Jim Perry

Dr. Perry has more than 40 years’ experience in water quality and environmental management and has authored more than 135 scholarly and lay publications on environmental management, water quality, water resources management, aquatic ecology, higher education and international development.

He is HT Morse Distinguished University Professor, and Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. He is a recognized scholar and teacher who has won several teaching awards and is an elected member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. He served for six years as Head of the Department and in 2006 served a short stint as Interim Associate Vice President and Dean of International Programs. He earlier served as Director of Graduate Studies in Water Resource Science (WRS), Director of Graduate Studies in Wildlife, and as a member of the WRS Executive Committee.

Dr. Perry served six years as Deputy Director of the US AID Environmental Training Program for Central and Eastern Europe. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work in Brazil, is a member of the Fulbright Specialist Roster, was a Visiting Scholar at Oxford Forest Institute, was a Senior Fellow of the American Institute for Indian Studies and was awarded a National Academy of Sciences Fellowship for Poland. Recently he has been assisting UNEP and UNESCO with capacity development in ecosystem management (developing training materials, offering Training of Trainers workshops) and with climate change adaptation for the world’s natural and mixed World Heritage sites.

He developed a global risk model to judge the threats that climate change poses to natural and mixed World Heritage sites and built UNESCO’s strategy for climate change adaptation at those sites. His efforts with IISD and others advances capacity development for integrated approaches to managing ecosystems in rapidly changing biophysical and social landscapes.