Bas de Leeuw

Bas de Leeuw (born 1959) is a Dutch economist and sustainability expert. He is currently Managing Director of the World Resources Forum.
Career.
After graduation from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, de Leeuw held various positions in the Dutch Ministries of Economic Affairs and Infrastructure. In 1997, he started his international career and joined the United Nations Environment Programme. Based in UN Environment's Economy Division in Paris, he introduced programs at the nexus of sustainable consumption, lifestyle, advertising and resource management. He has set up and managed several new UN initiatives, such as the Sustainable Consumption Program, the Marrakesh Process on Sustainable Consumption and Production, the International Life Cycle Panel, and the International Resource Panel. He was Head of the Secretariat of the last two. He has also worked as a National Expert for the OECD on sustainable consumption policies.
In 2009, Leeuw became Executive Director of the Sustainability Institute, founded by Donella Meadows. The institute based in Vermont, USA, was later rebranded as Donella Meadows Institute and Donella Meadows Project.
In 2011 he led the spinoff of the Swiss-based World Resources Forum, which used to be an initiative of the interdisciplinary Swiss research institute for applied materials sciences and technology, Empa. He initiated the transformation towards an independent non-profit international organization that serves as a platform connecting and fostering knowledge exchange on resources management amongst business leaders, policy-makers, NGOs, scientists and the public. He introduced professional management and communication programs, such as the WRF Workshop Parade, nominated for the 2018 Audience Interaction Awards at the FRESH 18 Conference of the Meeting Design Institute. Apart from organising conferences the WRF has been managing or contributing to various international and regional coordination and research projects, such as Sustainable Recycling Industries (SRI), and the EC Horizon2020 projects FORAM, CICERONE, RE-SOURCING and CEWASTE, and has set up MOOCS with UNEP IRP on decoupling resource use (Resource Revolution Trainer) respectively - with the Basel Convention Secretariat and other partners - on e-waste management (the E-waste Challenge).
De Leeuw is elected full member of the Club of Rome and has served on various advisory and steering committees, including the Advisory Board of Global Action Plan International, Green Cross Netherlands and the Council of the Union of International Associations (UIA). He is currently Strategic Advisor of the One Planet Network's 10-year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns (10YFP) Sustainable Lifestyles Initiative Multi-Stakeholders Advisory Committee (SLE MAC) at UN Environment and a member of the UN Task Group on Catalysing Science-based Policy Action on SCP.
Publications.
De Leeuw's most cited publication has been on the use of life cycle thinking for sustainable consumption and production policies, World Behind the Product. Other publications include: