I’ve been involved in the global conservation movement since the early 1990s. For most of that time I specialized in economic and policy approaches to sustaining nature. In 1998 I founded Conservation Strategy Fund, a group that delivers training and research for activists, governments, and development agencies in over 90 countries. This practical applied brand of “conservation economics” won CSF the 2012 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. And it helped lots of amazing people accomplish great things for forests and other ecosystems.

Humans’ relationships with nature are complicated. The longer I’m in the business the more curious I get about the sort of ethics that lead to healthy coexistence between people and ecosystems. Especially when it came to the largest intact forests, which are crucial and irreplaceable and poorly understood in economics. These questions led to a partnership with the late biologist Tom Lovejoy, who never missed an opportunity to explain the importance of large scale conservation. Our conversations in 2017 and 2018 led to a book, Ever Green, published in 2022. And to various other things I’ve since been writing about nature, economics, and people.