In October 2017, Juha Siikamäki has been appointed as IUCN’s Chief Economist. Juha is based in Washington DC and leads the IUCN Economics Unit within the Science and Economic Knowledge Team.
Juha is a graduate of the University of California at Davis and University of Helsinki with the unique combined skills focusing on environmental and natural resource economics but also encompassing forestry, agronomy, and ecology. Throughout his career, Juha has specialized in the economics of ecosystems and nature, including economic valuation of ecosystem services, benefit-cost evaluations of conservation programmes, and spatial targeting of conservation investments.
Juha’s career spans two decades of policy-relevant work. Since 2004, Juha worked at Resources for the Future (RFF), a non-partisan research organization based in Washington DC, most recently as Associate Research Director and Thomas J. Klutznick Senior Fellow. Prior to joining RFF, he was a Senior Economist at Arcadis company. He also has experience from University of California at Davis and Natural Resources Institute Finland.