What does it take to lead one of the world’s most influential conservation organisations during a time of ecological crisis and transformation? And how do you align 100+ countries, thousands of staff, and a 64-year legacy behind a single, shared vision for 2030?

Today’s guest is , . With over 30 years of experience across Africa’s conservation and development sectors—and senior roles at Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and the African Wildlife Foundation—Daudi is now helping steer the global strategy of WWF as it works to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

In this episode, we explore the ambitious —including six global goals focused on biodiversity, climate, food systems, finance, and locally-led conservation. We dive into the concept of , the shift to inclusive conservation, and the bold leadership required to drive outcomes at scale.

Daudi also shares his own career story—from his unexpected beginnings in economics to investing in lifelong learning to grow as a leader. He speaks passionately about the value of natural resources in Africa’s development, the role of hope in driving impact, and why there’s space in conservation for every kind of skill—even politics.

It’s a big-thinking, deeply inspiring, and leadership-packed conversation.

Enjoy!

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See you on the inside!

Transcript

My name is Daudi Sumba, and I’m chief conservation officer at WWF International. Well, it’s a real pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you again for sharing your valuable time with us today. I’m really looking forward to talking to you about your career, what your job’s like, what it’s like working at WWF in a role such as chief conservation officer.

Yeah, and your thoughts on the industry itself. Let’s let’s start if we can with your current role. So you’re you’re the chief conservation officer at WWF International. Describe your role to us, please. What what does your job entail?

How would you describe it to someone who’s who’s never met you or doesn’t understand what you do? Okay. So it’s really a wide a wide job, but I would say that my job provides leadership to the WWF network for all the conservation issues and matters. You would know that WWF is is is a huge conservation network and the different types of conservation issues that we engage with on a daily basis. Mhmm.

In my role, I provide leadership to a team of experts in different, areas of expertise ranging from forest to corporate engagement, to fundraising, you know, to policy, and who then provide, you know, high level technical services to the network and help the network in conservation programming. You know? So sort of think about us as a a hub service provider, for conservation services, conservation expertise, to the network. I also provide representation, services to network. I represent the network in various areas.

I also help with the, you know, convening what we call the global conservation committee, which is the highest organ that, advises the network on econservation subjects, and this is has membership drawn from across the network. Yeah. So, you know, I lead in fundraising for conservation where possible. I’m also, responsible for driving the impact framework for the network, trying to understand, and and and and sort of articulate what’s WWF’s impact, you know, to to ourselves, first of all, for adaptive management and learning, but also to others who may be interested in the change that we are making across the world. You You know?

So it’s a it’s a wide job, but I’m trying to summarize in a few words to give you a flavor of what it really looks like. Yeah. That’s perfect. And I’d love to dig into a few more elements of that. You’ve mentioned fundraising there as well, adapting to sort of monitoring evaluation learning.

I’ve read about your background in that too. So we’ll go into a few more elements in more detail. But just standing back briefly, could you I I I know a big part of your role in the organization is working towards some targets that you set. You’ve got twenty, thirty targets coming up around, you know, five or so years time. Mhmm.

Just could you give us a bit of a an idea as to what are the WWF two thousand and thirty targets? Like, what are you working towards as a network? And then, like, a little follow-up question attached to that is, like, how do you, either as an organization or as an individual, how do you go about coordinating impact across continents, across a network of organizations towards targets like that? So what are the targets, and and how do you coordinate and work as a global community towards them? Okay.

So if you will allow me, I will I will give you a pitch, for for our target. Basically, in 2024, we put out a report, which maybe many of you did see, for the living planet report. Yep. And in the living planet report, of course, we always communicate the living planet index, which measures, you know, sort of performance of average populations of certain species across time. Mhmm.

And in that report, we showed that, you know, there’s been a a decline, sort of a 73% decline, in the average in the average size of monitored populations over the last fifty years. Mhmm. Now 73% is a really, really, really, you know, bad statistic from a conservation standpoint. Mhmm. Now we also showed that there were regional variations in how that decline was spread across the, the Earth.

And so if you look at North America, it was about 39% decline of the monitored species. Europe and Asia, Central Asia was about 35% decline. Asian Pacific, South Pacific was 60% decline. Africa’s 70 6 Percent decline, and Latin American, the Caribbean was about a 95% decline. Now there are very many reasons why this was happening in the regional variations, but, you know, I don’t wanna get into that.

It’s but the I the the issue is that despite many years of good conservation work, we still see, you know, decline in species, and we see decline in biodiversity. Yeah. Now that links up with the global biodiversity framework, which has clearly, been, enacted, to respond to the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. Mhmm. And so for us here at WWF, we decided that we needed to, develop a response, you know, enhance the 2,030 targets.

We needed to develop a response, to this situation. And broadly, we think that, given that we’ve been working on conservation for the last sixty four years since WWF was created, we think that the best, mechanism for bringing new change is through systemic transformation. You know, work that will be done in the way in which it has been done for the last sixty years will not get us where we need to. Mhmm. But what we need is systemic change, addressing especially the drivers of conservation loss.

Mhmm. And and in the report, we identified four key transformations that need to happen if we are to have a chance. And these four key transformations then become the basis of our goals and targets for, for 02/1930. And in fact, we call it roadmap 02/1930. Mhmm.

So the first transformation is in conservation itself. We need to change how conservation operates. Mhmm. You know, conservation as has been done before will not get us what we want. We need a new narrative of conservation, a new paradigm of conservation.

Mhmm. And we think that that’s inclusive conservation, you know, which is the next level of conservation from what has been going around, community based conservation. Mhmm. So we need to bring indigenous peoples and local communities with the right power relationships, with the right, rights to resources, stewardship, and then empower them to drive the narrative and to drive conservation, Mhmm. You know, which is the next level, like I said, of community based natural resource management.

The second one is that we need transformation in the energy systems, you know, because climate is a persistent problem for us today. We will only address climate, not only, I would say, but we will address climate major if we are able to cut greenhouse gas emissions. And and therefore, we need transformations in energy systems that drive emissions or or other sectors, which drive emissions. And and this has to really, really be deep seated, so that we are able to achieve net zero in the time frames that have been set and achieve the goals of the Paris agreement. Thirdly, we need transformation in food and agricultural systems.

How we produce food, how we eat it, how we store it is a big driver of biodiversity loss. In fact, 86% of all deforestation is driven by food systems. And we need to, you know, go into the food system arena and work with them to change how we interact with food systems and how they impact conservation. And that that’s why we are thinking of nature positive production. You know, that’s the where we have the direct link between conservation and, and deforestation or or habitat loss.

You know? So looking at, you know, different net chart positive practices that help us to address that problem of food systems. And lastly, we need to change how, resources flow, how financial resources flow because financial resources really, support the investment, either that degrade or incentivize conservation. And so we have to go into the financial systems, make them green, so that they serve the purpose for which we are looking for, and they help us to, you know, to address this conservation. So we will see that the rationale for our goals is really moving from sort of threat based, conservation interventions to addressing the real drivers of change Yeah.

Which which then should lead us to this systemic change. So out of this, we’ve created what we call roadmap 2030, which has six good objectives with targets. The first one is on thriving biodiversity. And, basically, we are looking at putting 1,800,000,000 hectares of land under conservation and then maintaining status of threatened species. We are looking at, climate change for a second target, and we think that we should be, looking at 2.4, gig 24, sorry, 24 gigatons of carbon during the time that we are working on until 2030.

Mhmm. And then food and agricultural system, what we are looking at is the adoption of nature positive practices. You know, nature positive production practices. We think that if we are able to increase, a 24%, the adoption of this, we will begin to make a dent in the places where we work. Mhmm.

And then for for we’re also looking at locally led conservation, amplifying locally led conservation in the areas where we work. So we think in all the countries where we work, locally led conservation should really be the driving, driving, driving shift that we make with all our programming. And then, of course, lastly, with the resources, with finances, we look into mobilizing, $1,300,000,000,000 for conservation, in the next six years till 2030. So those are sort of our global goals. They’re broken down, much lower.

There’s too much detail. I just wanted to flag the high level. They’re broken down, but this have become the rallying point for the network, to drive change in a meaningful way. Because we are a global network, we have to think big, and we have to think how we will impact conservation at the global scale. Yeah.

Now you asked the question, how do we organize ourselves to then track impact and to track, what we do? So what we’ve done is to based on these six goals, we have developed an impact framework. And this impact framework then becomes the basis for countries, for regions, you know, to report, to track performance, to track impact in the different places where they work and all the different issues where they work. You know? So that’s how we we’re coordinating impact, across across the network.

Thank you. Amazing. Yeah. I could ask a hundred questions off the back of that, but I just I just wanna step back and just say the vision and the scale and the ambition in those targets is enormous, isn’t it? Particularly within the time scale as well, actually five years, you know.

And it’s it’s the sort of vision and scale that I think as a community we need as a conservation community. So Yeah. So if I may say that what we’re trying to do here at WWF is to raise the ambition. Yeah. So these targets and the work that we are trying to do is not an accounting exercise.

Yeah. This is about ambition. And we think that the higher the ambition, the more we can rally the network because the network is big. The more we can rally the network and our partners to really think differently Yeah. About what we need to do to deliver conservation at scale.

So that that’s why we are going the the way we are going with our targets. Yeah. And I guess you’re setting leadership too. One of my questions was gonna be, like, what do you because you are a senior leader yourself. You’ve been in senior leadership roles for fifteen, twenty years or so.

Like, what do you see as leadership? Because it seems that what’s happening here is the vision and the goals are setting a clear vision for the future, which unites and coalesces people behind it. And that feels like part of leadership to me. So, yeah, what do you see as leadership either as an organization or indeed as an individual? Like, how would you define a a group leader?

So so for for for me and and and especially for the network in terms of leadership. Yeah. Leadership really the job of leadership is to set vision. Yeah. Okay.

To set vision, towards which people should rally. The leader must show the way and show the magnitude of the way you want people to go. So that’s what leadership has done here, to set these six ambitious objectives Yeah. And then to provide the network with an opportunity to respond in their different ways, with different activities, with different initiatives, to respond to the achievement, of those objectives. But then leadership continues to drive, okay, to provide oversight over the implementation of this road map.

So it it’s not enough for leadership to set the the vision and the ambition, but it’s equally important for the leadership to to drive and to provide over oversight, over implementation of the vision. Because normally where we lose things is when we we set good visions, but implementation is always the key issue. And that’s where we normally where things fail. So here at WWF, what we are looking at, yes, we’ve set the vision. Now we’ve developed the leadership structures to help us to drive implementation of that vision, with appropriate checks, appropriate, enabling mechanisms, appropriate resource allocations, to enable countries then to implement according to vision.

Yeah. You mentioned something around the impact framework. Have I got that right? Yeah. And what I what I hear when I hear impact is outcome.

You’re interested in the outcomes. You mentioned also that people can achieve the outcomes how they want. There’s sort of an element of innovation built into or flexibility maybe is a better word around that. Have you deliberately focused on outcomes, impacts, like the yeah. The the what happens as a result of the activities in terms of your goals rather than just measuring impact?

Inputs, if you like, like the activities. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We are. In in fact, our our system, you know, maybe the description of 2030 is not an accurate description.

Yeah. I should have said it’s road map 2050 with a checkpoint in 2030. Got you. And so our our our system really focuses on the outcomes and the impact. If you look at the results hierarchy, we are not focused on inputs.

Of course, inputs and outputs are important because they’re the ones that you use to determine how how best you will get to your outcomes and to your impact. So those, yes, we track. But our focus is really how do we then use this to get to the impacts we are look. What is the change? And remember, I talked about transformation.

What is this transformational change that we would like to see in the systems in which we are working? And, of course, there will be the cascade of the inputs, impacts, and a long time. But at the end of the day, we would like to demonstrate real change, which is the impact we are looking for with the impact system. Yeah. Yeah.

I find it really inspiring. Yeah. And I I hope people find it interesting just to kinda look under the hood about how these things are built, how it’s coordinated, because that’s a key part of your role. And I love what you said about how we need to change things. It’s a systemic change.

If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we’ll expect similar outputs right. So we’ve got to change things to have the scale of the impacts that we’re looking for. And that sounds really exciting. Yeah. Absolutely.

I’d like to talk a bit about sort of sustainable development. I know it’s a kind of core part of your work, in your career, but also as an organization. And you’ve described how natural resources are being critical to particularly Africa’s development, but obviously, if other reason regions also. What are the so what are some of the tensions that you see between kind of conservation goals and development needs? So recognizing that natural resources and wildlife are part of development, but also they have they receive negative impact sometimes as a result of that.

I don’t know if you just speak to that a little bit because I know it’s an area that you’re particularly interested in. Yeah. Yeah. I I think that, many years ago, we we used to talk about, you know, the need to integrate development and conservation because this was seen as two distinct, you know, areas of operation or sectors. Yeah.

But I I think that’s a false a false narrative because in many parts, for for example, in Africa, there is no way we can divorce development from natural resources. Natural resources are the best for development in Africa. If you look at the value of natural resources in Africa, we know that this is 6,500,000,000,000.0, okay, and should be the basis for development in Africa. I think when we look at, natural resources from a purely, narrow perspective, you know, then then we begin to say that there’s a conflict between conservation and development. Yeah.

You know? But when we look at natural resources from the holistic view, I’m an economist. So I look at natural resources from sort of the total economic value. What is it that we get from these resources in totality, whether they be indirect or directly? How do they support ecosystem functions?

How do they support economic processes? You know? What direct values do we get out of natural resources? When we adopt that holistic view, then we can see for Africa, natural resources are central to the development discourse. Yeah.

You know? Yes. You are right that because, conservation is a land use, and natural resources in some other natural resources exploitation are also land uses, say oil exploration. In economics we say that it’s about choices, you know? It’s about options.

And when when we begin to look at it from that, that you choose one option against another, then in that way there are conflicts and the issue is how well we align the allocation to maximize value Mhmm. For for our economies and for our people. You know? So I think that, for natural best economies like Africa, you know, the the the the the, sort of the the conflict between natural resources and development is very narrow, you know, because natural resource are the base, for cons for but in some cases, I should agree that in some cases, people who still maintain the traditional view of development as being totally different from, conservation will still see these conflicts between agriculture and, conservation. They will still see conflicts between wildlife and settlements, wildlife and other land uses.

This will be a reality. But I think that the way Africa is shaping up, we have found that all of us, all this can thrive at the same time. What the different uses to which we put land in Africa can thrive at the same time. It is possible for us to have what you might call classic development in the same space as have spectacular wildlife landscapes. And and that is I think the differentiating factor for Africa.

That it will be possible to show this clear integration between good conservation and good economic development in space and time. Yeah. And that win win that comes with that. Yeah. Again, that’s so important.

Yeah. Now you’ve mentioned economics there a number of times. Yeah. And also the the systemic change we need in the conservation movement that we’re moving towards. Now you’ve got a background in economics.

You did a degree in economics, I think, at Manchester University. I think I’m right in saying. Yeah. And much more besides. Could you speak a little bit to a two pronged question?

Sorry. One is, how is your background in economics helped to shape your approach to conservation? Has it helped or hindered? And then beyond that, like, what are some of the skills we need in the industry as we seek to evolve towards this new vision that you’re creating? Yeah.

Okay. So whether my degree in economics has hindered or accept helped my career, I would say it has helped my career. Yeah. When I joined conservation, in in the early nineties, around about ’91, there, you know, the the the prevailing narrative for conservation was really one that was best on preservation. Yeah.

You know? And, there was very little, use of economic tools or economic thinking around how to appropriate value of natural resources to the fullest extent. Yeah. We were more concerned with preserving, preserving environments, preserving species, you know, but not using. And in fact, there are some people who came up and wrote interesting articles in journals, proposing that we either use it or we lose it.

You know? You know? And and and economic thinking wasn’t very prevalent in its interaction with conservation. And this is where I found it quite fascinating that as an outsider who hadn’t been trained as either conservation biologist or as an ecologist, I could see obvious applications of economic instruments to help the cause of conservation. Mhmm.

Why? Conservation is a land use. And unless this land use can be competitive compared to other land uses, nobody is going to choose conservation. People are going to choose other land uses which maximize the the utility, like we say in economics, maximize the benefit they receive from employing that particular. And and so we thought, okay.

So why why don’t we try some some some, you know, economics thinking here? You know, and again, at that time, I should, you know, remind you, those are the days when we’re beginning to see, the explosion of natural resource economics, environmental economics, really, really, you know, studying how humans interact with the and utilize natural resources with a focus, on those interactions and how they impact the economy. Mhmm. You know? So we began to, you know, bring this holistically into the discipline and started some initial work those days on valuation of natural, resources from an economics perspective.

This was interesting and very, very useful. Why? Because for the first time then, we could communicate with policy makers in a language they understood. Mhmm. You see, policy makers use economic language in economic planning.

That’s how governments plan. You know? And so natural resources, because they were not falling within that language, were being either under invested in or not including in overall development planning. Mhmm. You know?

And that’s how we started to lose a lot of the natural resources. But with this type of thinking, economic thinking, we could say, hey. These natural resources have value. The value may be tangible or the value may be intangible. It may be direct or it may be indirect.

But it needs to be reflected within our national accounts or national economy. Because these values contribute to the welfare and to the economy of the nation. So we began to bring this in policy and in discussions, and we began to experiment with the actual application of economic instruments in in conservation. So, you know, looking at at at how do we bring business models, for example, to tourism, that maximize value for local people and for tour companies? You know?

How do we experiment with the instruments like, like bonds, you know, to capitalize investments for for conservation? I began to look at a a whole range of tools, that, you know, that would help conservation. And today, conservation economics is really, in my view, mainstream thinking, in, in conservation. Unlike those days when eco conservation was mostly driven by, ecology, conservation biology, zoology, and passion. You know?

Those were the ingredients of conservation. Not that passion is not there today, but I think that, economics gives us a a grounding in which we can speak to the other world, which lives in a system that determines much of what the world looks like. And and I think we are able to do that. Now in terms of what skills, should someone have if they want to thrive in conservation, I think today, I should say, conservation has become a very multidisciplinary discipline. Very multidisciplinary.

Today, conservation is very different from the conservation of twenty, thirty years. And many, many, many disciplines find room, to operate in conservation. So if you are an economist, there’s a place for you. Mhmm. You know?

If you are a lawyer, there’s a place for you. We we dealing with human rights issues. We are dealing with the legal issues around land title, rights, resource rights. They need lawyers, you know, intellectual property. We need lawyers.

If you are, you know, maybe a behavioral psychologist or or someone who deals with issues of change, even a behavioral economist, we are very, very interested in how do we drive behavior change among people so that people can stop, degrading in activities, you know, or activities that threaten the environment and adopt, you know, nature positive activities. So we need those sorts of people. We need communication people Yeah. To speak about the message of communication. We need business people.

You know, in WWF here, we’ve been engaging with the private sector since the nineties, you know, bringing in, propositions to the private sector about how they should engage with conservation, whether it is in their value chains, whether it’s in philanthropy, whether it’s in community communications and awareness raising. Whatever the case might be, we’ve been engaging business for a very long time, and we need people who understand business. When you look at the actual conduct of conservation, most of it is through projects and programs. Yeah. We need people with expertise in management.

You know, project management especially. You know, because we need a good job done in delivery and and and operations people. So I I should say here that in my view, there is really no skill that cannot find a home in conservation. And and if anyone is there and and and they have come from a totally different discipline, and they’re wondering how, they can find a place in conservation. One, the skill that they have is useful for conservation.

But number two, they can build on that skill and learn conservation quite quickly and and be quite useful because they bring a different perspective to, you know, the people maybe who are purists, conservation purists. Yeah. You know? But I think the biggest skill you need is passion. Yeah.

Absolutely. Anything like that. Maybe let me let me not call it a skill. Let me call it a competency. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. It should be. Yeah. Where did your passion come from, Doughty?

Like, where did your interest in the environment where’s this rocket fuel being ignited from? So I I I let me be honest. I was completely not interested in conservation. When going through university, my my eyes were on, you know, banking. It was, you know, the theory then during our days was going to banking, excel, make a lot of money Yeah.

And tie on a beach somewhere and have a a good life. What went wrong? You know? Yeah. But, you know, I was when I was starting my career, I was interested in some conservation work.

Mhmm. And I found it quite interesting because, like I said, the application of, you know, economic instruments to conservation was I found it quite fascinating where it was really green fields that we are opening up during those days. Yeah. You know? So with with the work and and and and the understanding that I was doing something meaningful for society beyond myself, you know, for the future generations and trying to, you know, play my role in care of the arts, sustaining, the ecosystems that make life possible, You know?

I I I developed the passion. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m still here. Yeah.

Yeah. And long may he be still here for as well. Yeah. Yeah. What what advice would you give to perhaps young conservationists, perhaps in Africa specifically as well, like speaking to your your sort of your home region, who really want to make a difference?

You know, they want to help conserve wildlife or the environment or make an impact. Have you got any advice, words of wisdom, any practical steps that might that might help those people that were listening? Yeah. I mean, if you are coming into conservation for the first time or you’re just a beginner Yeah. I mean, one of the things that you need to do is to develop a long term vision for yourself.

Mhmm. You’re not going to become a conservation star day one. No. No. No.

No. No. No. And and that’s not even the point. The point is that we are trying to make a contribution in conserving Africa’s wildlife even though nobody recognizes you or sees you.

I I think for me, that was quite important, and relieved me of the pressure of of wanting to be known for doing something. Just that I was contributing in my little corner quietly, and making a difference was enough. But I think that, one of the first things, any new conservationist should do, is to understand where they really want to go with conservation. Conservation is so broad these days, and what you can do is so broad. Which is the specific area you want to go into, and then develop a plan for how you engage in that area.

You know, I always recommend to even my team members, yeah, that you become a better conservationist if you start from the field where it actually works, where the rubber meets the road. Conservation doesn’t happen in boardrooms, and conservation happens in a place on the ground where change can be observed. And so starting from the field gives you a totally different dimension and appreciation of conservation. So start from the field. Understand how conservation works in the field, in your own small way, wherever you are.

It’s possible then to show the change you are making as an individual if you have started from the field. Then you can begin to broaden your horizons, your training, and you can begin to pick on other new responsibilities and and and new visions for how you want to grow your conservation career. But starting small in a more realistic way in the field, I find it to be quite enriching. I started in the field myself, and I cherish those periods when I worked in the field. What, what would you say about people who are perhaps on the outside, wanting to follow your advice, wanting to kinda connect with their passion and go into wildlife conservation?

But perhaps they’re feeling like an outsider. They’re feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome. They’d like to connect with the conservation community, if we can put it that way, the conservation family even, but they’re not sure about it. What would you what would you say to those people who, you know, what is it like to be a conservationist? What are we like as a people?

Yeah. Speak to that as you wish. I I I think if anyone is on the outside looking in, they might be intimidated by the acronyms. Yeah. They might be intimidated by the speak, the language, it may be a little bit different.

People are talking about ecosystems and home ranges Yeah. And umbrella species and all those sorts of things. They may look they may look particularly intimidating. But like I said, in conservation today, as it is structured, there is room for any skill that is out there. You know?

And anybody who’s interested in cons can find a niche for themselves within the conservation movement. Even architects, we we need architects to come here and design things for us. I mean, you know, engineers to come and do, you know, corridors, whether they be bypasses or what. We need those skills. Yeah.

So I think that, you know, with with good and careful examination, anyone on the outside can identify a niche. I think what what is important is engagement. I think people on the outside need to engage, with people within the conservation sector to particularly understand how their skills might be of use within conservation. Mhmm. Sometimes just watching doesn’t make it apparent, but I think engagement, engaging, and asking questions, and, you know, finding out how you might be useful.

Some people might want to volunteer in a in a conservation organization to just understand the lay of the land and and see whether they can find a place where their skills can land. Mhmm. You know? These things in the field, and they happen. I’ve seen many people come to WWF and other conservation organizations I’ve worked in, in their fifties after maybe they left a certain career somewhere else, and they came either on a a job placement, exercise as an intern or as a volunteer.

And suddenly, they found something they can contribute to. Or a young person came into the organization as an intern. And suddenly found something they can latch onto. You know so there’s I think that you know that engagement, that exploration, is a critical piece in, identifying the the particular place someone can find passion or someone can find the convergence between their skills and what they can offer to conservation. So I would encourage greater engagement, especially for those who are outside con con conservation.

Yeah. I love it. Yeah. There’s a home for every skill. That’s what I’m holding on for for There is.

Which I totally believe. Even even politicians. We need politicians in conservation. I like that. Even politicians.

Yes. We do. We need people who understand politics because Yeah. Politics is the art where policies are made. And unless we understand how policies are made and can advocate and get the right policy off the table, we will always be ourselves.

So we need politicians in the house. Let’s talk a little bit about investing in ourselves and in our own careers as well, which I think you’ve done as far as I can see. So you’ve completed training at Strathmore Business School, Harvard Law School, the Kellogg School of Management, and Carleton University, amongst other than I’m sure. Have you consciously invested in yourself through your career? Have these just been opportunities that have come along that you’ve taken?

Have you been strategic and planned about developing your skills? Have these things helped you? Yeah. Maybe you can just speak to that a little bit because it seems like you’ve got quite an impressive list of things you’ve done, and I’m interested to know was that planned or how has it come about? How has it benefited?

Okay. So, you know, I tell you that some of it was planned, but some of it was opportunistic. Yeah. Yeah. I always knew that I wanted to, you know, get to, you know, leadership positions in conservation.

Yeah. And so I decided to do that, which was necessary to get me there. So that was your big goal. That was the longest That was my big goal. I knew I needed to, you know, be in a place where I drive conservation, functions and Mhmm.

Conservation from a large scale. Okay. I never dreamt that I’ll be driving global conservation. I should tell you. But, anyway, you know, just a simple village boy, you know, from Africa, really.

It’s a tough it’s a tough thing to think about from that context. But Yeah. So, you know, saying, okay. This I wanted to be in a place where I can drive conservation programs. But then I asked myself, what do I need for me to achieve that goal?

Yeah. You know? And and one of the things I I I really found out for myself was that I have to diversify my expertise. You know, because there’s a sense in which the higher you go in an organization, the more generalist you become rather than specialist. And so I had to diversify my skills base.

That is why I studied leadership. I studied operations. I studied negotiations. I studied all sorts of things, public policy also because I wanted to be well rounded. I told you conservation is multidisciplinary.

Yeah. And and and one level of skills, disadvantages you when you go higher in your career and you have to deal with a vast range of issues for which you have no depth. Yeah. So that’s why I as I as I took new positions, new challenges came, and I responded to those challenges by seeking additional capacity in training, in mentoring, and in many other ways. You know?

So that that’s been the story of my career. I’m still I’m still learning even now. I think I I’m a lifelong learner. I’m still learning the things I’m still taking on now to improve myself so that I can function well in the place, that I’ve been privileged to sit. And I think that’s how I would imagine if any young person or any person, listening to me would want to position themselves.

What you want to do is to be the best and to deliver in the role that you’re given. And and sometimes to do that, you have to improve yourself. You have to get new skills. You have to get new mindset, new perspective, for you to function very well. So that that’s what I’ve tried to do on my career.

Yeah. Clearly successfully. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you.

We’ve got just under ten minutes left, and I want to kinda ask some more some broader questions, actually, yeah, about yourself and how you think and what you care about as well. The first one is, easy question. Maybe not so easy to answer, but if we could take you to one place on the planet and you could see one species while you were there, where would you hope to go and what would you hope to see? I think that’s the most difficult question I can ever be asked because Sorry. I I I care very deeply about, you know, species, whether they are small, insignificant ones Yeah.

Or charismatic species or whatever space, keystone umbrella, because I understand that each species has a unique role that it plays in ecosystems and in maintenance of life. So, you know, I I I would have maybe favorite top 10 places where I would see certain types of species. You can have a favorite. I I wouldn’t I wouldn’t I would I would not narrow it down to one. Okay.

Yeah. It’s it’s like choosing your favorite child. I know it’s Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That that’s difficult. Very difficult. Okay. Thank you. What gives you hope when you look towards the future, when you look towards 2030 or even beyond?

We’ve talked about 2050 targets, some of the bigger targets you’re working towards as an organization. Yeah. Are you are you optimistic? Maybe you’re not. I don’t know.

And if so, like, where is that coming from? Yeah. Okay. So I am optimistic. You know you know, hope is a very important thing in life.

I’m very optimistic. Yeah. And and part of my optimism comes from the evidence that we are seeing from the field Mhmm. That we are seeing interesting conservation results, but at a small scale Yeah. In many different places across the earth.

Yeah. You know? So we see, for example, tigers rebounding in in Asia when they were on the brink of extinction. Yeah. We see jaguars making a comeback in South America when they looked like they were going to be gone.

Yeah. And I can go on and on about different types of species making a comeback. Yeah. You know? And and and that gives me hope that if it can be done at that scale, what we need to do is to unlock this for a larger scale.

You know? And so that’s the basis of my that systems do rebound. They are resilient. And given the right management and right interventions, they will bounce back. You know, that that gives me a lot of hope.

Secondly, I see that, today compared to, say, thirty years ago, I see that the environment and nature has now become mainstream in either public discourse Yeah. Or in the minds of the people. Today, people respond very differently, to conservation matters than they did thirty years ago. Yeah. And so that public consciousness, and that deliberate, public policy focus on conservation, admittedly, it’s not where we want it to be, but it is good.

It is great. It gives me hope because it’s the public that will ultimately push conservation forward. Either do by doing conservation themselves or by creating the enabling environment for conservation to thrive. Yeah. And so just that mainstream, consciousness of conservation in public and and private discourse really gives me a lot of hope.

I know that there are people out there who may not be working in conservation like myself, but they deeply care about conservation Mhmm. And will do what they can in their own small corner to support conservation. I don’t have a lot of hope in multilateralism, you know, which we’ve tried to use, at the global level to solve conservation problems because, we’ve been very good, as a community of nations Mhmm. In coming together to state the ambition and the targets and whatever we want to do, but we’ve been very poor at implementing and meeting targets. Mhmm.

And so you can look back and see the HE targets not met, the sustainable development targets on track not to be met. We can go on and on and on and on. So that doesn’t give me a lot of hope, but the citizenry in those countries, gives me a lot of hope because there’s I think we can differentiate between local action and maybe national action. Local action is giving us a lot of hope because people who, in many cases, face the daily impacts of a poor environment are doing something to revert it Yeah. You know, and to change, the story.

And and for me, I’m then, of course, the young people give me a lot of hope, you know? I think young people care about about the environment. They care about wildlife. They care about species in a much more different way. And, in in my own continent in Africa, you will know that more than 60% of the population is 25.

And when you look at, the projections, that by 02/1950, it’s estimated that 42% of global population will be composed of African youth. I think I have a lot of hope that, the proactiveness that I’ve seen in this African youth will, will, will pertain well for conservation in the coming days. They care, and I think that they’re going to, you know, you know, they’re going to apply themselves, to conservation, not just today, but tomorrow because conservation matters. Mhmm. Conservation matters for their lives, for clean air, for the sustenance, for their resilience, for their jobs, and for everything else.

Conservation is critical. Conservation is critical for safeguarding their lives in the coming future in the face of climate change. So I I have a lot my hope comes from that demographic, I think. Yeah. And on that incredibly hopeful message, yeah, a huge thank you for your time, Odie.

It’s so lovely to kind of speak to you, to hear your passion, to feel inspired by what you’re showing with us, and to see the the vision and the ambition that you and the WWF network are setting for yourselves, and exciting to see where it’s gonna go as well. So, yeah, thank you for jumping on the podcast, for answering these questions, and for for for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nick. I appreciate your invitation.

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