our people
Bridging the Gap Between People & Planet.
Integrated expertise for sustainable outcomes. We facilitate the constructive engagement required to solve
our generation’s most pressing development challenges.
Leadership
James Ensor is the Founder and Managing Director of People and Planet Group.
James is an internationally recognised sustainable development leader. His career ‘north star’ is solving the unprecedented environmental and socio-economic sustainability challenges of our time through building co-created solutions between communities, civil society, business and governments.
Most recently James was Vice President External Affairs (Just Transition) with BHP, the world’s largest resources company. In this role James sought to enable BHP to achieve its global growth goals in energy transition minerals through ensuring the rights and voices of communities influence company decision making, and that principles of transparency, accountability and participation underpin BHP’s approach to energy transition mineral development.
Between 2016 and 2023 James was inaugural CEO of the BHP Foundation www.bhp-foundation.org, an independent global philanthropy working in 65 countries with 40 leading NGO’s, international institutions and think-tanks finding scalable solutions to the most critical global sustainable development challenges facing our generation:
• Environmental Resilience: Achieving enduring conservation outcomes in at least 20 globally significant bioregions through elevating and amplifying Indigenous-led conservation models, influencing public policy and leveraging environmental markets.
• Natural Resource Governance: Achieving more accountable, efficient and equitable natural resource governance policies and practices in more than 20 resource-rich countries, improving the well-being of 100 million people by 2030.
• Education Equity: Enabling economic and societal participation of marginalized young people through accelerated access to relevant post-primary education and skills opportunities.
Prior to 2016 James has 20 years professional experience in leadership roles in international development, human rights and corporate responsibility, with a particular focus working in the complex spaces between governments, corporations, NGO’s and communities. James was Oxfam’s Director of Public Policy & Associate Director of International Programs between 2001 and 2012, with responsibility for Oxfam’s domestic and international programs, policy, research, advocacy and campaigning activities across more than 80 countries.
Prior to Oxfam, James spent seven years with the Central Land Council in Australia’s Northern Territory, a statutory authority established under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, representing the interests of the indigenous landowners of Central Australia in relation to exploration and mining, community and pastoral enterprise development and land.
James has degrees in Economics and Science (specializing in Natural Resource Management), postgraduate qualifications in Journalism and has completed the Melbourne Business School Senior Executive Program, the Cambridge University Prince of Wales’s Business & the Environment Programme for Industry and the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) Course.
James currently serves on the Boards of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI); Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI); the Advisory Council of the Monash University Sustainable Development Institute (MSDI); and on the teaching faculty of the Cambridge University Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). James has previously served as a member of the BHP Forum on Corporate Responsibility, the National ‘Close the Gap’ Steering Committee and is past President of the Victorian National Parks Association.
