Paul West, Ph.D, is an ecologist whose career spans pulling weeds and chasing dragonflies at The Nature Conservancy, co-leading a university research team on improving global food security and the environment, consulting on Indigenous cultural landscapes, and presenting at COP30. Paul’s biodiversity assessments across the western Great Lakes region became the scientific foundation for Wisconsin's Land Legacy Report, which has directed over $100 million annually in conservation funding since 2002, and he helped launch a global initiative to conserve large rivers in agricultural landscapes across the United States, Brazil, China, and Zimbabwe. As a senior scientist with Project Drawdown, he explores the intersection of climate solutions with biodiversity conservation, food system sustainability, and other aspects of planetary health and human well-being.
After moonlighting as a Ph.D. student, Paul co-led the University of Minnesota's Global Landscapes Initiative, identifying leverage points for feeding the world while reducing agriculture's environmental footprint – research published in Nature, Science, PNAS, and National Geographic, among other leading journals, that has informed billions of dollars in conservation and sustainable agriculture investments worldwide.
His most impactful work is identifying where targeted interventions in complex systems – food, land, climate, water – can produce outsized benefits across multiple goals simultaneously, an approach that at Project Drawdown means identifying the most impactful opportunities at the intersection of climate, nature, and people.
He works with a global network of scientists, development banks, businesses, and national governments whose on-the-ground work protects biodiversity, develops climate-resilient farming systems, and improves livelihoods worldwide.
With more than 35,000 citations placing him in the top 1% of environmental scientists globally, his influence spans a career that has never strayed far from land, water, or the people who depend on both.