Mathis Wackernagel | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1962-11-10)10 November 1962 (age 63) Basel, Switzerland |
| Education | Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning |
| Occupation | President |
| Employer | Global Footprint Network |
| Known for | creating theecological footprint concept, promotingEarth Overshoot Day |
| Website | http://footprintnetwork.org/ |
Mathis Wackernagel is aSwiss-bornsustainability advocate. He is President ofGlobal Footprint Network, an international sustainabilitythink tank with offices inOakland, California, and Geneva, Switzerland. The think-tank is anon-profit that focuses on developing and promotingmetrics for sustainability.
After earning a degree inmechanical engineering from theSwiss Federal Institute of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. incommunity andregional planning at theUniversity of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada in 1994. There, in his doctoral dissertation under ProfessorWilliam Rees, he worked with Rees in creating theecological footprint concept and developed the accounting methodology for it.[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 adjunct faculty at SAGE of theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2010, he was appointed Frank H. T. Rhodes Class of 1956 Visiting Professor atCornell University (1 July 2011 – 30 June 2013).[2][3] Wackernagel was a member of theGlobal Business Network.[4]
Wackernagel has said that "Overshoot will ultimately liquidate the planet's ecological assets."[5] He also noted that "We look at all the problems in separate ways – climate change or biodiversity loss or food shortage – as if they were occurring independently. But they’re all symptoms of the same underlying theme: that our collective metabolism, the amount of things that humanity uses, has become very big compared to what Earth can renew."[6]
Università di Siena awarded Mathis Wackernagel withan honorary degree on March 21, 2025, for which he provided a "lectio magistralis".
On November 21, 2024, the Nobel Sustainability Trust awarded Wackernagel with theAward for Leadership in Implementation. It is the second year the Trust has bestowed this honor; thefirst time they imparted the implementation award toNicolas Stern.
In November 2022, the University of Stirlingpresented Wackernagel with anhonorary doctorate. In his address,he proposed a "question with which to start everything – whether you design a policy or develop any new strategy [...]: do you love people?"
In 2018, Wackernagel andZhifu Mi were the joint recipients of the secondWorld Sustainability Award.[7] Wackernagel, along with Susan Burns, received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship from the Skoll Foundation in 2007.[8] He received an honorary doctorate from theUniversity of Bern in 2007, a 2006World Wide Fund for Nature Award for Conservation Merit, and the 2005Herman Daly Award of the US Society for Ecological Economics.[9] With Global Footprint Network, he received the International PrizeCalouste Gulbenkian 2008 (Lisbon, Portugal) “dedicated to the respect for biodiversity and defense of the environment in man’s relationship with nature.”[10]
In 2013, Wackernagel received thePrix Nature Swisscanto.[11] Prior, he received the2012 Binding-Prize for Nature Conservation,[12] the bi-annual Kenneth Boulding Award of theInternational Society for Ecological Economics,[13] and theBlue Planet Prize of the Asahi Glass Foundation (the latter two withWilliam E. Rees).[14] He also received the2011 Zayed International Prize for Environment[15] 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."
The (En)Rich List ranked Wackernagel as the 19th of the 100 most inspirational individuals whose contributions enrich paths to sustainable futures.[16]
