Professor Lee White CBE

Professor Lee White, born in Altrincham, is a joint British and Gabonese National. He was brought up in UK, Uganda and Sierra Leone and has lived most of his life in tropical Africa. In a 40-year career in Natural Resource Conservation and Management in Equatorial Africa he has worked in Gabon, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda. During this time, he served for 15 years as country director in Gabon and for a time as Central Africa Director for the international conservation NGO, Wildlife Conservation Society, WCS; Directed Gabon’s National Parks Agency, ANPN, for almost 10 years; and served for over 4 years as the Water, Forests, Sea and Environment Minister in the Gabonese Government, from June 2019 onwards. 

During his time at WCS, ANPN and the Ministry, he participated in the creation of 53 new protected areas, including Gabon’s networks of 13 national parks in 2002 and its 20 marine protected areas in 2017. He also led the fight against ivory poaching in Gabon, protecting the biggest population of forest elephants in Africa and dismantled an illegal forestry network that was stealing $300 million per year from the Gabonese economy. He raised and managed over half a billion US$ of donor funding for conservation and forest management; led the process to register 187 million tons of REDD+ results with the UNFCCC; structured and signed a REDD+ results-based payment worth up to $150 million with the Norwegian Government, as part of the Central African Forest Initiative; helped to put in place a debt restructuring Blue Bond for $500 million, designed to generate $163 million for marine conservation funnelled through a Biodiversity Foundation dedicated to conservation in Gabon that he was a founder member of; and spoke on behalf of Africa at UNFCCC COP26 in Glasgow.

He has authored / co-authored 125 scientific papers published in international peer-reviewed journals and has written and / or edited 16 books and 30 book chapters. Professor White was awarded a CBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2010, for services to conservation in Central Africa and was made a ‘Chevalier' (2003) and then ‘Officier’ (2022) in Gabon’s National Order of Merit. He has been living in Guardbridge since leaving Gabon after a military coup deposed the government in August 2023. His work featured in the Sky feature documentary broadcast in 2024: Gabon: Earth’s Last Chance.