Nik Sekhran is the Chief Conservation Officer for World Wildlife Fund US – and previously the Director for Sustainable Development for the United Nations Development Programme – and has dedicated his life to finding solutions to some of the most complex challenges facing our planet today.
Read on to discover why Nik chose to study economics at Bath, and how he applies an economist’s mindset to complex conservation and sustainability challenges.
Why did you choose to study at Bath? Did you have a particular career in mind when you chose your course?
I’ve always been innately drawn to nature. As young as five years old, I started birdwatching in the nearby montane cloud forests where I grew up in Kodaikanal, India. As I got older, I knew that I wanted nature to be part of my career but, at the time, there were few university programmes dedicated specifically to environmental studies.
I chose to focus on economics, rather than biology or ecology, recognising that conservation needs economists, in addition to other disciplines, to address the demands stressing our planet.
It was the right decision as, throughout my career, I’ve built on my education as an economist to create incentives for governments, corporations and communities to allocate nature – a scarce and precious resource – in a way that supports sustainable development, without further degrading nature as an asset.
As someone with both English and Indian heritage, I had always planned on attending university in the UK. Bath stood out to me as not only a reputable university with a strong economics programme, but also an institution that valued real-world experience and focused on strong job prospects.
Can you tell us about your experience of studying here?
I remember visiting the campus for the first time and being struck by just how green it was. I also greatly enjoyed having the chance to live in the Royal Crescent during a year of my studies.
But truly the most valuable experience at Bath was my ‘sandwich year’. First, I was placed with a policy advocacy group in Belgium doing econometric work, and later I travelled to the United States to work for an environmental campaign in Minnesota. For me, this was proof that it was possible to apply my formal training as an economist to the challenges facing people and the planet.
Describe your career journey since graduating.
From the very beginning, it was clear to me that nature conservation and sustainable development is not a zero-sum game. One cannot be sacrificed for the other because they depend on each other. This became my guiding principle across my career, spanning nearly 30 years and over 45 countries.
One of my first jobs was in Papua New Guinea, working for the government’s finance and environment departments. As a small island nation, Papua New Guinea has contributed least to the climate crisis but is highly susceptible to its impacts, which stress food security, create water scarcity and threaten infrastructure as extreme weather events become more frequent and intense. These early work experiences demonstrated the importance of developing incentives for environmental conservation that can simultaneously address the basic needs for other interest groups, including businesses and local communities. 
I spent the next 20 years building integrated programmes with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where I eventually served as the Director for Sustainable Development. At UNDP, I worked with a team of 200 staff dedicated to advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Earlier in my UNDP career, we worked to build a major conservation finance initiative to increase investment flows into conservation programmes from traditional sources (such as grants, gifts and corporate investments) as well as market-based approaches, debt-for-nature swaps and payment for ecosystem services.
Today I have the incredible opportunity to serve as the Chief Conservation Officer at the World Wildlife Fund US. I lead a team of 300 dedicated conservationists focused on halting and reversing biodiversity loss, addressing climate change, ending plastic pollution and ensuring a future where both people and nature can thrive. Partnerships are absolutely central to our work at WWF, and we collaborate with partners from local to global levels in nearly 100 countries.
What is a typical day like in your current role?
A typical day involves a lot of troubleshooting. The challenges facing our planet are immense; a dump truck’s worth of plastic ends up in the ocean every minute, wildlife populations have plummeted by 69% since 1970 and 2023 was the warmest year in recorded history. These complex and integrated challenges require thoughtful, integrated solutions.
The reality is, nowhere in the world is free of the human footprint, and every place has multiple demands and competing interests. Animals want to exist in their habitats and have the flexibility to migrate to food or breeding grounds. Humans want to commute to work, feed their families and sustain a safe home with clean air, water and liveable conditions. In many ways, industry supports those conditions, but they also want to turn a profit. While these interests are competing, they are also all connected because they rely on nature.
At WWF, we are gearing up for a series of global meetings, including the UN Biodiversity Conference in Colombia (CBD COP16), and the UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan. At these meetings, countries will come together and hopefully commit to the ambitious action we need to halt biodiversity loss and keep global temperatures from breaching the 1.5C warming threshold.
How did your studies help you to develop, professionally and/or personally?
My studies helped me to approach conservation challenges with an economist’s eye and develop practical solutions for everyone at the table – and in conservation, it is often a very large table that includes everyone from heads to state, to global corporations and local communities.
The reality is, we need to create incentives for conservation – in other words, we need to make it profitable or beneficial in a tangible way to protect nature.
For example, that means thinking bigger than just species or habitat protection to also include support for local leadership and rights. And it means driving corporate sustainability efforts that are feasible from a business perspective – and go beyond the status quo, with real results, transparency and accountability.
Nature is the basis of our economies, with over half of the world’s GDP, $44 trillion USD, depends on nature and its services. That’s what’s at stake if we don’t rapidly change the way we do business.
What advice would you give to prospective students thinking about studying your course at Bath?
Conservation needs all skill sets to avoid dangerous tipping points that would result in damaging and potentially irreversible change to our planet. We of course need more scientists – but we also need more economists, AI experts, infrastructure engineers, policy experts, communicators and finance experts.
I think about one of the conservation models we’re most excited about at WWF called Project Finance for Permanence – an approach that engages governments, local communities and funders to protect nature at scale and over the long term. This model is particularly effective because it involves blended international finance, withstands political upheavals and is anchored in co-creation with local and traditional communities. Establishing these projects requires dozens of people who hold different expertise and represent diverse backgrounds – in other words, we could use a lot more students from Bath working on these efforts!
My advice is to follow your passion when designing your studies at Bath. And then, when you develop those skills and expertise, apply them to challenges facing our shared planet.
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