Tim Jackson (economist)

Tim Jackson FAcSS (born 1957) is a British ecological economist and professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey. He was the founder and director of RESOLVE (Research Group on Lifestyles Values and Environment) and is director of the follow-on project: the Defra/ESRC Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG). Tim Jackson is the author of Prosperity Without Growth: economics for a finite planet (2009) and currently holds the ESRC Professorial Fellowship on Prosperity and Sustainability in the Green Economy. In 2016 he received the Hillary Laureate for exceptional mid-career Leadership.

For more than twenty years, he has worked internationally on sustainable consumption and production. During five years at the in the early 1990s, he pioneered the concept of preventative environmental management outlined in his 1996 book Material Concerns – pollution profit and quality of life. For the last decade his research has focused on consumption, lifestyle and sustainability. In 2005, the Sustainable Development Research Network published his widely cited review Motivating Sustainable Consumption. A respective Earthscan 'Reader' in Sustainable Consumption was issued in 2006. During 2006 and 2007 Tim Jackson was advisor and a regular contributor to BBC Newsnight's Ethical Man series.

In his function as Economics Commissioner on the Sustainable Development Commission he authored a controversial report, later published by Earthscan/Routledge as Prosperity Without Growth: economics for a finite planet (2009). By arguing that "prosperity – in any meaningful sense of the word – transcends material concerns", the book summarises the evidence showing that, beyond a certain point, growth does not increase human wellbeing. Prosperity without Growth analyses the complex relationships between growth, environmental crises and social recession. It proposes a route to a sustainable economy, and argues for a redefinition of "prosperity" in light of the evidence on what really contributes to people’s wellbeing. In the wake of technological progress and the pursuit of ever-increasing profits, financial growth and it's "skewed priorities" are linked to human exploitation and environmental destruction, which Jackson refers to as the "age of irresponsibility." "The clearest message from the financial crisis of 2008 is that our current model of economic success is fundamentally flawed. For the advanced economies of the Western world, prosperity without growth is no longer a utopian dream. It is a financial and ecological necessity."

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