Dr Tara Shine

Dr Tara Shine is an environmental scientist, advisor and broadcaster who specialises in the impact of climate change. Her work combines both environmental and developmental challenges, seeking solutions to complex problems that are fair as well as practical.

With direct scientific, political and social understanding of climate change and its effects, Tara analyses both the challenges and the solutions. She shares a vision that respects people, rights and the planet. She has advised governments, businesses and international agencies including the OECD and World Bank, and served as a UN climate negotiator for a decade. She has also travelled the world, from deserts to rainforests to ice floes, witnessing the effects of climate change and speaking to those that live there to better understand how they live in harmony with their, often inhospitable, surroundings.

As well as her policy and scientific experience Tara is also a social entrepreneur, the co-founder of sustainability consultancy Change by Degrees, as well as various community projects in her native Ireland. She is the author of How to Save the Planet One Object at a Time, a guide to the big impact of small changes. Many of Tara’s expeditions have been covered for TV for programmes including the BBC’s Expedition Borneo where she examined human-wildlife balance and rainforest biodiversity, and Lost Crocodiles of the Pharaohs, in which Tara discovered species in locations experts had previously assumed they could not exist. She also presented the technology episode of Channel 4’s science series Brave New World with Stephen Hawking.

Covering everything from the natural world to renewable energy and new technologies, Tara examines accessible solutions to complex problems, from the small, individual-level changes to large, institutional actions. She considers policies that are equitable for all economies, commercial strategies that maintain profitability, and how we can all make a difference.