Eric Kemp-Benedict became director of SEI’s Asia Centre in February 2013.

As director, he is responsible for research, administrative and financial leadership of SEI Asia and serves as the main contact for key partners and donors. He will also be part of SEI’s international management and help coordinate its interactions with headquarters and with SEI colleagues worldwide.

Prior to assuming this role, Dr. Kemp-Benedict was a senior scientist in SEI’s U.S. Centre in Boston and leader of SEI’s Rethinking Development Research theme. Since 2012, he had spent much of his time in Bangkok, supporting the centre through a period of transition and helping build local research capacity.

His own research focuses on cross-disciplinary policy analysis for sustainable development strategies. He has contributed to studies on diverse topics of relevance to sustainability at national, regional, and global levels, funded by international organizations, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations.

In his facilitation and capacity-building work, Dr. Kemp-Benedict actively develops and applies tools and methods for participatory and study-specific sustainability analyses. As a scenario modeller, he specializes in the development of application-specific models within a participatory framework. In addition to scenario analysis and scenario modelling in general, his areas of interest include poverty and income distribution; social dynamics; water, livestock, and land use; and rural livelihoods.

He has a B.S. in physics from the University of Texas in Austin and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Boston University in 1997, as well as an MAT in secondary physics education.

Publications

• Sweden in a World of Growing Uncertainties: Background report 10 to the Commission on the Future of Sweden (Report - 2013)

• Inequality and Trust: Testing a Mediating Relationship for Environmental Sustainability (Journal article - 2013)

• Material needs and aggregate demand (Journal article - 2013)

• Social Ecology of Domestic Water Use in Bangalore (Journal article - 2013)

• International Trade and Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Could Shifting the Location of Production Bring GHG benefits? (Project report - 2013)

• Second-order Price Dynamics: Approach to Equilibrium with Perpetual Arbitrage (Paper - 2012)

• Biomass in a Low-Carbon Economy: Resource Scarcity, Climate Change, and Business in a Finite World (Policy brief) (Policy brief - 2012)

• Biomass in a Low-Carbon Economy: Resource Scarcity, Climate Change, and Business in a Finite World (Project report - 2012)

• The National Bioenergy Investment Model: Technical documentation (Working paper - 2012)

• Price and Quantity Trajectories: Second-order Dynamics (Paper - 2012)

Complete list of publications »

Projects

• 3C - Resource scarcity

  
  

• Developmental equity in an international climate regime

  
  

• Urban Metabolic Mapping: Securing the Biophysical Foundation of Indian Cities

  
  

• Inequality and Sustainability

  
  

• CPWF L1 - Targetting and Out-scaling in the Limpopo Basin

  
  

• Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF) V1 - Targeting and Scaling Out in the Volta Basin

  
  

• Sustainable Mekong Research Network (Sumernet, Phase II)

  
  

• Mainstreaming adaptation into Ghana’s national development plans

  
  

• Great Transition Initiative (GTI)

  
  

• Boston Scenarios project

  
  

• Global Sustainability Scenarios

  
  

• Integrating Energy, Water and Livelihoods

  
  

• Water, Socioeconomic and Ecological Relations in Urbanizing Environments – Phnom Penh

  
  

• Modeling for Negotiations

  
  

• Religious Institutions and Environmental Policy Making

  
  

• Water Poverty Modeling in the Mekong River Basin

  
  

• Bayesian Methods for Incorporating Livelihood and Poverty Issues into Development Planning

  
  

• Great Transition Scenario Consultation

  
  

• Policy Guidance on Forest-Related Trade and Investment and Its Environmental and Social Impacts

  
  

• Climate Adaptation Plan for Ghana

  
  

• National-level Climate Change Adaptation Action Plans

  
  

• UNEP Global Environmental Outlook (GEO) Initiative

  
  

• Sustainable Development in West Africa

  
  

• PoleStar

  
  

• Development Futures in Ecuador

  
  

• Baltic 21

  
  

• Technical support for international climate change adaptation research

  
  

• Greenhouse Development Rights