Philippe Le Billon is Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and at the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His research engages with the environment-development-security nexus, including climate change, ocean governance, extractive sectors, and conflicts. He regularly collaborates with international and non-governmental organizations, including environmental defenders.
Dr. Le Billon is a Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and held a Fulbright Research Chair at UC Berkeley and a Research Fellowship at Science-Po Paris.
He is the author of Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources (Oxford University Press, 2014), Oil (Polity Press, 2017, with G. Bridge), and editor of The Geopolitics of ‘Resource Wars’ (2005, Cass), Corruption, Natural Resources and Development (Elgar, 2017, with A. Williams), and Environmental Defenders: Deadly Struggles for Life and Territory (Routledge, 2021, with M. Menton)
His academic research has appeared in journals such as African Affairs, Annals of the AAG, Antipode, Climate Policy, Geopolitics, Global Environmental Change, Political Geography, and Review of International Political Economy. Some of his research also appeared in AP, CBC, CCTV, Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and Mail, Die Zeit, The Guardian, Financial Times, and The Washington Post. He regularly writes for Policy Options and The Conversation.
Prior to his position at UBC, he worked as a humanitarian and UN peacekeeper, as well as with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and French Foreign Affairs. He was a founding Director of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association, and is on the scientific advisory board of SwissPeace and editorial board of Environment and Security.
