Stephen Polasky, PhD
Director of Natural Capital, Ecosystem Services and Economics

Dr. Stephen Polasky, is Earth Knowledge’s Director of Natural Capital, Ecosystem Services, and Economics, and provides leadership related to Natural Capital Metrics and Indicators.  Steve is a globally recognized leader in quantifying the economic value of natural capital and ecosystem services.  Steve is a crucial advisor and contributor to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services that provided the scientific basis for the historic Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that was signed during the 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity on December 22, 2022.

Steve is a Regents Professor and the Fesler-Lampert Professor of Ecological/Environmental Economics at the University of Minnesota. He has a joint appointment in the Department of Applied Economics and the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior. He is also a fellow of the University’s Institute on the Environment.

His research interests focus on issues at the intersection of ecology and economics and include the impacts of land use and land management on the provision and value of ecosystem services and natural capital, biodiversity conservation, sustainability, environmental regulation, renewable energy, and common property resources.

Stephen co-founded the Natural Capital Project, a partnership between the University of Minnesota, Stanford University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, The Nature Conservancy, the Stockholm Resilience Center, and the World Wildlife Fund. Stephen served as Senior Staff Economist for environment and resources for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers 1998-1999. He previously served on the Board of Directors for The Nature Conservancy, the Science Advisory Board of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Sustainability External Advisory Committee of Dow Chemical Company. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010. He is a fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in 1986.