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Simon Batterbury (b. 1963) is a British-Australian geographer, Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia and Visiting Professor, Lancaster University, UK.

Background
Born and raised in Eltham, South East London, he attended Eltham College, Reading University (Human and Physical Geography, 1985) and Clark University (MA 1990, PhD 1997). He worked at Property Market analysis in the 1980s doing real estate research before further study and academic appointments at Brunel University (1993-1999), the London School of Economics [1999-2001), the University of Arizona (2001-2004) and the University of Melbourne (2004-2016, 2019-). From 2017-2019 he was the inaugural Professor and Chair of Political Ecology in the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, and has remained affiliated since 2019.

At University of Melbourne, he formerly directed the Office for Environmental Programs and the interdisciplinary Master of Environment degree with 370 students, and from 2024, the Melbourne Climate Futures Academy for PhD students and early career researchers.

Contributions
Batterbury conducted applied PhD research and research programs in the francophone drylands of West Africa (1992-2001), working in Burkina Faso on soil conservation and rural development, and latterly in an interdisciplinary investigation of land use change and livelihoods in South West Niger funded by the British ESRC. The work showed the adaptability of peasant farmers to drought, poverty, and gender inequality in access to resources through 'productive bricolage' and diversification of livelihoods. Their role in desertification in the Sahel was found to be small in these locations, as was their use of western agricultural advice, inputs, and seed varieties.

He was an early adopter of political ecology as a research approach, showing how local environmental changes resulted more from the national and international political economy than crises of farmer knowledge and resources. He has edited the Journal of Political Ecology since 2003.

This work led to several contributions supporting Diamond Open Access non-commercial scholarly publishing including the Open Access Manifesto.

Since 2010 he has worked in the disputed settler economy of New Caledonia on the political ecology of mining on Indigenous Kanak societies and cultures, producing a major volume in English in 2024. The work demonstrates how Indigenous people have reluctantly embraced mining on their territories, but use it to to their gepolitical advantage and control one major nickel project, the [Koniambo mine]. The Critical Raw Materials Act in Europe has a peripheral influence on mining on the islands

Research on Community Bike Workshops and their contributions of low carbon mobility, social justice, and active travel is also ongoing, funded by the British Academy

Awards

 * Best PhD supervisor, University of Melbourne, 2019
 * British Academy fellowship, 2024
 * James Martin Fellow, University of Oxford, 2007

Publications
Global Environmental Change 11(1): 1-96. (8 articles).
 * Kowasch M. and Batterbury, S.P.J. (eds.). 2024. Geographies of New Caledonia-Kanaky: environments, politics and cultures. Springer. (19 chapters)  http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49140
 * Reynolds J.F., D.M. Stafford-Smith, E. Lambin, B.L. Turner II, M.J/ Mortimore, S.P.J Batterbury, T.E. Downing, H. Dowlatabadi, R.J. Fernandez, J.E. Herrick, E. Huber-Sannwald, H. Jiang, R. Leemans, T. Lynam, F. Maestre, B. Walker, and M. Ayarza. 2007. Global desertification: building a science for dryland development. Science. 316 (May 11): 847-851
 * Batterbury, S.P.J. (ed.) 2006. Rescaling governance and the impacts of political and environmental decentralization. World Development 34(11): 1851-1995. (8 articles)
 * Batterbury, S.P.J & A. Warren (eds.) 2001. The African Sahel 25 years after the Great Drought.