Alastair Nelson

Alastair Nelson has 30-years field experience implementing and leading field-conservation programs in the Horn of Africa, East and Southern Africa. Alastair is currently the Managing Director of Conservation Synergies, an organisation that supports governments and their partners to look at conservation problems from new angles, working with experts from other fields to understand drivers and patterns, then develop practical solutions. This includes working on solutions to disrupt patterns of corruption, and then build individual integrity and organisational resilience to corruption. He has also undertaken analyses of what has worked to reduce wildlife crime in Southern and East Africa, and used this to inform SADC policies and strategy, as well as numerous country strategies. Previously, he served as WCS Mozambique Country Director and Regional Director of Counter Wildlife Trafficking for six years, spent three years managing regional projects from the FZS office in Tanzania, and worked in Ethiopia for six years.

Alastair has also been a Senior Analyst with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, conducting political and economic analyses of illicit economies on the Swahili coast, with a particular focus on northern Mozambique, as well as convergence between wildlife crime and other illicit economies.