Tim is CEO of rePLANET, which funds ecosystem restoration and protection using carbon and biodiversity credits in 5 main markets: mangrove restoration, restoration of native forest by payments to small-scale farmers to reforest unprofitable areas of their farms, increasing biodiversity in new marine reserves, protecting under threat high-value nature reserves and quantifying biodiversity uplift achieved from investment in supply chains. rePLANET currently works in Mexico, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Transylvania, the UK, Spain, and Indonesia and is aiming to demonstrate how high quality carbon credit projects which quantify the biodiversity gain for each credit can enable corporates to achieve their Net Zero targets but also make steps towards being Nature Positive without additional investment.
Tim helped coordinate the development of the Wallacea Trust biodiversity credit methodology and rePLANET has now gathered several data sets that show how this system works. Tim has also helped encourage the formation of the Biodiversity Futures Initiative, an international team of academics who can peer review biodiversity claims using the definition of a unit of biodiversity change as a 1% uplift or avoided loss per hectare in the median value of a basket of taxa that reflect the conservation objectives for the site.
Tim is also Chair of Operation Wallacea which provides a method for funding long-term biodiversity research using tuition fees paid by students. Opwall has operated as a commercial business for 25 years and has published over 650 papers in peer-reviewed journals from their research programs. Tim also founded the Wallacea Trust, a UK-based charity. Before Opwall, Tim founded and ran the Institute of Environmental Assessment which became IEMA. Tim trained as a fisheries scientist and at the start of his career worked for the forerunners of the Environment Agency as a Fisheries and Conservation Scientist, pioneering new survey methods and river corridor wildlife surveys.