William Rees

William Rees is a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP). He founded SCARP’s Environment and Resource Planning concentration and served as director from 1994 to 1999. His research focuses on the public policy and planning implications of global environmental trends and the necessary ecological conditions for sustainable socioeconomic development, and he is best known as the originator of “ecological footprint analysis.” He is also a founding member and former president of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a co-investigator in the Global Integrity Project, aimed at defining the ecological and political requirements for biodiversity preservation; a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute; and a Founding Fellow of the One Earth Initiative.

GTI Contributions

GTI Forum

Evolution and Overshoot
Contribution to GTI Forum The Population Debate Revisited

August 2022

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Viewpoint

Economics vs. the Economy

June 2015

Operating from a realistic paradigm that understands the economy as embedded in the ecosphere is the key to transitioning to a sustainable civilization. Will the increasing unfitness of growth-obsessed neoliberal economics to our social and ecological realities spell its demise?

Roundtable

Contribution to GTI Roundtable "Monetizing Nature"

An exchange on the viewpoint Monetizing Nature: Taking Precaution on a Slippery Slope

August 2014

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Roundtable

Contribution to GTI Roundtable "Consumer Society"

An exchange on the viewpoint The Decline and Fall of Consumer Society?

May 2014

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