Rodrigo Pizarro

Rodrigo Pizarro joins IPER’s 2007 cohort from Chile. He is an economist by training, and studied at the London School of Economics and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After undergraduate study at the LSE, Rodrigo´s initial intention was to specialize in macroeconomic and development issues. But he then came across environmental issues almost accidentally in his first formal job at the Central Bank of Chile, where he participated in an environmental accounts project. The idea was to determine a ‘sustainable income’ or ‘green’ GDP.  But in order to carry out the study it was necessary to understand the environmental nature of these resources.  From then on he was hooked, and has been working on environmental issues, with an interdisciplinary outlook.

Rodrigo has worked in the Public Sector and in the Non Government Sector, always involved in environmental issues. He was adviser to the Minister of Economy and Public Works on environmental issues. More recently he directed an important sustainable development NGO in Chile, Fundacion Terram, before coming to Stanford.

At Terram, Rodrigo led an interdisciplinary team that won the World Bank’s 2005 Sustainable Livelihood Prize for a project on sustainable aquaculture. This project, on bioremediation in Chilean salmon farms, has been nominated for the 2007 Intel Environment Innovation Award by the Tech Museum. He has also carried out diverse projects and consultancies. For instance he acted as head economist in a three year environmental accounts Project for Panama, financed by the Interamerican Development Bank, finally heading the project, which included an economic valuation of a natural reserve. He has also been an environment and resource economics professor in various Chilean Universities.

As a well known NGO directive, Rodrigo has been directly involved in environmental policy in his country where he was appointed Member of the “Consejo Consultivo Comisión Nacional de Medio Ambiente” the Advisory Body of the regional environmental commission, for the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, from 2001 to 2003. He was also a member of the Commission on Education for Sustainable Development, organized by Conama, the Chilean Environmental Agency. He was invited to participate in the review of the atmospheric decontamination plan of the metropolitan area of Santiago and was also formally consulted on the passing of a new law to create the office of Environmental Minister in Chile in 2006 and regularly testified as expert witness in Congressional Committees on environmental and natural resource policy.

Rodrigo´s main interest still lies in research and academic work, which is the reason he returned to graduate study. IPER allows him to extend and strengthen his interdisciplinary outlook. He is broadly interested in the political economy of environmental policy in developing countries, more specifically how institutions determine environmental outcomes. He is also affiliated to the food security program which permits him to deepen his interest in the relationship between food systems and the environment and especially aquaculture. Rodrigo is married and the proud father of three daughters. After IPER, he hopes to pursue an academic career. Rodrigo is the recipient of the Sykes Family Fellowship.