John-O is Director of the Tropical Forest Group and a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of California, San Diego. Mr. Niles has spent his career building momentum and credibility for new conservation finance tools to help conserve tropical forests, improve peoples’ lives and mitigate climate change. He has worked with a range of communities, governments, non-profits, private companies and multi-lateral groups on climate change and tropical forests for 15 years. Niles has helped pen three books, a dozen peer-reviewed articles, and various popular articles on global environmental science and policy. In 2007 Niles co-authored a peer-reviewed compilation of independent top-down estimates of forest carbon stocks in 61 developing countries. He has helped write and review numerous studies and methodologies on terrestrial carbon in developing countries. As Director of TFG, Niles represents the Governor of Cross River State in Nigeria on the Governors’ Forest and Climate Task Force, a group of governors working on REDD+ initiatives and rules in states and provinces worldwide. Niles also helps guide TFG’s pro-bono humanitarian carbon portfolio, overseas the development of policy, measurements and transparency issues on REDD+ and leads TFG’s efforts to develop a new suite of field tools for measuring forest carbon.
Early in his career, John-O spent several years managing Pandrillus, a forest and primate conservation program in southeastern Nigeria. He later was a Staff Scientist at Stanford University’s Center for Conservation Biology. Subsequently, John-O was Manager of the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance where he led writing, stakeholder review and marketing of the popular social and environmental standards for land use carbon projects. These standards have been widely around the world to increase transparency, involve communities and ensure that land use projects demonstrate compelling and credible multiple benefits. In 2006, Niles joined the Coalition for Rainforest Nations as their Science and Technical Advisor. The same year he co-founded the Tropical Forest Group with Tracy Johns, Jeff Metcalfe and Haley Nyeholt. In 2007, before returning to Direct TFG, Niles was the Chief Science and Policy Officer for a private company where he helped secure a multi-million dollar private investment in a 750,000 hectare forest conservation and green development program in Aceh, Indonesia.
John-O holds a BS in resource economics (University of Vermont ‘92) and a MS in biological sciences (Stanford University ‘00).
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