World Population Day Presentation by Dr. William Rees

Dr William Rees is a population ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. Prof Rees is a founding member and former President of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics; a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute; a founding Director of the OneEarth Initiative; and a Director of The Real Green New Deal. Prof Rees’ research focuses on the biophysical prerequisites for sustainability. He is best known as the originator and co-developer (with his graduate students) of ‘ecological footprint analysis,’ a quantitative tool that shows definitively that the human enterprise is in dysfunctional overshoot—we would need five Earth-like planets to support just the present world population sustainably with existing technologies at North American material standards. Such findings led to a special interest in cities as inherently unsustainable and particularly vulnerable components of the human ecosystem. Concerned about societal unresponsiveness to worsening indicators, Dr Rees also studies the biological and psycho-cognitive barriers to rational political behavior. He has authored hundreds of peer reviewed articles on the above topics. Dr Rees was elected to Royal Society of Canada in 2006; his international awards include the Boulding Memorial Award in Ecological Economics, the Herman Daly Award in Ecological Economics and a Blue Planet Prize (jointly with his former student Dr Mathis Wackernagel