Experts & Staff

Before joining WRI, John Schaar worked with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) where he was Director of Policy Support, and where he held different positions over the past few years, including head of the departments for environment and climate change and humanitarian assistance. His background includes work for the International Commission on Climate Change and Development, which played a key role in raising global awareness of the links between adaptation and poverty reduction. WRI board member (and former President) Jonathan Lash was a member of the commission, and traveled with Johan to places like Mali and Cambodia, always returning with eyes opened to new issues around the climate-development connection, and with praise for Johan’s insights.

Prior to leading the commission, Johan had operational responsibility for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ recovery operations following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, based in Geneva. His 25 years of international development, humanitarian and environmental work also led him to stays in Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, and Peshawar. This is a long way from the milk protein research that once earned him his doctoral degree at the Swedish Agricultural University.

Schaar’s life is about swimming up-streams, like the salmon, from being where people deal with the disastrous human consequences of failed development, disrespect for human rights and environmental mismanagement, to places where people try to address the origins and root causes of these events. This, he believes, is very much what the WRI Vulnerability & Adaptation Initiative is about.

Originally from Lund, Sweden, Johan moves to DC from Stockholm with his wife. “My wife and I like to be in this political city, with access to culture and nature, and close to our son and daughter-in-law in Philadelphia – an exciting new loop on a winding career path.”