Academy Fellow Dr Brian Walker has been awarded Japan’s Blue Planet Prize, recognising his lifelong career in pioneering “resilience science”.
Founded after the 1992 Earth Summit, the Blue Planet Prize is awarded to outstanding individuals or organisations whose work contributes to the global environment.
Dr Walker is a renowned ecologist who is at the forefront of resilience science – the capacity for an ecosystem to resist to or recover from damage – in social-ecological systems.
This is an interdisciplinary area involving sociologists and scientists from a range of fields, who collaborate to understand the interrelationship of natural resilience and human society.
“The aims of this prize are fundamental to the long-term wellbeing of our planet and they have been a motivating force behind the development of my life’s research,” Dr Walker said.
“In the latter part of my career, I have been working to put into practice the theoretical developments that motivated my earlier years.
“What I am trying to do aligns closely with the aims of the Blue Planet Prize and this award gives me inspiration and renewed energy to further the incorporation of resilience into planetary sustainable development, from local to global scales.”
Dr Walker is an Honorary Research Fellow of the CSIRO and an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University.