Meet our team

Prof. Robert Ayres is one of the founding fathers of ecological economics, a physicist by training with a PhD from Kings College London, who is known all around the world for his work on the role of energy in the economic analysis, invention of industrial metabolism and pioneering work on life cycle analysis and material flows. Professor Ayres has been a Novartis Chair of Management and the Environment at INSEAD Business School. He was the founder of Center for the Management of Environmental Resources (CMER), which he directed from 1992 to 2000. The author of the first 1969 article in American Economic Review that explored the role of environmental externalities in economic systems: Ayres (1969) 'Production, Consumption and Externalities' and numerous books, including 'The Bubble Economy' (2014), 'Turning Point: The End of Growth Paradigm' (1997), 'The Economic Growth Engine: How Energy and Work Drive Material Prosperity' (2009), 'A Handbook of Industrial Ecology' (2002), 'Information, Entropy and Progress' (1997), 'On the Reappraisal of Microeconomics: Economic Growth and Change in a Material World' (2005) and many more, Professor Ayres remains one of the most innovative interdisciplinary thinkers in ecological economics. It is our strong belief that Prof. Ayres clearly deserves the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences awarded by the Bank of Sweden. A special issue in the honour of Prof. Robert Ayres has appeared in the journal, Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions, in 2013: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/.... Prof Ayres writes an active blog with reflections on contemporary economic issues: https://ruayres.wordpress.com/, which we have a pleasure to share.

Prof. Herbert Girardet is a consultant to UNEP and UN-Habitat and an author. He is leading consultant on sustainable development and a recipient of a UN Global 500 Award 'for outstanding environmental achievements'. For many years he has focussed mainly on the challenges of sustainable urban development and he is often called the world's leading urban ecologist. He has been a consultant to UNEP and UN-Habitat and has developed sustainability policies for major cities such as London, Vienna and Bristol. In 2003 he was inaugural 'Thinker in Residence' in Adelaide, developing sustainable development strategies for South Australia. He also worked as senior adviser to the Dongtan Eco-City project on Chongming Island, Shanghai. At present he is a senior consultant to the Saudi Sustainability Initiative, based in Riyadh. From 1996 to 2008 Herbert was chairman of the Schumacher Society, UK. He is an honorary fellow of Royal Institute of British Architects, a patron of the Soil Association, UK, and a visiting professor at University of the West of England. He has produced 50 environmental TV documentaries for major broadcasters. He is author and co-author of 12 books, amongst these: CITIES, PEOPLE, PLANET – Urban Development and Climate Change, 2004 and 2008; SURVIVING THE CENTURY – Facing Climate Change and other Global Challenges, 2008; A RENEWABLE WORLD – Energy, Ecology, Equality, 2009. His report REGENERATIVE CITIES was published by the WFC in 2011. He has written many other reports and chapters for books.

Peter Söderbaum is professor emeritus in ecological economics at Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden. Previous employments include the Department of Economics, Uppsala University, the Department of Management Science, Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. Söderbaum is an institutional economist in the tradition of Gunnar Myrdal and K. William Kapp. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of the journal Ecological Economics and has published articles in the journal for example "Ecological economics in relation to democracy, ideology and politics" (Vol. 95, 2013, pp 221-225) and "Varieties of ecologicaleconomics: Do we need a more open and radical version of ecological economics?" (201, article in press). He has written textbooks in ecological economics in English and in Swedish. The titles of the English books are "Ecological Economics. A Political Economics Approach to Environment and Development" (2000) and "Understanding Sustainability Economics. Towards Pluralism in Economics" (2008). Both books have been published by Earthscan, London, now part of Routledge.

David ELLIOTT BSc, PhD. is Emeritus Professor of Technology Policy at the Open University, UK, where he has focused on courses and research related to sustainable energy policy. Since retirement from his full time OU post, he has been teaching on a range of post graduate energy courses around the UK, and has continued to published widely. His most recent books are 'Renewables: a review of sustainable energy supply options' ,Institute of Physics, 2013, and ' Green Energy Futures', Palgrave Pivot, 2015. His weekly, monthly and bimonthly Blogs and Newsletters are accessible from http://renewnatta.wordpress.com