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. 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 115 peer-reviewed articles, several books and book chapters, and served as guest editor in 13 special issues. He is an associate editor of the journal Ecology and Society and participated in the 2014 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was among the world’s most cited multidisciplinary scientists over four consecutive years (2019-2022, cross-field category, 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.
Selected publications
– Brockington D, Corbera E et al. 2024, ‘A baseless statistic could harm the Indigenous Peoples it is meant to support‘, Nature, 633, pp. 32-35.
– Busck-Lumholt LM, Corbera E & Mertz O 2024, ‘Why Target Communities Remain Subjects Rather than Partners of Development Agencies in Integrated Conservation and Development Projects in Latin America‘, The European Journal of Development Research, vol. 37, pp 100-123.
– Izquierdo-Tort S, Carabias J, López A, Meli P & Corbera E 2024, ‘Development and conservation in the tropical forest frontier: a 50-year analysis of policy evolution and interplay in Marqués de Comillas, Chiapas, México’, Oxford Development Studies, vol. 52, no. 4, 429-448.
– Albizua A, Tuihedur Rahman HM, Corbera E, Pascual U 2024, ‘Rural livelihoods displacement and mal-adaptation due to large-scale modern irrigation in Navarre, Spain ‘ Environmental Development, 50-100987.
– Facchini F, García López D, Villamayor-Tomás S & Corbera E 2024, ‘Intersectional coalitions towards a just agroecology: Weaving mutual aid and agroecology in Barcelona and Seville‘, Agriculture and Human Values, 41, pp. 955-973.
Selected research activities
Continued in my role as ICTA-UAB Deputy & Scientific Director. Co-wrote a new Maria de Maeztu grant application with ICREA Profs. Brockington & Anguelovski (under evaluation). Graduated a PhD (Facchini, Nov. 2024) & obtained a new FPI PhD scholarship. Supervised 3 completed MSc dissertations & co-edited a special issue in the journal Ambio, [Trajectories of social-ecological systems in the Global South]. Gave a keynote in the Global Land Conference Program Conference, and submitted two new projects: an ERC-Synergy [LAND] and a Doctoral Network [PLANET]. I have been a jury member of the Annual Prizes of the Environmental Scientists Catalan Association; examiner of two PhD dissertations, and a member of a promotion committee (UoManchester).