Simon Foale

My undergraduate training was in zoology and marine science, but my PhD work, conducted in the Solomon Islands, employed fisheries science and ethnographic approaches to explore the relationship between local environmental knowledge, customary marine tenure, and coastal fishery management. My interest in the relationship between Western science and environmental knowledge in other cultures has led me steadily towards what I do now, which is continuing to research the epistemological dimensions of natural resource management (particularly coastal fisheries) and biodiversity conservation, while teaching anthropology.

Having worked for several large conservation NGOs, I have also developed an interest in the relationship between power, science and transnational conservation projects, and have written a number of papers on this topic.

I have also become increasingly interested in post-colonial forms of extractivism in the global south, including through the use of secrecy jurisdictions by transnational resource extracting corporations. This includes a focus on the extent to which capital flight, enabled by the offshore financial system, drives poverty and inequality at multiple scales.

I have been engaged in a large number, and wide variety of consultancies over the past twenty-five years, from measuring the social and economic impact of mining in PNG, to monitoring the impact of governance interventions such as the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), to assessing the effectiveness of conservation programs all over the Pacific.