Eric Lambin

About

Eric Lambin is a geographer and environmental scientist who holds the George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professorship and is a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. He divides his time between UCLouvain in Belgium and Stanford, where he is part of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. His research focuses on understanding the causes and impacts of land use changes across different parts of the world. Lambin has led significant international scientific projects, including serving as Chair of the Land Use and Land Cover Change (LUCC) project from 1999 to 2005. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards, including the 2009 Francqui Prize, the 2014 Volvo Environment Prize, and the 2019 Blue Planet Prize. He is an International Fellow at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a member of four European Academies of Science. Since 2021, he has been a member of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors to the European Commission. Lambin holds a PhD in Sciences (Geography) from the University of Louvain, Belgium, earned in 1988, along with a master's degree in Geography and a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the same university.

Research topics

• Economics
• Ecology
• Geography
• Sociology
• Environmental resource management
• Social Science
• Public economics
• Positive economics
• Forestry
• Environmental protection

Selected publications

• Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 406 citations

  Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 1…

  DOI

• Impacts of Chilean forest subsidies on forest cover, carbon and biodiversity

  Nature Sustainability · 2020 · 204 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Deforestation-Free Commodity Supply Chains: Myth or Reality?

  Annual Review of Environment and Resources · 2023-04-18 · 68 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Since the early 2000s, many private companies, public-private coalitions, and governments have committed to remove deforestation from commodity supply chains. Despite these zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs), high rates of deforestation persist and may even be increasing. On the upside, a few region- and commodity-specific ZDCs have contributed to reductions by up to hundreds of thousands of hectares of deforestation, with mixed evidence on associated leakage. ZDCs have also spurred progress…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social dimensions of fertility behavior and consumption patterns in the Anthropocene

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 54 citations

  162, 1243-1248 (1968)] drew attention to overpopulation and concluded that the solution lay in people "abandoning the freedom to breed." That human attitudes and practices are socially embedded suggests that it is possible for people to reduce their fertility rates and consumption demands without experiencing a loss in wellbeing. We focus on fertility in sub-Saharan Africa and consumption in the rich world and argue that bottom-up social mechanisms rather than top-down government interventions a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Public policies and vested interests preserve the animal farming status quo at the expense of animal product analogs

  One Earth · 2023-08-18 · 45 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Patrick Meyfroidt

  UCLouvain

  91 shared

• Daniel J. Salkeld

  Colorado State University

  44 shared

• B. L. Turner

  43 shared

• Rodolfo Dirzo

  Stanford University

  41 shared

• Kristofer M. Helgen

  Australian Museum

  40 shared

• Douglas J. McCauley

  39 shared

• Hillary S. Young

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  39 shared

• Lynne Gaffikin

  Center for Innovation

  36 shared

Awards & honors

• 2009 Francqui Prize
• 2014 Volvo Environment Prize
• 2019 Blue Planet Prize
• International Fellow at the U.S. National Academy of Science…
• Member of four Academies of Science in Europe

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