Dr. Vishwanie Maharaj
Member, ISSF Environmental Stakeholder Committee & Lead, Tunas and Other Multilateral Fisheries, World Wildlife Fund-Inc. (WWF-US)
Dr. Vishwanie Maharaj is an economist with over 20 years of experience working on fisheries and environmental policy issues through research, engagement of the seafood industry, regional management bodies and non-governmental organizations. Both past and present work include incentive-based tools to improve the ecological and socioeconomic performance of fisheries, with a large focus on tuna fisheries that engaged the tuna industry and RFMO staff to promote strategies factoring in the impacts on fishing businesses and fishing dependent communities.
Dr. Maharaj is currently the lead for tunas and other multilateral fisheries at the World Wildlife Fund-Inc. (WWF-US). In that capacity, she works in close coordination with global and regional leads on overall tuna policy and markets teams on engaging major retailers to drive sustainable sourcing of tuna products. Her more recent work focused on engagement in the FAO and World Bank ABNJ projects, using market incentives to reform Indonesian tuna fisheries and work to address overcapacity and improve business performance in the Eastern Pacific tropical tuna fisheries.
Prior to WWF, Dr. Maharaj held senior positions at the Environmental Defense Fund, South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council and a trade association. She holds a doctoral degree in marine resource economics from the University of Rhode Island and an undergraduate degree in oceanography from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
