Ian Parker

At Johns Hopkins, Ian Parker is a lecturer for the MS in Energy Policy and Climate program. Parker is a career U.S. Foreign Service officer currently working as a Climate Policy Advisor for the Department of State’s Office of Global Change and Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. In this capacity, he leads multilateral negotiations in support of Indigenous Peoples at the UN Climate Conference and manages bilateral coordination on climate and energy issues with U.S. diplomatic missions throughout the Western Hemisphere. He previously served in diplomatic assignments at U.S Embassy Santiago, the U.S. Consulate General in Mérida, Mexico, and U.S. Embassy Kingston, Jamaica.

Prior to joining the U.S. Foreign Service, Parker worked as a consultant for the Millennium Challenge Corporation supporting compact agreements in Liberia and Indonesia, as well as social and environmental development at the World Bank in several countries including Vietnam, The Philippines, Yemen, and Kyrgyzstan. He also worked as a researcher with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, including work in Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Parker’s research focuses on interactions between people and the environment, climate change, governance, and ethics. His doctoral research at the University of California, San Diego investigated social aspects of natural resource management and eco-tourism in the biodiversity hotspot of the Raja Ampat islands of Indonesia’s West Papua Province. An initial study, based on over a year of ethnographic fieldwork with previously undocumented communities, evaluated how island inhabitants of Raja Ampat talk about and engage in forms of environmental protection. The research explored to what extent marine conservation initiatives intersect or differ from local understandings of resource protection. It also focused on how human interactions with marine and terrestrial resources are a setting for the creation and reshaping of social bonds across cultural and institutional barriers.

Since 2011, Parker has pursued mixed methods research, including joint research with Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UC San Diego on small-scale fisheries, climate policy issues, and social-ecological relations. His second main research focus is ethnographic research in international relations, particularly among institutions involved in global environmental diplomacy including the UN Climate Conference, where he has served as a lead U.S. negotiator for the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform to the UNFCCC.

Parker holds a PhD in Anthropology, with a Specialization in Interdisciplinary Environmental Research, as well as an MA in Anthropology from the University of California, San Diego, an MA in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University, and a BA in Anthropology from Reed College.