Professor Ian Swingland was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School, London, Edinburgh and Oxford Universities, and worked as a mathematician for Shell, as a biologist at Oxford, Edinburgh and with the Royal Society, and holds the Emeritus Chair in Conservation Biology at the University of Kent, where he founded The Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology (DICE), in addition to Visiting Chairs at the Universities of Michigan, Florence, Auckland, and Manchester Metropolitan. At London University he read zoology and social anthropology and published his first scientific paper in Nature in 1969 while an undergraduate. After working as a mathematician for Shell Research International for a short time he took a Ph.D. in ecology in the Forestry and Natural Resources Department at Edinburgh University on an FCO/ODA Scholarship. He was then employed as a research and management biologist in the Kafue National Park, Zambia helping to write the management plan. In 1974 he joined Oxford University Zoology Department and the Royal Society to work on the giant tortoises of Aldabra Atoll, Western Indian Ocean. Ian Swingland has worked on climate change for over a decade and with China and ADB since 2002 on China-GEF Country Planning Framework - Land Degradation in Dryland Ecosystems, He published a best-selling book 'Capturing Carbon and Conserving biodiversity; a market approach' and advised the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the Asian Development Bank, and Governments on conservation and biodiversity management setting up some of the largest projects in the world. A leading authority on commercialising the sustainable use of biodiversity assets, he was appointed Board Chairman of Iwokrama International Centre for Rainforest Conservation and Development in Guyana by the President, the Commonwealth and HRH The Prince of Wales.