Mike Christie

Mike Christie is Professor of Environmental and Ecological Economics at Aberystwyth University, where he explores how people understand and value nature. His research uses economic and deliberative approaches to reveal the many ways biodiversity and ecosystems matter to people’s lives.

As Co‑Chair of the IPBES Values Assessment, he helped shape global conversations on how recognising diverse values of nature can drive fairer, more sustainable decisions. Mike’s projects across Europe, Africa and Asia inform real‑world policies that place nature’s value at the heart of societal wellbeing.

Mike takes us on a journey through the evolving ways humans have understood their relationship with the natural world and how societies have tried to embed nature’s values into conservation policy.

He traces the shift from early perspectives that saw nature as possessing intrinsic worth, to political and economic decisions that reduced it to a resource for growth, driving widespread overexploitation. Environmental economics sought to counter this by making nature’s value more visible in policy decisions and more recently the field has begun to embrace alternative perspectives, including indigenous worldviews that reveal the diverse and often irreplaceable ways people connect with the living world.

The talk will explore emerging approaches such as the rights‑of‑nature movement, offering a hopeful path toward protecting the nature we all depend on. Join us at TEDxAberystwyth to hear Mike’s talk.