| Mathis Wackernagel | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 10, 1962 |
| Education | Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning |
| Occupation | President |
| Employer | Global Footprint Network |
| Known for | creating the ecological footprint concept |
| Website | |
| http://footprintnetwork.org/ | |
Mathis Wackernagel is a Swiss-born sustainability advocate. He is currently President of Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think tank with a presence in Oakland, California; Brussels, Belgium, and Zurich, Switzerland. The think-tank is a non-profit that focuses on developing and promoting metrics for sustainability.
After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in community and regional planning at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada in 1994. There, as his doctoral dissertation under Professor William Rees, he created with Professor Rees the ecological footprint concept and developed the methodology. [1] He has worked on sustainability issues for organizations in Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia and Australia. Wackernagel previously served as the director of the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress in Oakland, California (1999 - 2003), and directed the Centre for Sustainability Studies / Centro de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad in Mexico (1995-2001). In 2004, he was also an adjunct faculty at SAGE of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2010, he was appointed Frank H. T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Visiting Professor at Cornell University (1 July 2011 – 30 June 2013).
Wackernagel has said that "Overshoot will ultimately liquidate the planet's ecological assets."[2]
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Wackernagel, along with Susan Burns, received the Skoll Award for Social Enterpreneurship from the Skoll Foundation in 2007. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern in 2007, a 2006 World Wide Fund for Nature Award for Conservation Merit, and the 2005 Herman Daly Award of the US Society for Ecological Economics. As part Global Footprint Network, he received the International Prize Calouste Gulbenkian 2008 (Lisbon, Portugal) “dedicated to the respect for biodiversity and defense of the environment in man’s relationship with nature.” Wackernagel also received the 2011 Zayed International Prize for Environment [3] in the category "action leading to positive change in society." The Zayed prize recognized Wackernagel’s contribution to “translate[ing] the complexity of humanity's impact on the environment and natural resources into a more understandable and actionable form. The concept of ‘ecological limits' and relating the demands of human beings to the planet's available ecological resources, has attracted and is catalyzing action among governments, business and civil society."