Background

David Thomas has over 30 years’ experience as a conservationist and project manager both in the field and as manager of a global portfolio of projects. After graduating he worked at University College London and then Edinburgh University, exploring landscape-scale impacts of development in Tunisia (impacts of dams and drainage) and Belize (impacts of coastal tourism development). He worked for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) providing technical advice on links between environment and local livelihoods at a floodplain wetland in northern Nigeria, before joining BirdLife International in 1997. As Head of Environment and Sustainable Development, he coordinated the different strands of BirdLife’s environment and sustainable development work and led on cross-cutting issues of conservation and governance, equity, rights, poverty reduction, gender and indigenous peoples. From 2010 he coordinated work focused on empowerment of local, grassroots organisations, and the linkages between biodiversity, livelihoods and well-being.