Professor Rashid Hassan, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Pretoria (UP), has been awarded the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) 2020 Boulding Award, in honour of Kenneth Boulding, one of the progenitors of Ecological Economics.

The award is to honour people who exemplify aspects of the special character of Kenneth E Boulding with the hope of perpetuating his many individual strengths that combined into wisdom among ISEE members and beyond.

“I very much value the honour of being the recipient of this prestigious award and consider it to be a highly appreciated recognition by the ISEE of the importance of having Africa on board in the global efforts to ensure harmony between the functional integrity of our natural world and pursuance of human development goals,” Prof Hassan said.

This accolade recognises Prof Hassan’s long-term efforts to build and strengthen ecological and environmental economics in Africa, his important contributions to the literature and international dialogue and practical training in the field.

The Boulding Award will be presented during the 2020 ISEE Meeting and Joint Conference with the International Degrowth Association at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, in early September 2020: The Seventh International Degrowth and Sixteenth ISEE Joint Conference--Building Alternative Livelihoods in Times of Ecological and Political Crisis.

Prof Hassan was the recipient of the UP Chancellor’s Award for Research in 2010 and has been honoured with a number of international recognitions of his outstanding contributions to the field of Environmental Economics. One of these was being selected as Foreign Associate Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) early in 2019.

Prof Hassan holds a Web of Science H-Index of 36. He served as a member of several prestigious international bodies, councils, boards, steering committees and panels as well as editor and associate editor for renowned international journals. He is the founder of the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy Analysis in Africa (CEEPA), which is the only one of its kind in Africa, and receives very high international recognition as a leading centre of excellence in this field in the developing world.