Robert Costanza

Robert Costanza is a Professor and Vice Chancellor’s Chair in Public Policy at the Crawford School of Public Policy. Prior to this, he was Distinguished University Professor of Sustainability in the Institute for Sustainable Solutions at Portland State University, Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and founding director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, Professor at the University of Maryland and at Louisiana State University and a visiting scientist at the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics in Stockholm, Sweden, and at the University of Illinois Natural History Survey.
Dr. Costanza is also currently a Senior Fellow at the National Council on Science and the Environment, Washington, DC, a Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Center, Stockholm, Sweden, an Affiliate Fellow at the Gund Institute at the University of Vermont„ and a deTao Master of Ecological Economics at the deTao Masters Academy in Shanghai, China.

Dr. Costanza received BA and MA degrees in Architecture and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering Sciences (Systems Ecology with Economics minor) all from the University of Florida.

Dr. Costanza’s transdisciplinary research integrates the study of humans and the rest of nature to address research, policy and management issues at multiple time and space scales, from small watersheds to the global system. Dr. Costanza is co-founder and past-president of the International Society for Ecological Economics, and was chief editor of the society’s journal, Ecological Economics from its inception in 1989 until 2002. He currently serves on the editorial board of ten other international academic journals. He is also founding editor in chief of Solutions (www.thesolutionsjournal.org) a unique hybrid academic/popular journal.

His awards include a Kellogg National Fellowship, the Society for Conservation Biology Distinguished Achievement Award, a Pew Scholarship in Conservation and the Environment, the Kenneth Boulding Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions in Ecological Economics, and honorary doctorates from Stockholm University and the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

Dr. Costanza is the author or co-author of over 600 scientific papers and 27 books. His work has been cited more than 25,000 times in Scopus with an h-index of 67, and more that 75,000 times in Google Scholar, with an h-index of 108. More than 300 interviews and reports on his work have appeared in various popular media.

His specialties include: transdisciplinary integration, systems ecology, ecological economics, landscape ecology, ecological modeling, ecological design, energy analysis, environmental policy, social traps, incentive structures and institutions