Professor Carl Folke is Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He is also founder and Chair of the Board of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.
Carl is a systems thinker in integrative science for sustainability, recognized for his research on social-ecological systems and resilience thinking. Since the mid-1980s he has broken new ground in understanding the dynamic interplay of humans and nature, of economy and ecology, from management and stewardship of ecosystem services in the seas and on the land to global sustainability. His work has illustrated how progress, prosperity and wellbeing will benefit from reconnecting development to the biosphere.
Carl has contributed in fostering a new generation of sustainability science researchers internationally and in Sweden, built internationally leading research centres and institutes, and worked with scholars across the natural and social sciences and the humanities. He has a long record of science, policy and practice collaboration, working with key actors from local landscapes in Sweden to international bodies and transnational corporations. He is genuinely engaged in the arts-science interface.
Carl has produced some three-hundred publications and is recognized as highly cited researcher. He has received the Heineken Prize for environmental sciences (2022), the Grande Médaille Albert I, Science, Institut Océanographique de Monaco (2021); HM The King of Sweden’s Medal 8th size with the ribbon of the Order of the Seraphim (2018), the Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science (2017); the International Geographical Union’s Planet and Humanity Medal (2016); the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America (2004, 2023); and the Pew Scholar Award in Conservation and the Environment (1995). He is member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (since 2002) and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (since 2017).
Selected Publications
Anatomy and Resilience of the Global Production Ecosystem
Nyström M., J.-B. Jouffray, A. Norström, P. Sogaard-Jørgensen, V. Galaz, B.E. Crona, S.R. Carpenter, and C. Folke. 2019. Anatomy and Resilience of the Global Production Ecosystem. Nature 575:98-108.
READ MOREEvolution in the Anthropocene: Informing Governance and Policy
Jørgensen, P.S., C. Folke, and S.C. Carroll. 2019. Evolution in the Anthropocene: Informing Governance and Policy. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 50: 527-546.
READ MORETransnational Corporations and the Challenge of Biosphere Stewardship.
Folke, C., H. Österblom, J.-B. Jouffray, E. Lambin, M. Scheffer, B.I. Crona, M. Nyström, S.A. Levin, S.R. Carpenter, W.N. Adger, J.M. Anderies, F.S. III Chapin, A.-S. Crépin, A. Dauriach, V. Galaz, L.J. Gordon, N. Kautsky, B.H. Walker, J.R. Watson, J. Wilen, and A. de Zeeuw. 2019. Transnational Corporations and the Challenge of Biosphere Stewardship. Nature Ecology & Evolution 3:1396–1403.
READ MORESustainability, Resilience and Transformation in the Urban Century
Elmqvist, T, N. Frantzeskaki, E. Andersson, T. McPhearson, C. Folke, P. Olsson, O. Gaffney, and K. Takeuchi. 2019. Sustainability, Resilience and Transformation in the Urban Century. Nature Sustainability 2:267-273.
READ MOREDancing on the Volcano: Social Exploration in Times of Discontent
Carpenter, S.R., C. Folke, M. Scheffer, and F. Westley. 2019. Dancing on the Volcano: Social Exploration in Times of Discontent. Ecology and Society 24(1):23.
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