Folke, Carl

Carl Folke is science director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, one of the collaborating partners of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

He took on those positions in early 2007. Folke is currently on leave from his Chair in Natural Resource Management at the Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, a position he held since 1997 where he is still active as supervisor

He has extensive experience in transdisciplinary collaboration between natural and social scientists, and has worked with ecosystem dynamics and services as well as the social and economic dimension of ecosystem management and proactive measures to manage resilience.

The work of his research group in Stockholm emphasizes the role that living systems at different scales play in social and economic development and how to govern and manage for resilience in integrated social-ecological systems. In 1995 he received the Pew Scholar Award in Conservation and the Environment and in 2004 the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America.

He has co-authored and edited 10 and written more than 200 scientific papers, including 15 in Science and Nature. Folke shares the position as editor in chief of Ecology and Society with Lance Gunderson, since January 2002 and serves on the editorial board of fifteen international journals.

Folke is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 2002 and serves on its Environmental Research Committee. He is currently on the board of the Stockholm Environment Institute, the Scientific Advisory Board of the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS), the Science Advisory Committee of  IIASA, Vienna, the Steering Committee of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, Leeds University/London School of Economics, the Scientific Committee of the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS), ICSU and of the Volvo Environment Prize.