James Leslie

Background

About James Leslie

James Leslie is Global Coordinator of the GEF-funded Blue and Green Islands Integrated Program. Previously, he served as Global Programme Manager for Food Systems at UNDP, where he integrated a systems approach in efforts to address complex challenges at the nexus of food, climate and biodiversity in diverse contexts in the tropics, SIDS and temperate regions. He has also worked for many years with UNDP in Peru, as Technical Advisor Ecosystems and Climate Change, where he was responsible for managing the portfolio - including concept development, resource mobilisation and partnership management, and personnel oversight - focused on sustainable food systems and landscapes, climate change, environmental finance and biodiversity conservation. Much of his work has entailed close coordination with national and sub national authorities as well as local communities and private sector. He holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences with a focus on social ecology and forest governance from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, for which he developed a field-based thesis focused on socio-ecological resilience in the Bazaruto Archipelago. He also holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, with a focus on business strategy and finance. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in biology and education from Brown University, USA. Specialties: food systems, jurisdictional and landscape approaches, multi-stakeholder collaboration mechanisms, participatory governance, climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, disaster risk resilience, carbon markets, ecosystem services markets, climate change and private sector, climate finance, forest conservation, forest policy, local governments, community-based conservation, Latin America.