Prof. Paul Ekins

Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London

Paul Ekins has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of London and is Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London. In 2013 he was appointed to UNEP’s International Resource Panel (IRP), for which he was lead author of a report on resource efficiency at the request of the G7 Summit in 2015, and a contributor to the IRP’s 2020 report on Mineral Resource Governance. In 2011 he was appointed Vice-Chairman of the DG Environment Commissioner’s High-Level Economists Expert Group on Resource Efficiency, and in 2012 a member of the European Commission’s European Resource Efficiency Platform, which contributed to the first EU Circular Economy Package in 2014. He was one of two Co-Chairs of UNEP’s sixth Global Environmental Outlook (GEO-6), which was presented to the United Nations Environment Assembly in March 2019. In 2023-24 he was a member of the UK Government’s Critical Minerals Expert Advisory Group. He has been and is currently a consultant to OECD on circular economy issues in cities and regions, and is lead coordinating author on an IRP report on financing the extraction of energy transition minerals for sustainable development. In 1994 Paul Ekins received UNEP’s Global 500 Award ‘for outstanding environmental achievement’. In the UK New Year’s Honours List for 2015 he received an OBE for services to environmental policy.