Carl McGuinness
Global Director Natural Climate Solutions
Wellington, New Zealand
Carl McGuinness Global Natural Climate Solutions Director © TNC
Areas of Expertise
Natural Climate Solutions, statistics, plant health, public administration
Media Contact
Email: aegolf@tnc.orgBiography
Carl is the Global Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) Director for The Nature Conservancy and leads the climate mitigation team. He is based out of Wellington, New Zealand. As NCS Director, Carl oversees the Global NCS team and strategy, with a focus on forests, peatlands, coastal wetlands and agricultural systems, and their power to address climate change whilst also supporting biodiversity and people’s livelihoods.
Prior to this role, Carl was TNC’s Deputy Country Director of New Zealand and comes from a long background in conservation both at TNC and with the New Zealand government. Carl led the establishment of the TNC New Zealand conservation program, becoming Conservation Director in 2019 and growing the program and team to where it is today. He also was the TNC India Program Advisor in 2022.
Before joining TNC in January 2018, Carl came from an extensive 20-year career in conservation with the New Zealand government. In his time there, he led a variety of multi-disciplinary teams distributed across the country and managed a range of functional areas including conservation science, delivery, strategy, partner relationships and organizational design. He was also heavily involved with training and development of organizational culture, systems and leadership development programmes.
Originally trained as an invertebrate ecologist, Carl also has qualifications in statistics, plant health and public administration.
More about NCS
Natural Climate Solutions
Natural climate solutions offer immediate and cost-effective ways to tackle the climate crisis—while also supporting healthy, thriving communities and ecosystems.
New Science Unveils Principles of Natural Climate Solutions
A scientific paper led by The Nature Conservancy outlines five principles that will help leaders define, implement, and measure effective natural climate solutions.
Living Carbon: Stories of Nature’s Climate Solutions
In this series, we showcase innovative carbon projects in Africa, the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, Chile's Valdivian Forest, and the Emerald Edge of North America's Pacific Coast.