Esteve Corbera (PhD Development Studies, 2006, U. of East Anglia) is ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research focuses on human-nature relationships and the impact of social, policy and environmental change on resource governance. Specifically, he has conducted research on how international policies for biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation have affected land-use systems, institutions and livelihoods of rural peoples in the global South. He has written over 90 peer-reviewed articles, several books and book chapters, and served as guest editor in 11 special issues. He is an associate editor of the journal Geoforum and participated in the 2014 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was among the world’s most cited multidisciplinary scientists in 2019 and 2020 (Clarivate analytics).

Research interests

I am a political ecologist building knowledge on the environmental and wellbeing outcomes of climate change and biodiversity conservation policies and producing scientific findings that inform global policies for sustainable land use. I employ multiple quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate 1) the social-ecological and behavioral effects of policies aimed at conserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change, such as payments for ecosystem services, the UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) framework, and biodiversity offsets; 2) the implications of global change for the vulnerability and resilience of farming communities, and their capacity to adapt; and 3) the politics of knowledge production in conservation and environmental science and policy. My research in these fields draws on data from multiple levels, from multi-actor views gathered ethnographically to secondary information collected for quantitative assessments.