Dr. Murray C. Simpson, Senior Research Associate, University of Oxford

Dr. Murray C. Simpson is a Senior Research Associate at Oxford University Centre for the Environment and Principal of the international consultancy Sustainable Solutions Worldwide. He has extensive experience in sustainable development, tourism, climate change and the environment. Murray has worked at chief executive management level in industry, owning and operating an international group of tourism companies and in the public sector at board level.  He has worked with the public and the private sector in a range of initiatives including sustainable tourism development, tourism strategy, tourism analysis and climate change adaptation and mitigation projects in developed and developing countries, and in small island states; bridging the gap between research, policy and implementation.

He is lead author of the recent UNEP-Oxford University-UNWTO-WMO publication, ‘Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation in the Tourism Sector: Frameworks, Tools and Practices’ and director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) international capacity building seminar series on climate change and tourism. Murray is lead author of the ‘Report on the International Policy and Market Response to Global Warming and the Challenges and Opportunities that Climate Change Issues Present for the Caribbean Tourism Sector’. He is also lead author of the ‘Impacts and Adaptation in Destinations’ chapter and co-author of the UNWTO-UNEP-WMO technical report, ‘Climate Change and Tourism: Responding to Global Challenges’.

Murray has worked in Europe, UK, Australasia, South Africa, the USA, Asia, South and Central America and in more than 15 island states in the Caribbean. International organizations he has worked with include United Nations Agencies, the European Development Fund, the Association of Caribbean States, the Caribbean Tourism Organization, the European Union and the European Travel Commission. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a founding member of the UK International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, a founding member of Experts in Climate Change and Tourism (eCLAT) and a member of the United Nations World Tourism Organization Panel of Tourism Experts.