Garry Peterson

Garry Peterson is a professor in environmental sciences with emphasis on resilience and social-ecological systems and director of the Finance to Revive Biodiversity Programme. Peterson’s research integrates three themes: connections between people and nature, the dynamics of resilience, and how thinking about the future can help people and organizations navigate surprising social-ecological change. In this research he uses a combination of quantitative analysis, systems modelling, qualitative analysis, as well as participatory research approaches. He has published over 125 papers in over 50 journals. Peterson has an interdisciplinary background in sustainability. His bachelors degree was in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada. His PhD “Contagious disturbance and ecological resilience” was completed in 1999 in Zoology at the University of Florida. He has previously worked at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Center for Limnology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and at McGill University in Canada. For over twenty years, Peterson has worked in various science policy assessments including the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s Scenarios Assessment, the Arctic Council’s Arctic Resilience Report, and IPBES’s Scenarios and models assessment, as well as its Scenarios and models expert group and task force. He is also co-chair of Resilience Alliance, an international science network that publishes the journal Ecology & Society, and is part of the transition team establishing the Society for Social-Ecological Systems.