Professor Carl Folke is a systems thinker in integrative science for sustainability, recognized internationally for his pioneering research on social-ecological systems and resilience thinking.

Folke is co-founder and Chair of the Board of Stockholm Resilience Centre. He is also founder and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Anthropocene Laboratory, and former Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Since the mid-1980s he has broken new ground in understanding the dynamic interplay of humans and nature, and between economy and ecology, from management and stewardship of ecosystem services in the seas and on land to the broader challenges of global sustainability. His work has illustrated how progress, prosperity and human wellbeing depend on reconnecting development to the biosphere.

Folke has contributed to fostering a new generation of sustainability science researchers internationally and in Sweden, built internationally leading research centres and institutes, and worked with scholars across the natural and social sciences and the humanities. He has a long record of science, policy and practice collaboration, working with and advising key actors from local landscapes in Sweden to international bodies and transnational corporations. He is genuinely engaged in the arts-science interface, most recently the symphony RESIL together with composer Jacob Mühlrad. He is a passionate science communicator who regularly appears in media. For example, he participated in the popular Swedish radio show Sommar i P1, 2025.

Folke has produced some 380 publications and is recognised as highly cited researcher. He has received the Heineken Prize for environmental sciences (2022); the Grande Médaille Albert I, Science, Institut Océanographique de Monaco (2021); HM The King of Sweden’s Medal 8th (2018) and 12th size (2025) with the ribbon of the Order of the Seraphim; the Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science (2017); the International Geographical Union’s Planet and Humanity Medal (2016); the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America (2004, 2023); and the Pew Scholar Award in Conservation and the Environment (1995). Folke is honorary doctor at KU Leuven, Belgium, Michigan State University, USA, Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands, and University of Helsinki, Finland. He is member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences since 2002 and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences since 2017.

Folke, together with Gretchen Daily, leads the SRC-Stanford research programme on biosphere-based sustainability science. He serves on the editorial board of journals like PNAS, One Earth, Global Sustainability, and Ambio, and is scientific director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre's Executive Programme in Resilience Thinking: Transformative Business Leadership for a Prosperous Planet, and Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Volvo Environment Prize.

His roles have included:

• Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2006-2025), Deputy Director (1991-1996)
• Founder, and Science Director of Stockholm Resilience Centre (2007-2022)
• Director of the Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere (GEDB) Academy Program, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2013-2025)
• Chair of the Natural Resource Management branch of the Department of Systems Ecology (1997-2007) and Director of the Center for Transdisciplinary Environmental Research, Stockholm University (1999-2006)
• Co-founder, board member and in the Executive Committee of the Resilience Alliance (1999-2015)
• Member of the advisory board developing the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (2007-2016)
• Secretary of the International Society for Ecological Economics (1990s)
  

Other achievements:

• Co-founder of the Keystone Actors dialogues for ocean stewardship with transnational seafood corporations and the SeaBOS initiative
  
• Played a leading role in the first Nobel Prize Summit 2021, serving on the Executive Team and Steering Committee, organising the Academic Science Sessions, and leading the White Paper authored for the summit
• Engaged in developing subglobal assessments of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
• In the advisory Board of EAT and the EAT Forum (2013-2024)
• Core knowledge partner to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures
• Started the science communication institute Albaeco in the late 1990s

Folke is currently part of the following boards and steering committees:

• Earth Commission, Future Earth
• Scientific Advisory Board, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
• Partnership Committee of the Natural Capital Project, Stanford University
• Board of Misum House of Sustainable Society, Stockholm School of Economics