Megan Epler Wood

Special Advisor on Sustainable Tourism Development, PATA

Megan Epler Wood is a conservationist, ecotourism pioneer, research leader and consultant on questions of managing sustainable tourism for destinations, business, and civil society. She has led her firm EplerWood International since 2003 to design net positive regional tourism development projects working in over 35 countries with support from the World Bank, IFC, IDB, GIZ and USAID. Since 2010 her research and teaching with Harvard and Cornell universities vetted a wide range of solutions to help protect destinations using business management techniques dedicated to long-term conservation and local well-being, environmental and public health, social science, advanced technology and landscape design, and biodiversity research. She is dedicated to helping global industry and governments to leverage the positives of tourism while genuinely addressing the tough questions of managing tourism as it scales upward without the local skills, metrics, or governmental oversight required. Epler Wood wrote her 2017 book, Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet and the 2019 report Destinations at Risk: The Invisible Burden of Tourism to address these gaps and review solutions. Her latest 2020 report, A Marshall Plan for Tourism: Can it be built? asks how a travel and tourism economic recovery from COVID 19 can be financed via blended investment which focuses on small and medium enterprises and destination sustainability for the long-term.