Profile: Johan Rockström, Chair of the Arctic Resilience Report

The speech to be delivered at the Arctic Council meeting is entitled: Resilience and sustainability in a rapidly changing Arctic. Johan Rockström is a Professor in natural resource management at Stockholm University, and the Executive Director of Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Professor Rockström is a leading scientist on global water resources and strategies to build resilience in water scarce regions of the world. He has more than 15 years experience from applied water research in tropical regions, and has published more than 100 research publications in fields ranging from applied land and water management to global sustainability.

Rockström was awarded the title “Swedish person of the Year" in 2009 for his work on bridging science on climate change to policy and society. He was ranked the 2nd most influential person on environmental issues in Sweden 2010. For 2012, he was ranked as number one. In August 2010, Rockström was given the “Social Capitalist Award" by Veckans Affärer, a Swedish weekly influential magazine.

Johan Rockström is an internationally recognized scientist on global sustainability issues, and he is now bound to the work of the Arctic Council through the newly approved project, the so-called Arctic Resilience Report·Project. A flagship project for the Swedish chairmanship, the ARR was initiated by the Swedish Ministry of the Environment. Resilience is a framework to understand the implications of simultaneous social and environmental changes. Resilience aims to identify strategies for reinforcing the Arctic societies that can face the challenges caused by these increasing changes. ARR is designed to create links between scientific knowledge and policy-makers in order to ensure that the assessment can help guide crucial decisions. The project is led by the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Text: Marc-André Dubois
Photo: Stockholm Resilience Center