Bernie Bastien-Olvera

I study what nature is worth to people — and what we lose when climate change takes it away.

As an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Climate Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and an Affiliated Scientist at the European Institute on Economics and the Environment in Milan, I combine ecological modeling with economic valuation to understand how climate-driven shifts in terrestrial and marine ecosystems hit our ways of living, especially in the Global South. My research has been published in journals like Nature and Nature Climate Change.

I completed my PhD in Geography at UC Davis, as a Fulbright Scholar and John Muir Institute Fellow, earning the Kinsella Memorial Prize for my dissertation, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD. I am a National Geographic Explorer, a Beijer Young Scholar a Scholar of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and serve on the Council of the American Geophysical Union.

In the world of science communication I go by El Capi — short for Capitán Planeta — and I co-founded Planeteando, a collective that translates climate science into podcasts, boardgames, festivals, films and performances.

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