Professor Leen Hordijk is Director of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (IES-JRC), Italy.
In 1973 Professor Hordijk received his MSc degree in econometrics from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and he received his doctoral degree in economics from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 1991.
In 1987, Professor Hordijk became deputy head of the Laboratory for Waste Research and Emissions, National Institute for public Health and Environment (RIVM), The Netherlands. He founded and became head of the Environmental Assessment Office of RIVM in 1989. He started working for Wageningen University in 1991, where he is professor in Environmental Systems Analysis and was Scientific Director of the Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research (WIMEK). From 2002 until 2008, he was Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria. In 2008, he became director of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (IES-JRC), Italy.
Beginning in 1984, he pioneered the development of methods for linking environmental science and economics for integrated assessments of air pollution problems in Europe. Hordijk's approaches are recognized as effective for linking science and policy in international environmental affairs, and the models he and his colleagues at the IIASA developed have been widely used.
Hordijk has an extensive publication record, with an emphasis in the recent years on integrated assessment, modeling of environmental impacts and science-policy interface. He has served in many national and international scientific committees and is member of governing bodies of several scientific initiatives, for example the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan, and the European Space Policy Institute, Austria.
Interview
- What made you decide to get involved with the RESCUE foresight initiative?
The conviction that policies should be well informed and preferably based on scientific understanding and the fact that the social sciences and humanities need to be involved more in the agenda setting, brought me to decide to participate.
- In your field, what are the most urgent issues at stake for our unstable Earth?
The fact that macroeconomics has not been a great help in avoiding the current crisis. As a matter of fact, many argue that wrong economic theories and applications have caused it in the first place. What can we learn from the causes of the current economic crisis to better address environmental challenges? My strongest concern as a scientist is: How can research help address the vicious circle of environmental change, resource scarcity, poverty, and poor health?
- What are your ambitions for how RESCUE could help address these challenges – how could it help in the short and long term?
The topics of the five working groups of RESCUE mirror the agenda. In the short term, the benefit will be that many of the leading scientists in a dozen of scientific disciplines meet, discuss and come to conclusions. The trickle down effect of this will influence science and policy analysis shortly. In the long term, or I'd rather hope in the medium term, the analyses of the RESCUE Working Groups will cut down a series of barriers. Barriers between the sciences and between science and policy development will become lower. Injecting these new ideas in curricula all over the world should make our new approaches sustainable over generations.
- How do you see your role as Chair of the RESCUE foresight initiative?
We have found very competent chairs, co-chairs and members of the Working Groups. It's my role to keep them going, to let them interact between the groups, to jointly work on high quality, and to deliver our joint product on schedule.
- How do you think being involved in RESCUE will impact your mission at the EC-JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability?
After a very positive review of the Joint Research Center (JRC) by a Panel chaired by Sir David King, one of my tasks is to focus on one of the Panel's major recommendations. The Panel strongly advised that we work towards an integrated approach and bring the social sciences into our mostly natural science and engineering based approaches. Working in RESCUE will widen my horizon and will certainly be beneficial for the JRC.
