Mario Giampietro was born in Italy in 1953. He graduated in Chemical Engineering (1978) and Biological Sciences (1981) at Universitá La Sapienza, Rome. He has a MS degree in Food System Economics (CEFAS/Universitá La Tuscia) and a PhD in Social Sciences (Wageningen University). Mario was a researcher at Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca per gli Alimenti e la Nutrizione (INRAN) from 1985 to 2007, but pursued most of his research as visiting scientist at leading universities, such as Cornell University (1987-1989; 1992-1995), Wageningen University (1997), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (1998-2000), University of Wisconsin, Madison (2002), Penn State University (2005-06), and Arizona State University (2006-07). He joined ICREA and UAB in 2007. He has over 150 scientific publications and authored several books. He coordinated the Horizon2020 project "Moving Towards Adaptive Governance in Complexity: Informing Nexus Security” (MAGIC) (1996-2020).
Research interests
Mario works on integrated assessment of sustainability issues. Using concepts from complex systems theory, he has developed an innovative scientific approach: Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM). MuSIASEM integrates biophysical and socioeconomic variables across multiple hierarchical scales, thus establishing a link between the metabolism of socio-economic systems and potential constraints of the natural environment. MuSIASEM allows the use of integrated sets of indicators that can be chosen "à la carte" by social actors in relation to multiple criteria of performance. Recent research has focused on the analysis of energy systems and energy scenarios and directives (projects EUFORIE, NETEP, PARTICIPIA), food systems (GLAMUR), and the nexus between energy, food, and water in relation to sustainable development goals (MAGIC).
Selected publications
- Giampietro M & Bukkens SGF 2022, 'Knowledge claims in European Union energy policies: Unknown knowns and uncomfortable awareness', Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 91, article 102739.
- Pérez-Sánchez L, Velasco-Fernández R & Giampietro M 2022, 'Factors and actions for the sustainability of the residential sector. The nexus of energy, materials, space, and time use', Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 161, article 112388.
- Manfroni M, Bukkens SGF & Giampietro M 2022, 'Securing fuel demand with unconventional oils: A metabolic perspective', Energy, vol. 261, part B, article 125256.
- Taghdisian A, Bukkens SGF & Giampietro M 2022, 'A societal metabolism approach to effectively analyze the water–energy–food nexus in an agricultural transboundary river basin', Sustainability 14 (15): 9110.
- Giampietro M 2022, 'The entropic nature of the economic process—A scientific explanation of the blunder of circular economy', in Lehmann H, Hinske C, de Margerie V, Slaveikova Nikolova A (Eds), The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy. Separating Aspirations from Reality, Chapter 4, Routledge.
- Giampietro M, Renner A & Cadillo-Benalcazar JJ 2022, ‘An accounting framework recognising the complexity of the nexus’, in Brouwer F (Ed.), Handbook on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus, Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 329–345.
Selected research activities
Keynote speaker: "Construyendo sociedades sostenibles. Desafíos más allá del campo", Congreso CREA 2022, La Rural - Predio Ferial de Buenos Aires, Argentina, 14 September 2022,
Invited speaker: "The Future of Energy", The 14th International Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics: Will Achilles catch up with the tortoise?, 16 June 2022, Pisa, Italy