Jason Clay
Senior Vice President, Markets | Executive Director, Markets Institute

Connect: Twitter
Jason gets things done on a global scale. His ideas are changing the way governments, foundations, researchers, and NGOs identify and address risks and opportunities for their work. He brings people together to improve environmentally sensitive practices in agriculture and aquaculture. Jason's goal is to create global standards for producing and using raw materials, particularly in terms of carbon and water. He has convened industry roundtables of retailers, buyers, producers and environmentalists to reduce the key impacts of producing soy, cotton, sugarcane, salmon, shrimp, mollusks, catfish and tilapia. "We now have 10% to 25% of global production and buyers sitting at the table for each commodity."
Jason ran a family farm, taught at Harvard and Yale, worked at the US Department of Agriculture and spent more than 25 years working with human rights and environmental organizations before joining WWF in 1999. His favorite flavor of ice cream is Ben & Jerry's Rainforest Crunch, which he helped create—with sustainably harvested ingredients—after meeting "Ben" at a fundraiser featuring the Grateful Dead.
Jason is also a regular contributor to Brink.
“Our goal is to figure out how to produce more with less land, less water and less pollution, so we won't be the only species left living on this planet.”
In The News
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TriplePundit
WWF Predicts Top Issues, Trends and Tools for 2021
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InsideClimate News
Empty Grocery Shelves and Rotting, Wasted Vegetables: Two Sides of a Supply Chain Problem
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The New York Times
How Much Food Do We Waste? Probably More Than You Think
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Olam International (By WWF's Jason Clay)
The 21st Century Commodity Trader—Transcending Boundaries
More on Jason
Connect: Twitter
Title
Senior Vice President
Education
- PhD - Anthropology and international agriculture, Cornell University
- MS - Anthropology, Cornell University
- Read Economics - London School of Economics
- BA - Anthropology, Harvard College
Areas of Expertise
- Indigenous people - nation/state conflicts, natural resource management, global trends
- Corporate Social Responsibility - reducing social and environmental risks, water and carbon neutrality, value chain management
- Agriculture and aquaculture
- Impact assessments of large-scale development projects
- Trend Analysis - the implications of biofuels, metric-based standards for agriculture and aquaculture, animal protein consumption
Publications
- Dr. Jason Clay’s welcome speech at the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue application/pdf, 104 KB