For Paul Ekins, environmental problems are also economic problems: they concern what societies value, how they use resources and what costs their accounts leave out. That way of thinking has shaped a career spanning Green Party politics, environmental research and policy advice. At its centre is a practical question: how can economies provide prosperity without treating damage to the natural world as an incidental cost?
From Green politics to environmental economics
Born in 1950, Ekins became a prominent member of the Green Party in the 1970s and 1980s. He left in 1986 following controversy over reforms intended to streamline the party’s structures. The group associated with those reforms, known as Maingreen, was later described as a forerunner to efforts to change the internal structures of the Green Party of England and Wales.
His politics and academic work shared an interest in bringing environmental concerns into decisions usually framed in economic terms. After leaving party politics, Ekins developed a career as a green academic and consultant. He headed the Environment group at the Policy Studies Institute and advised the Environmental Audit Select Committee of the House of Commons. In 1994, he received the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement.
In 1996, he set up Forum for the Future with Sara Parkin and Jonathon Porritt. Ekins established its Sustainable Economy Unit, arguing that many environmental problems were economic problems in disguise and that getting economics right was central to finding solutions. The aim was to show that substantial moves towards environmental sustainability could be compatible with prosperity. That proposition links his early political activity to his later research: environmental protection need not be treated as a separate concern to be weighed against economic wellbeing.
Making the environment visible in economic decisions
Ekins’s work in sustainable economics examines the conditions and policies needed for an environmentally sustainable economy. A recurring concern is the way conventional economic measures can fail to account for natural capital: the world’s natural assets, including soil, air, water, geology and living things. If the depletion of those assets is missing from economic calculations, a measure of growth may not show the environmental cost of achieving it.
That concern informs the case for green accounting in public policy and corporate decision-making. Treating resource depletion as an economic cost changes the questions policymakers and businesses need to ask. It brings the condition of natural assets into view alongside more familiar measures of economic activity, rather than assuming that environmental damage sits outside the economic system.
Ekins has also examined whether economic growth can continue while environmental pressures are reduced. His book Economic Growth and Environmental Sustainability, published in 2000, addresses that relationship. His wider writing ranges across green economics, sustainable cities, ecological tax reform, hydrogen energy and environmental taxation. In 2011, he co-authored Environmental Tax Reform; in 2015, he co-authored Global Energy: Issues, Potentials and Policy Implications with Mike Bradshaw and Jim Watson. These subjects reflect the breadth of his central interest: how economic choices, policy instruments and energy systems affect the prospects for sustainability.
Research, energy and policy
Ekins became Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Westminster in October 2002, serving until 2007. He later became Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy at University College London (UCL). From 2004 to 2014, he was co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre. These roles placed his work across universities and research institutions concerned with the relationship between resources, energy and environmental policy.
One prominent strand of his research concerns fossil fuels and climate change. Working with Christophe McGlade, Ekins published research in 2015 arguing that substantial fossil-fuel reserves should remain unburned if the world is to avoid temperature increases beyond two degrees. The conclusion puts a limit on the idea that known reserves can simply be treated as future supplies: the consequences of burning them matter to climate policy and to assessments of energy resources.
His experience also includes work as a consultant and advice to a parliamentary committee. Together, those roles illustrate how environmental economics can connect academic analysis with public decisions. The questions raised in research—how to count natural assets, how to assess energy options and how to account for environmental costs—also arise in the design and scrutiny of policy.
Books and recognition
Ekins has written and co-written books on the economy, sustainability and energy. His publications include A New World Order and The Gaia Atlas of Green Economics, both published in 1992; Cities and Sustainability (1993); and Real Life Economics, co-authored with Manfred A. Max-Neef in 1992. Later titles address ecological tax reform, economic growth and environmental sustainability, hydrogen energy, environmental tax reform and global energy policy.
In 2015, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to environmental policy. The honour recognises work at the intersection of research and public affairs, where questions about resources and environmental costs have practical consequences for policy. His career has moved between political activity, academic institutions, research organisations and advisory work without losing sight of that connection.
Why Paul Ekins deserves a place in British Legacy
Paul Ekins merits a place in British Legacy for helping bring environmental limits into the language of economics and policy. His work on natural capital highlights a basic weakness in treating economic activity as if it were separate from the resources on which it depends. By arguing that depletion should count as a cost, he makes the condition of soil, air, water and living systems relevant to decisions ordinarily judged by economic measures alone. That approach offers a way to ask not only whether an economy is growing, but what that growth uses up and what it leaves behind.
His contribution also lies in carrying those questions across different settings. Ekins was active in Green Party politics, helped establish Forum for the Future’s Sustainable Economy Unit, led environmental research at the Policy Studies Institute, advised a House of Commons committee and held academic posts at Westminster and UCL. His work with Christophe McGlade on fossil-fuel reserves brought the same concern to energy policy, examining what climate goals imply for the use of known resources. These are specific links between analysis and public debate, rather than a claim that environmental concern alone guarantees better policy. Ekins’s career has helped make the economic choices behind sustainability more visible—and given British research and policy discussions a vocabulary for weighing prosperity against environmental costs.
Sources
Adapted in part from Paul Ekins by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.
