Mathis Wackernagel, Ph.D., is a founder and Executive Director of Global Footprint Network, a charitable research organization with headquarters in California. This organization supports the creation of a sustainable economy by advancing the policy-utility of the Ecological Footprint. The goal is to make ecological limits central to decision-making everywhere. Mathis has lectured at over 100 universities and worked on sustainability issues for organizations on all continents but Antarctica. Mathis has authored or contributed to over fifty peer-reviewed papers, numerous articles and reports, and various books on sustainability that focus on the question of embracing limits and developing metrics for sustainability, including Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, Sharing Nature's Interest, and WWF International's Living Planet Report. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in community and regional planning at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. There he created, as his doctoral dissertation, with Professor William Rees the "Ecological Footprint" concept, now a widely used sustainability measure. Mathis's awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of Berne in 2007, a 2007 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, a 2006 WWF Award for Conservation Merit, and the 2005 Herman Daly Award of US Society for Ecological Economics.

Dr. Wackernagel recommends:

Meadows, Randers and Meadows, 2004. Limits to Growth – 30 year update. Chelsea Green

Jared Diamond, 2005 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Penguin

Vaclav Smil, 2008, Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years, MIT Press

WWF, Global Footprint Network and Zoological Society of London, 2008, Living Planet Report 2008. WWF Gland, Switzerland. (www.panda.org/livingplanet, http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/newsletter/bv/new_data_shows_humanitys_ecological_debt_compounding)

Wackernagel, Mathis, 2008. The Sustainable Development Challenge: with 'peak everything' around the corner, how can we succeed? Climate Action. Climateprogramme.org

Global Footprint Network and Confederation of Indian Industries, 2008, India 2008. Global Footprint Network, CII. http://cii.in/documents/GBC/IndiaEcological_Footprint_Report08.pdf

Global Footprint Network and WWF, 2008, Africa – Ecological Footprint and Human Well-Being. WWF and Global Footprint Network. www.footprintnetwork.org/africa