James Workman

James Workman creates natural resource conservation markets for water, energy and marine life. He wrote the award-winning Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought, and Sea Change: The Quiet Revolution Transforming Life Offshore–and On (ForeEdge). Workman studied at Yale & Oxford, taught at Wesleyan and Whitman, but his real education came from blowing up dams, releasing wolves, restoring wildfires, guiding safaris, smuggling water to dissidents after breaking down alone in Africa’s Kalahari Desert, and becoming a father. A former investigative journalist, he was enlisted by U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt as a White House appointee to advance President Clinton’s conservation policies, later joined the World Commission on Dams under Nelson Mandela, and advises corporations, governments and international NGOs. Based in San Francisco, he works and writes for Environmental Defense Fund, and has co-founded AquaShares, the world’s first online market that lets families and firms trade and monetize their water savings. Workman is also a 2005 PERC Enviropreneur™ alum.