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IN MEMORY 
 

Karl-Göran Mäler: the Adi-Guru of Environmental 
Economics 
 

Saudamini Das   

 
Karl-Göran Mäler, one of the most loved and revered environmental 
economists of the century, passed away on May 20, 2020 in Stockholm. 
Born on March 3, 1939 in a small town in Västernorrlands County in 
northern Sweden, Karl-Göran grew up to be one of the most significant 
ecological economists in the world, contributing enormously to the 
discipline as well as helping to spread it across the globe. His passing leaves 
a permanent vacuum in the world. 

Karl-Göran was a professor of economics at the Stockholm School of 
Economics (1975–2002), a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of 
Sciences (1981–1994), a member of the Committee for the Sveriges 
Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (1982–
1994) and the head of this Committee during 1986–87, director of the 
Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics (1991–2006), and then a professor 
emeritus at this institute. He co-founded Beijer Institute of Ecological 
Economics together with Partha Dasgupta in 1991. He was one of the 
founding members and then a council member of the European 
Association for Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE), a 
recipient of the Volvo Environment Prize in 2002 (shared with Partha 
Dasgupta), and a recipient of the European Lifetime Achievement Award in 
Environmental Economics in 2005 (shared with David Pearce). However, 
to the ecological economics fraternity, he was a global professor of 
environmental and resource economics sans boundaries and nationalities. 

                                                           
 National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) Chair Professor, 
Institute of Economic Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007, India; 
saudamini@iegindia.org.  

Copyright © Das 2020. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 
International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.269  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.269


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [224] 

 
Karl-Göran Mäler releasing Environmental Valuation in South Asia at the ―Nature, 
Economy and Society: Understanding the Linkages‖ Sixth Biennial Conference 
of Indian Society for Ecological Economics, 20–22 October 2011, Centre for 
Economic and Social Studies (CESS), Hyderabad. [Image courtesy: INSEE]  

Karl-Göran was an original thinker in the field of the environment; he 
produced seminal works on varied subjects such as pollution, 
environmental protection, property rights, poverty, theory of sustainable 
economic development, regime shifts, and irreversibility in natural systems, 
among others. His first book, Environmental Economics: A Theoretical Inquiry 
(1974) is a foundational volume for environmental economics. This book 
was published when the field was first evolving and, thus, helped its ideas 
grow. His books such as Environment and Development: An Economic Approach 
(with Jan Bojö and Lena Unemo), Economic Measurement of Environmental 
Damage: A Technical Handbook (with Ronald E. Wyzga), various edited 
volumes (with different colleagues), and many research publications in 
several top international journals are all significant contributions and speak 
volumes about his scholarship. 

His highly influential research ―The Acid Rain Game‖ (1989) was probably 
the first paper to provide an economic rationale (through a compensatory 
payment mechanism) to encourage international cooperation to resolve 
critical transboundary environmental problems. His seminal paper 
―National Accounts and Environmental Resources‖, published in 
Environment and Resource Economics (1991), made a compelling case for 
incorporating nature in national income accounting. Equally revolutionary 



[225] Saudamini Das 

 

were his lectures on intermediate ecosystem services and the problem of 
double counting if the value of supporting services is separately accounted 
for in the total economic value measures of ecosystem services. 

Karl-Göran has initiated several pioneering activities; the two worth 
mentioning are the Askö meetings and capacity-building work in the Global 
South. He envisioned that a combination of the two disciplines, economics 
and ecology, would be necessary to find a sustainable solution to the 
catastrophic environmental problems in the world. He strengthened this 
interdisciplinary approach by bringing the world’s leading ecologists and 
economists under one roof in the famous Askö meetings of Beijer Institute, 
the deliberations of which are published as the Askö Series and also in 
some of the top journals of the world. 

Karl-Göran, along with Partha Dasgupta, initiated network programmes in 
environmental economics research and teaching in the Global South that 
resulted in the formation of these regional networks: South Asian Network 
for Environment and Developmental Economics (SANDEE), Centre for 
Environmental Economics and Policy in Africa (CEEPA, previously 
RANESA), and Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Economics 
Program (LACEEP). These networks provided training through research 
and training workshops (R&T), mentoring of early-career researchers by 
globally renowned professors, guidance in proposal and manuscript writing, 
and so on. They revolutionized environmental economics research and 
teaching, helped the careers of hundreds of early-career researchers, and 
transformed perceptions and attitudes towards the environment and 
environmental policymaking in the Global South.  

In India, SANDEE was and still is a lifeline for environmental research. 
Karl-Göran was attached to SANDEE and enjoyed great camaraderie with 
leading Indian environmental economists and SANDEE associates such as 
Kanchan Chopra, Gopal Kadekodi, M. N. Murthy, and the late Narpat 
Singh Jodha, to name a few. He never missed his SANDEE research and 
training workshops and summer schools (for as long as he was able to 
travel), a bond he never shared with others. We, the SANDEE researchers, 
would look forward to the opportunity to present our work to him at the 
R&T workshops, be reprimanded by him, and then work further, day and 
night, for the next presentation. The R&Ts, our real gurukul, have provided 
us with a strong foundation for our careers and helped us integrate with 
global research. Karl-Göran will always remain the father of the 
environmental economics capacity-building programmes in South Asia.  

As with SANDEE, Karl-Göran’s association with the Indian Society for 
Ecological Economics (INSEE) was equally strong and dear. He delivered a 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [226] 

keynote address during the Sixth INSEE Biennial Conference in 
Hyderabad. Initially, he was supposed to come to New Delhi for a meeting 
on the Government of India’s invitation and then travel to Hyderabad. The 
Delhi meeting was eventually cancelled, but Karl-Göran still travelled to 
India so that he could keep his promise with INSEE and meet his Indian 
colleagues at the conference. We will always remember this gracious 
gesture. 

On a personal note, two people had a profound impact on his life—his 
father, Karl Mäler, and his wife, Sara Aniyar. His father, born in the Nordic 
forests of Sweden, rose to become an elected member of the Swedish 
Parliament. Karl-Göran was a proud son and always kept his father’s 
lessons close to his heart; even when he was at the care home, he kept his 
father’s statue with him. Karl-Göran met Sara at a workshop in Jamaica and 
their beautiful life together started then. Sara complemented him perfectly 
and was always by his side; she spent two months in quarantine in the care 
home with him and Karl-Göran left for his heavenly abode still holding her 
hand. 

I was fortunate to be mentored by Karl-Göran and to have enjoyed a 
personal friendship with him and Sara while I was a Mäler scholar at the 
Beijer Institute. I loved visiting museums, exhibitions, historical sites, and 
eateries with them in Stockholm. I was always amazed at the way Karl-
Göran could stand at the corner of a street and narrate interesting stories 
about the street, the histories of the main buildings, the chronologies of 
architectural innovations, the evolutions of the famous eating joints in the 
area, and the exact spot from which he got the best view of the Northern 
Lights during his childhood. He was as madly in love with his country, 
people, and dear city of Stockholm as he was with his discipline. His energy, 
ideas, persistence, and gentle chiding will inspire us for years. 

 

REFERENCES  

Kristrom, Bengt, Partha Dasgupta, and Karl Gustaf Lofgren, eds. 2002. Economic 
Theory for the Environment: Essays in Honour of Karl-Göran Mäler. Cheltenham: Edward 
Elgar. 

Mäler, Karl-Göran. 1974. Environmental Economics: A Theoretical Inquiry. Baltimore, 
Published for Resources for the Future by the Johns Hopkins University Press.  

Mäler, Karl-Göran. 1989. ―The Acid Rain Game.‖ In Valuation Methods and Policy 
Making in Environmental Economics, edited by Henk Folmer and E. van Ierland, 231-
252. Elsevier, Amsterdam. 

Mäler, Karl-Göran. 1991. ―National Accounts and Environmental Resources.‖ 
Environmental and Resource Economics 1 (1): 1–15. 


