive Alien Species: A New Synthesis, and Global Strategy on Invasive Alien Species. He has reached out to the private sector and was part of the Energy and Biodiversity Initiative, which led to the publication of Integrating Biodiversity Conservation into Oil and Gas Development. While he is reaching out to these new fields of interest to the conservation community, he remains committed to species and protected areas, and contributed to the Vth World Congress on Protected Areas, leading to another book, Friends for Life: New Partners in Support of Protected Areas.
He has published 40 books and over 500 technical and popular articles on a wide range of conservation issues, seeking to link conservation of natural resources to the maintenance of cultural diversity and to economically-sustainable ways of life. His books have included: Guidelines for Tourism Development in Protected Areas; People and Protected Areas in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya; Culture and Conservation; Economics and Biological Diversity; Conserving the World's Biological Diversity; Biodiversity Conservation in the Asia-Pacific Region; and Conservation and the Future: Trends and Options Toward the Year 2025.
He serves on the editorial advisory board of fourteen biodiversity-related journals; is Chairman of the Board of Ecoagriculture Partners; a member of the Scientific and Technical Council of the International Risk Governance Council; co-chair of the Task Force on Environmental Sustainability of the United Nations Millennium Project; a member of the Board of Trustees of two international foundations; and President of the Asia Section of the Society for Conservation Biology.