Joan Martinez Alier (born 1939,

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

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) is a Catalan

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

, Emeritus Professor of Economics and Economic History and researcher at ICTA at the

Autonomous University of Barcelona The Autonomous University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; , es, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona; UAB), is a public university mostly located in Cerdanyola del Vallès, near the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. ...

Biography

Martinez Alier has a Lic. Economics, Universitat de Barcelona (1961), after which he went abroad to escape

Francoist Spain Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spani ...

, and studied agricultural economics at Oxford University and Stanford. He then received a scholarship to return to Oxford (B.Litt. St Anthony's College, 1967). His PhD was in Economics from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (1976). He remained as a researcher at St. Anthony's College

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

into the early 70s (1966–73 and 1984–85), working on land reform, rural unemployment and the capitalist logic of sharecropping in Southern Spain and also conducting research in Cuba (on smallholders in the early years of Castro's Cuba) and in Peru (on the hacienda peasantry). He was visiting professor at the

State University of Campinas The State University of Campinas ( pt, Universidade Estadual de Campinas), commonly called Unicamp, is a public research university in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Unicamp is consistently ranked among the top universities in Brazil and Latin ...

(Brasil) in 1974, before returning to his home town to join the Department of Economics and Economic History at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain, in 1975. He has also been a visitor at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

(1980–81),

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

and the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

, (1988–89),

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

(1999-2001), and

FLACSO The Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences ( es, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, pt, Faculdade Latino-Americana de Ciências Sociais or FLACSO) is a graduate-only university and inter-governmental autonomous organization for La ...

Sede-Ecuador (1994–95 and 2007–15). He directed the CEECEC and EJOLT research projects on ecological economics and political ecology between 2008 and 2015. He is officially retired from AUB, but still professionally active and in 2016, aged in his mid 70s, he received a €2 million Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for a further five-year project, ''A Global Environmental Justice Movement - The EJAtlas''
www.ejatlas.org
. In particular, he has made a fundamental contribution to establishing ecological economics as a transdisciplinary field of study devoted to regulating economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice. In several books and articles, he has analysed the relationship between ecological economics and political ecology as well as the role played by

environmental justice Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justi ...

. Most important is his approach to

environmental conflict Environmental conflicts or ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) are social conflicts caused by environmental degradation or by unequal distribution of environmental resources.Libiszewski, Stephan.What is an Environmental Conflict." ''Journal ...

s and the notion of “ecological unequal trade”. Among his numerous important publications, one of the most influential is the volume The

Environmentalism of the Poor Environmentalism of the poor is a social movement that arises from environmental conflicts when impoverished people struggle against powerful state or private interests that threaten their livelihood, health, sovereignty, and culture. Part of the ...

(Edward Elgar, 2002), based on the author’s experiences researching in India and Latin America. He is a founding member and past-president of the

International Society for Ecological Economics The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) was founded in 1989, based heavily on the work of Herman Daly to promote ecological economics and assist ecological economists and related societies. In 1996, the Right Livelihood Aw ...

. He was a member (2000–08) of the

European Environment Agency The European Environment Agency (EEA) is the agency of the European Union (EU) which provides independent information on the environment. Definition The European Environment Agency (EEA) is the agency of the European Union (EU) which provides ...

Scientific Committee.

Contributions

His interests are agrarian studies, ecological economics and political ecology. In the late seventies Martinez Alier became interested in agricultural energetics and the work of Sergei Podolinsky (1850-1891), publishing a text on this with J.M. Naredo in 1982. He is a practitioner of ecological economics, defining many of its key concepts approaches. He argues, against neoclassical economists, that the economy is not circular, but entropic. Calculations of social metabolic flows of energy and materials need to figure in neoclassical and marxist economics. Energy is not recycled and materials are only partially recycled - and resource extraction and waste disposal manifest themselves in ecological systems. They are visible through the drawing down of physical resources, pollution, and through socio-ecological distribution conflicts. The latter are hastened by an increase in social metabolism and human appropriation of nature. "In environmental struggles, reproduction of human society and of nature’s functions are more important or just as important as fights over the (purported) economic surplus.".In recognition of his contribution to innovating economics studies, he was awarded the prestigious Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2017 for his groundbreaking theoretical and applied contribution integrating ecological approaches with developmental and justice-oriented ones. He has been extremely active in the dissemination of research results and in the promotion of environmental justice. The Atlas of Environmental Justice he co-directs is a unique, open-access database on the main ecological conflicts and their cultural expressions, which constitutes a highly useful source for scholars in several disciplines, as well as practitioners in the field. In 2020 he was awarded the Balzan Prize.

Awards

Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought
GDAE, 2017 *

Balzan Prize The International Balzan Prize Foundation awards four annual monetary prizes to people or organizations who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of humanities, natural sciences, culture, as well as for endeavours for peace and the br ...

for Environmental Challenges: Responses from the Social Sciences and the Humanities. 2020.Balzan Prize 2020
/ref> For the quality of his contributions to the foundation of ecological economics, his path-breaking analysis of the relationships between economies and the environment, his interdisciplinary as well as comparative approach, and his active role in the promotion of environmental justice.

Selected books (in English)

* 1971: ''Labourers and Landowners in Southern Spain'' * 1977: ''Haciendas, Plantations and Collective Farms (Cuba and Peru)'' * 1987: ''Ecological economics: energy, environment and society'' * 1994: ''The environment as a luxury good or "too poor to be green"? * 1996: ''Getting down to earth: practical applications of ecological economics'' (with

Robert Costanza Robert Costanza (born September 14, 1950) is an American/Australian ecological economist and Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a ...

and Olman Segura) * 1997: ''Varieties of Environmentalism. Essays North and South'' (with

Ramachandra Guha Ramachandra "Ram" Guha (born 29 April 1958) is an Indian historian, environmentalist, writer and public intellectual whose research interests include social history, social, political history, political, contemporary history, contemporary, Envir ...

) * 2002:
The_Environmentalism_of_the_Poor
:_A_study_of_ecological_conflicts_and_valuation.html" ;"title="The Environmentalism of the Poor">The Environmentalism of the Poor
: A study of ecological conflicts and valuation">The Environmentalism of the Poor">The Environmentalism of the Poor
: A study of ecological conflicts and valuation' * 2007: ''Rethinking Environmental History: World-Systems History and Global Environmental Change'' (with Alf Hornborg and John Mc Neill) * 2008: ''Recent Developments in Ecological Economics'' 2 vols. (with Inge Ropke) * 2012: ''Ecological Economics from the Ground Up'' (with Hali Healy et al.) * 2015: '' Handbook of Ecological Economics'' (with Roldan Muradian)

Interviews (in English)

Interview with Lorenzo Pellegrini in ''Development & Change''
2012
''Ecological Economics'', Video Interview
at The Montreal Degrowth Conference 2012

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martinez Alier, Joan 1939 births Ecological economists Degrowth advocates People associated with criticism of economic growth Living people Political ecologists Economists from Catalonia Autonomous University of Barcelona faculty Environmental justice scholars