On Tuesday 3 October, pupils in S3/S6 were treated to an inspiration and very informative guest lecture from world-renowned ecologist and sustainability pioneer Jim Cannon (1987). Jim is the Founder and CEO of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, an NGO that partners with major seafood buyers and their supply chains to rebuild depleted fish stocks, conserve the oceans and regenerate aquaculture landscapes.
After leaving Heriot’s, Jim studied at Cambridge and in London and as a “bio-economist”, Jim consulted for various clients, editing the UN World Review of Marine Fisheries in 1995 and 1997, working on tropical forestry issues for the World Bank, and helping Eco Securities with early carbon financing forest projects.
He moved to the NGO sector in 1997. At Conservation International (CI), Jim led conservation economics work in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, building a team of local economists working to value nature and use behavioural economics to design conservation interventions.
To engage government decision-makers in ways that would get their attention, in 2000, he co-founded CI’s Centre for Conservation and Government, aiming to partner with powerful corporate allies who could use their influence with policymakers to make conservation happen. Working together with McDonald’s in 2002 and Walmart in 2004. FIPs brought suppliers, producers, and NGOs together, to forge agreements on conservation measures to take to government regulators.
In 2006 Jim left CI and founded the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP). He describes himself as: ‘a lifelong ecologist in search of true impact’. Jim’s mission is to find ways to resolve the environmentalist split on offsets and dramatically increase global financing for forest conservation and rewilding, regenerative agriculture, fisheries management, and ocean conservation.
