Toby Gardner is a Senior Research Fellow at SEI where he co-leads SEI’s Initiative on Producer to Consumer Sustainability and the newly launched Transparency for Sustainable Economies platform, Trase. Toby joined SEI in January 2014.

Toby has fifteen years’ experience in science and science-policy issues in human-modified landscapes across the tropics, with a strong emphasis on the management and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in multiple-use agriculture-forestry landscapes, and the challenges of balancing environmental concerns and rural development priorities. He is involved in a number of international environmental policy processes including as a Coordinating Lead Author and Liaison Expert for the global assessment on Land Degradation and Restoration of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Before joining SEI Toby was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge for five years, and helped found and coordinate the Sustainable Amazon Network. He is an affiliated researcher at the International Institute for Sustainability (Rio de Janeiro). He has previously led research projects in Belize, Tanzania, and in Caribbean coral reef ecosystems.

He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications, including a reference book on the monitoring and management of biodiversity in forest ecosystems (Earthscan, 2010). In 2012 he was awarded the biannual British Ecological Society’s Founders’ Prize for significant contributions to the science of ecology.

Toby holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh (BSc, 2001) and the University of East Anglia (MSc, 2001; PhD, 2007).