Mark Halle lectures, writes and publishes frequently on issues relating to sustainable development.

Mark was previously IISD's European Representative and its Director for Trade and Investment. In this capacity, he supervises a team of some 30 professionals based in Europe and around the world.

He began his career in the field of international negotiations, serving in the diplomatic secretariat of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. In that capacity, he was associated with the negotiation of the Barcelona Convention on the Mediterranean Environment, one of the first regional environmental conventions ever adopted.

He then spent five years with UNEP, starting in the Policy Planning Unit and ending up working on the global State of the Environment report published 10 years after UNEP’s establishment. From UNEP, he worked with WWF and IUCN in writing the World Conservation Strategy, a document which fundamentally changed the way in which conservation of nature was approached, namely by abandoning the earlier notion that conservation and development were necessarily in opposition to one another and embracing the notion that they are essential components of sustainable development.

Halle then moved to WWF International, serving for three years as conservation assistant to HRH The Prince Phillip (a past president of WWF) and helping to establish and direct the WWF program in China.

He moved to IUCN in 1984 to establish the Conservation for Development Centre, IUCN’s first move to involvement with the developing countries. For seven years, he worked in, and directed, this Centre, establishing the foundation for what is now an extensive worldwide IUCN presence. Halle then spent a further three years setting up IUCN’s fundraising system, and a final four years establishing its Global Policy and Partnerships program.

Halle was born in the United States and grew up in Switzerland.