Skip To Main Content
Phoebe Barnard on Muck Rack

Phoebe Barnard

(She/Her/They)
  • CEO and Executive Director, Stable Planet Alliance
Oxford
As seen in: LinkedIn, Memory Studies, Oxford University Press (OUP), SAGE Publishing, Scientific American, The Conversation, Phys.org, AllAfrica, Ms. Magazine, LA Progressive and
Covers:  the climate emergency, biodiversity, ecosystems, transformative societal, political and economic change. Civilizational shift. Population, consumption, and mindsets. Human colony collapse disorder.
Doesn't Cover: astrology. cat photos. conspiracy theories. western neuroses.
#Globalchangescience #CEO #strategy #filmmaker The world doesn't have to be this way: we're changing it. #planetrestoration #overshoot #womenleaders #justice
Back to Phoebe Barnard’s profile

Phoebe Barnard’s Biography

I'm an unusual blend of scientist, policy wonk, civilization-shift strategist, systems action strategist and wannabe filmmaker - still idealistic for transformative change. I find collaborative spatial planning, policy and human behavior solutions to potentially high-conflict wicked problems - as a global change and climate scientist, systems and policy analyst, conservation biologist, environmental and societal futurist, sustainability risk and resilience strategist, climate bioadaptation science-policy analyst, writer, editor, mentor, professor and film co-producer.

I'm an inveterate team-builder and try everywhere to accelerate and deepen science-policy impact. I have 31 years of deep experience, founding and leading programs and teaching across southern and eastern Africa and North America. I'm an Affiliate Full Professor at the University of Washington (Center for Environmental Politics and School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences), and Research Associate at the University of Cape Town (African Climate and Development Initiative and the Fitzpatrick Institute of African Ornithology), Affiliated Researcher at Stockholm Environment Institute and Oxford University's Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, and a co-producer and journalist at Transmediavision USA. In 2017 I returned to the USA and was founding CEO of the lively Stable Planet Alliance, a dynamic global coalition of respected and determined organizations and experts on ecological overshoot (now sunsetting in 2026). I'm also a core coauthor of the World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency and lead author on World Scientists' Warnings into Action: Local to Global, guiding implementation of our six recommended areas of action (energy, pollutants, nature, food, population and economy). In 2023, I coauthored World Scientists' Warning: the Behavioural Crisis Driving Ecological Overshoot and in 2024, Earth at Risk: An Urgent Call to End the Age of Destruction and Forge a Just and Sustainable Future.

From 2018-2021 I was Chief Science and Policy Officer and strategist at Conservation Biology Institute, working on biodiversity early warning systems, green economic recovery, climate migration and displacement, managed coastal retreat planning, and triple-whammy episodic events, and from 2016-2018, Exec Director of the Pacific Biodiversity Institute. Before that, I set up and ran national programs in Namibia and South Africa on biodiversity, climate and environmental futures for 25+ years. See me on Wikipedia, and contact me on pbarnard@uw.edu (w) or phoebebarnard2018@gmail.com (h).

When not working, I climb mountains and volcanoes, run in the forests, develop a community victory garden, and go adventuring with my groovy husband, filmmaker John Bowey, our puppies and family when they visit.