Mathis_Wackernagel

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 with Professor William Rees, he created the ecological footprint concept.

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."^[1]

Awards and honors

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.”

Published works

• Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth (with Williams E. Rees, and Phil Testemale, 1995) ISBN 086571312X

• Sharing Nature's Interest (with Nicky Chambers and Craig Simmons, 2001) ISBN 1853837385

• The Winners and Losers in Global Competition: Why Eco-Efficiency Reinforces Competitiveness: A Study of 44 Nations (with Andreas Sturm, 2003) ISBN 1557533571

References

External links

• Global Footprint Network
• Interview with Mathis Wackernagel on Treehugger
• Interview with Mathis Wackernagel on Air America Radio