Caleb McClennen, Ph.D
Director, Global Marine Program, Wildlife Conservation Society
Caleb is a marine scientist whose work centers on the social and economic aspects of marine conservation and saving wild places. His expertise is in the environmental economics and development of coastal regions.
Caleb has lived for the past 3.5 years in the Marshall Islands, working as an advisor to the Government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands on coastal and marine environmental challenges. He has also been a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"There are all sorts of dilemmas facing small island nations like the Marshalls," says Caleb, whose has studied the effects of urbanization in these islands which lie mid-way between Hawaii and Australia. The Marshalls is a chain of more than 1,000 low-lying islands and coral atolls with few transportation links to developed areas and a limited amount of products - namely it has coconuts and fish - available for international trade. Most Americans are probably aware of the Marshalls as a testing site for the early U.S. nuclear program – the most infamous spot being the Bikini atoll, which were bombed during these tests.
As more Marshallese migrate to the capital city of Majuro, the country is fast witnessing the problems associated with development, compounded by a dearth of usable land. Explains Caleb, "People are living on top of each other; there are health problems, unemployment, typical urban issues like water pollution, [managing] sewage and solid waste. If we could take those problems away, they'd have a faster-growing economy."
Caleb received his Ph.D. in environmental policy and developmental economics at the Fletcher School of Tufts University, where he combined his interests in marine biology and coastal resource management. He received his BA in Environmental Studies and Geography from Middlebury College in 1997, and worked as a marine scientist for the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts for five years. During this time he was responsible for laboratory research in blue water oceanography on board the SSV Westward and SSV Corwith Cramer.
Hailing from beautiful Holliston, Massachusetts, Caleb was a Program Director and Captain at Sail Caribbean, where he taught sailing. He was also a bosun’s mate on Concordia, and speaks fluent Spanish.
Caleb’s career in International Environment and Resource Policy has included research on the socioeconomic and environmental implications of the shrimp farming industry and shrimp diseases in Mexico, Ecuador and Peru. It was while delivering a paper on this research at a conference in Hawaii that Caleb met representatives from the Marshall Islands who asked him to come to their islands to help them determine best conservation and resource policies. Related to his expertise in coastal marine economics and conservation, he has published various works, including “Changing Coastal Habitats and their Human Impacts.”
SAYS CALEB:
“Besides running the WCS Global Marine Program, my research interests lie on the socio-economic side of the marine conservation puzzle. In many developing countries around the world, where marine biodiversity value is highest, the conservation challenges integrate social, economic and ecological drivers; these are some of the greatest conservation challenges to overcome - in addition to transnational environmental issues such as climate change and natural disasters (i.e. hurricanes). Thus, I have prioritized my work to understand the socio-economic aspects of environmental challenges, and particularly of marine conservation.”
