Graham Prescott

Evidence synthesis and measurement under uncertainty. Field ecologist turned nature-finance specialist, now building tools to make AI-assisted evidence synthesis checkable.

Now

Founder of Nature GP, an independent advisory on nature-related risk, biodiversity measurement and evidence synthesis. Author of an open protocol for structured, AI-assisted evidence synthesis, described below, which I am developing toward a benchmark against human coding.

Built

Structured AI-Assisted Evidence Synthesis (SAES) v0.2.1-alpha · open protocol

A schema-first protocol designed to make each step of LLM evidence synthesis explicit and auditable: every coded field is paired with the verbatim text it came from, generation is kept separate from evaluation, and searches and screening decisions are logged, so that any consolidated claim can be traced back to the papers it draws on. Three stages: setup, extraction with audit, accumulation.

Run end to end on three corpora spanning medicine, agriculture and environmental impact; operated by hand and not yet benchmarked. An adversarial audit of the worked examples (September 2026) found that extraction quoted sources accurately where it could be checked, and that one consolidation had been written from the model's memory rather than the rows; the findings are recorded in the repo's KNOWN_ISSUES file. Next: benchmark against human coders, enforce provenance in code, run the audit in an independent model.

source: github.com/grahamprescott/structured-evidence-synthesis

Measurement rules that standard-setters adopted

Led development of the measurement framework of the Verra Nature Framework: a unit of biodiversity impact commensurable across every ecosystem type, calculated above a counterfactual baseline, and now Verra's published standard for nature credits. Lead author of the TNFD guidance on measuring changes to the state of nature, which corporates and financial institutions apply globally; wrote the tropical forest and intensive land-use biome guidance and project-managed the biome series. Joint first author of SBTN's biodiversity position paper.

Building a research programme in Myanmar

After Myanmar's democratic opening I built a collaboration from scratch with the Forest Department and WCS Myanmar, ran a horizon scan of forest-conservation issues with a large group of co-authors from government, NGOs and universities, and took the shortlist to a regional governor to ask which problem he most needed solved. Through fieldwork and economic modelling I calculated that the government's preferred interventions, enforcement and alternative livelihoods, could not plausibly deter informal gold mining, and redirected the policy question. source: Conservation Biology 2017, Conservation Science and Practice 2020

Experience

Nature GP Ltd · Founder and Director

2026 –

Independent advisory on nature-related risk and biodiversity measurement. Current work includes an analysis of the financial risks arising from illegal deforestation in Chinese commodity supply chains for an international NGO, and contributing to geopolitical crisis simulations run for corporate boards.

The Biodiversity Consultancy · Technical Director of Science; earlier Research & Development Lead

2022 – 2026
  • Technical responsibility for quality across 56 clients and 90 concurrent projects; advised clients with combined revenue above $400 billion on nature-related risk in operations, transactions and supply chains.
  • Won and delivered proposals worth more than £1m cumulatively, outside any formal business-development role. Line-managed seven people.
  • Set technical direction for the science team and led its adoption of AI-assisted methods.

IPBES Nexus Assessment · Lead Author, Chapter 1

2022 – 2024

Selected as an international scientific expert by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to synthesise the interactions between biodiversity, water, food, health and climate for governments. Large-scale evidence synthesis under calibrated-confidence rules, with an international author team and two rounds of government and expert review.

University of Bern · Postdoctoral Researcher

2019 – 2022

Led an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, ecologists and an engineer across Bolivia, Nepal, Switzerland and Tanzania on trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and the Sustainable Development Goals; supervised three PhD students.

National University of Singapore · Postdoctoral Research Fellow

2016 – 2019

Established the Myanmar research programme described above; trained government researchers in survey design and statistics.

Selected writing

  • Prescott GW et al. (2022). Formalizing artisanal and small-scale gold mining: a grand challenge of the Minamata Convention. One Earth.
  • Amano T et al. incl. Prescott GW (2023). The role of non-English-language science in informing national biodiversity assessments. Nature Sustainability.
  • Sonter LJ et al. incl. Prescott GW (2025). Global land cover maps do not reveal mining pressures to biodiversity. Scientific Reports.
  • White TB, Prescott GW et al. (2026). Evidence-based practice in consultancy settings is a win-win for business and nature. Ecological Solutions and Evidence.
  • Bromwich T et al. incl. Prescott GW (2026). Navigating uncertainty in life cycle assessment-based approaches to biodiversity footprinting. Methods in Ecology and Evolution.
  • Prescott GW et al. (2012). Quantitative global analysis of the role of climate and people in explaining late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions. PNAS.

More than 30 peer-reviewed papers, 1,965 citations. Full list on Google Scholar. Essays at grahamprescott.substack.com.

Education

University of Cambridge · PhD Zoology

2011 – 2015

Designed and ran large-scale field experiments on land use and biodiversity in tropical agricultural landscapes (Borneo, Sumatra, Colombia). NERC studentship with CASE award; Merian Award for best student talk.

University of Oxford · MSc Integrative Bioscience

2009 – 2010

University of Cambridge · BA Natural Sciences (Zoology), First Class

2006 – 2009

Organised and won funding for a Borneo research expedition; dissertation published in PNAS.

Practical

Based in Cambridge. UK, French and US citizen. English native; Spanish and French professional; German and Malay/Indonesian basic. Fieldwork and government collaborations in Bolivia, Colombia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Nepal and Tanzania.