James Vause

James Vause joined UNEP-WCMC (the biodiversity assessment arm of UN Environment) as lead economist in 2015. He is responsible for the steering organisation’s portfolio of projects around natural capital and the economics of biodiversity as well as mainstreaming economic analysis throughout the wider work of the organisation where it has potential to raise its impact. UNEP-WCMC’s natural capital work spans the public, business and financial sectors and has included the development and application of guidelines around species and ecosystem accounting, and natural capital assessments in the context of green economy transition. James is a member of the TEEB coordination group (a role he has held since 2009) and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative Natural Capital Group whose collective focus is on ensuring the full range of values of biodiversity are captured in Natural Capital Assessments. A former government economist in the UK, James has worked across a wide range of environmental economic policy areas, latterly coordinated economic support for both domestic and international biodiversity policy in the UK. A role which included establishing the Convention on Biological Diversity High Level Panel on resource requirements to meet the Strategic Plan, as well as developing responses to the UK National Ecosystem Assessment which encompassed the original notion of the Natural Capital Committee.