Colorado State University economics Professor Edward Barbier became the first economist to receive the 2026 Planet Earth Award, which was presented by the Alliance of World Scientists.
The award is given to those who show great creativity in their work or have made significant contributions in science or science-based advocacy, particularly while seeking solutions to environmental challenges.
“Dr. Edward Barbier has fundamentally shaped how the world thinks about the relationship between economics and the natural environment,” AWS Director William J. Ripple said regarding Barbier’s nomination in a statement to CSU SOURCE.
Barbier has devoted his career to finding ways to integrate environmental longevity into economic growth.
In doing so, he is currently one of the most cited environmental economists in the world and has assisted the United Nations with his work. He is also the co-author of “Blueprint for a Green Economy,” a book featured on the University of Cambridge’s top 50 sustainability books list.
Notably, Barbier made the distinction that sustainability isn’t just about protecting the natural world; it’s about making sure humans value nature and know what the costs are when it’s gone.
“Sustainability isn’t just about preservation,” Barbier said. “My approach as an economist to sustainability is to say, ‘What are the benefits of nature to us?’”
The question of what benefits nature can provide the public is an important one, Barbier said, and one that isn’t asked enough when land is developed for business or profit.
“We are losing much of nature because we don’t value it in our economic system,” Barbier said. “We underprice the environment and nature. We don’t value what nature does for us for free.”
Barbier’s interest in nature’s role in the economy began early in his life when his father’s military service took him to Southeast Asia.
“They were using nature and the environment to supplement what meager income and assets they had,” Barbier said. “That got me interested in the two things I’ve ended up most interested in, which is development and also the environment, and particularly how (they) fit together economically.”
Barbier returned to Southeast Asia during his undergrad time at Yale University to do a summer study on economic development in Indonesia. At that time, Barbier said in a CSU SOURCE interview, the country was exploiting its natural resources, which in turn negatively affected the poor, rural populations there.
“It was really intensive work, but I loved it,” Barbier said. “I also enjoyed being in a country that I grew up in, and also looking at it from a different perspective, from a research side.”
Barbier was hired by the International Institute for Environment and Development after he graduated from the University of London and received his Ph.D. There, he was able to collaborate with other environmental economists and come up with solutions to the challenges of sustainability in a profit-driven world.
While at IIED, Barbier co-authored “Blueprint for a Green Economy” alongside fellow environmental economists David Pearce and Anil Markandya. The book was the first of its kind and popularized the idea that damage to the environment should be recognized as an economic cost and incorporated within government policies.
“‘Blueprint for a Green Economy,’ which was published in 1989, really became an international bestseller and put economic sustainability on the map,” Barbier said. “It wasn’t just a ‘think’ piece; it was actually saying these are some real issues that we can tackle. Here is the data showing the problems and challenges. Here are the things we need to do and what we showed works and doesn’t.”
Barbier met his wife Joanne Burgess, a fellow environmental and natural resource economist, in London. After some time, the two formed the interdisciplinary Environment Department at the University of York in England and went on to teach at the University of Wyoming. The pair have published many research articles and books together through the years.
“It’s been really enriching to be able to have the confidence to pursue your ideas and bounce them off each other,” said Burgess, who is currently an associate professor of economics at CSU.
Upon arriving at CSU in 2017, Barbier said he was attracted to the institution’s rich culture and expertise in sustainability and saw an opportunity to thrive in an area he had already been heavily focused on within his career.
“One of the reasons I came to CSU was because of the emphasis on sustainability here, and all my career has been defined by economic sustainability,” Barbier said. “So it was a great fit for me to come here.”
An endeavor Barbier committed himself to during his time at CSU was expanding the ways environmental and natural resource economics is taught and giving students tools to address real-world issues.
Barbier achieved this is through the recent publishing of an introductory environmental economics textbook, “Economics for a Sustainable World: An Introduction to Natural Resource and Environmental Economics,” which he co-authored with Burgess.
Both Burgess and Barbier said the AWS Planet Earth Award is a major win for the field of environmental economics and highlights the importance of making this kind of research accessible to scientists, policymakers and the public.
“I feel happy because I think it’s less about the recognition of me personally,” Barbier said. “It’s more about the recognition that the economics of sustainability and greening economies is an important contribution.”
Reach Katya Arzubi at science@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
