Stewart Maginnis

Stewart Maginnis is the Deputy Director General in charge of Programme and has worked in sustainable development and biodiversity conservation for 35 years.

Prior to this position, Stewart Maginnis was the Global Director of the Nature-based Solutions Group, with overall responsibility for IUCN’s work on Ecosystem Management, Forests, Water, Gender, Social Policy, Economics and Business & Biodiversity.

Stewart has a broad experience in the area of natural resource management, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, including 13 years full-time field work in Tanzania, Sudan, Ghana and Costa Rica. More recently he has worked extensively in national and international natural resource and climate change policy arenas. During the past 12 years he has been a recognized leader in the conceptual development and promotion of “forest landscape restoration” (FLR), an approach which has now been adopted by many national and international polices and initiatives, including the Bonn Challenge to restore 150 million hectares of impoverished and degraded landscapes over the forthcoming decade.

An agriculturalist by training, he holds a master’s degree in Forestry and Land Use from the University of Oxford and has been a study fellow at the University of Manchester. He has a keen interest in the linkage between forest conservation and livelihood security of the rural poor, the practical application of ecosystem or landscapes approaches in forest management and on the role of civil society in local and national natural resource governance arrangements.