Jim Harkness

James S. Harkness

Born June 19, 1962, in Milwaukee, Jim Harkness has had a lifelong interest in China, nature, and sustainable development.

Mr. Harkness began studying Chinese language and culture in high school. In 1976, he was chosen to participate in the first U.S. High School Students Friendship Delegation to the People's Republic of China. He continued studies of Chinese language in college at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he also studied wildlife ecology. During the 1980s, Mr. Harkness worked as a translator and researcher on various China projects for the International Crane Foundation, a small conservation organization concerned with conservation of cranes and their habitat. His work took him to nature reserves in Heilongjiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou provinces, where he learned about China’s wildlife and about the human communities who live in and around protected areas. In 1990-91, he spent ten months in Tibet as part of a joint ICF-Tibet Plateau Institute of Biology research team carrying out the first comprehensive studies of the wintering and nesting population and status of the endangered black-necked crane (Grus nigricollis).

Mr. Harkness’ work with ICF convinced him of the need to better understand the social, economic and political causes of environmental degradation. From 1988 to 1992, he pursued a Master's degree in Development Sociology at Cornell University, with a focus on natural resource management. While there, he conducted field research in a nature reserve in Manchuria and wrote his thesis on the political and scientific debates surrounding the Three Gorges Dam.

From 1993 to 1995, Mr. Harkness worked with several different non-governmental organizations on issues ranging from transboundary environmental issues in Northeast Asia to Giant Panda conservation to the Three Gorges Dam. From 1995 to 1999, he worked as a program officer for the Ford Foundation in Beijing, where he was responsible for the Foundation's Environment and Development Program. This work focused on supporting innovative, people-centered approaches to rural development and natural resource management, mainly in the poor areas of China's Southwest; efforts to improve farmers' ability to organize and cooperate for mutual benefit; the establishment of new civil society organizations to promote social development and environmental protection; and research on causes, consequences and ways out of rural poverty in China.

From 1999 to July 2005, Mr. Harkness served as China Representative for the WWF, the conservation organization. He led a major expansion of WWF’s China progammme, and worked to expand the organization’s profile from a strict focus on conservation of biodiversity to also addressing the consequences of China’s economic growth on a broader sustainable development agenda. Throughout his tenure in China, Mr. Harkness sought to strengthen the Chinese non-governmental sector, and he was an early advocate of corporate social responsibility in that country. He also served as an advisor to the World Bank, United Nations agencies and international NGOs on sustainable development and civil society issues in China.

In July 2006, Mr. Harkness began a new position as President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, (www.iapt.org) based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. IATP’s mission is to work at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade system for all people.

(for more information, see http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=80292)