The 2019 Celebrate! Colorado State Awards, held on May 9^th, recognized more than 60 people from across the university, among them Economics Department Professor Ed Barbier.

Barbier was awarded the title of University Distinguished Professor, CSU’s highest academic recognition.

“Dr. Barbier’s career record clearly ranks him among the most outstanding members of his discipline,” Dean Ben Withers wrote in a letter endorsing Barbier’s nomination. “The letter of nomination provided by his faculty colleagues clearly outlines the global disciplinary and interdisciplinary image of his work, beginning with his seminal 1989 publication Blueprint for a Green Economy, and extending to the recent publication of his influential policy papers in the journals Science and Nature.”

Barbier was nominated by Professor and Senior Associate Dean Alex Bernasek, Professor and Chair Elissa Braunstein, Associate Professor Terrence Iverson and Associate Professor Sammy Zahran.

“Professor Barbier has had a long and distinguished career in environment, natural resource and development economics,” they wrote in their nomination. “He originated some of the earliest economic approaches to ‘sustainable development,’ publishing path-breaking work in this area in the 1980s. Professor Barbier’s continuing excellence of achievements and contribution places him among the top of his discipline: He is consistently ranked among the most highly cited environmental economists and among the top 5% of all economists by citations. He is also listed as one of the 50 most influential scholars on sustainability, according to Cambridge University’s Institute of Sustainable Leadership.”

Among his most recent accomplishments are a May 2018 Science article, “How to pay for saving biodiversity,” co-authored with CSU colleagues Joanne Burgess, assistant professor of economics, and Thomas Dean, a management professor. In January, he wrote an article titled “How to make the next Green New Deal work” for Nature, in which he commented on the recent proposal for a Green New Deal from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. His new book, The Water Paradox: Overcoming the Global Crisis in Water Management, was published by Yale University Press in February.

Barbier received his undergraduate degree in economics and political science from Yale University, his M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of London. He joined CSU in 2017 from the University of Wyoming. Barbier received CSU’s 2018 Scholarship Impact Award.