Mathis Wackernagel

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 with Professor William Rees, he supported Professor Rees in creating the ecological footprint concept at ETH Zurich. 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."

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.” Wackernagel also received the 2011 Zayed International Prize for Environment 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."

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

• Der Ecological Footprint. Die Welt neu vermessen. (with Bert Beyers) ISBN-10: 3931705323

External links

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