Helen Ding joined WRI in July 2015 as an environmental economist with the Economics Center, functioning as a cross-programmatic economist to support the analysis and practical tools being developed in Programs across the Institute and to develop economic tools for measuring and demonstrating the socio-economic value of nature resources to support government and business decision-making.
Previously, Helen was a senior economist at Deloitte Sustainability Service based in Paris and a deputy leader of Deloitte’s Natural Capital Community of Practice for Europe and Asia, where she supervised and contributed to high-level economic studies building on science-policy interface and led Deloitte’s contribution to the development of Natural Capital Protocol for business under the leadership of the WBCSD. Prior to that, Helen has gained considerable research experience in market and nonmarket valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services and impact assessment of climate change and biodiversity policy through her various appointments in leading environmental economic research institutes in Belgium, Italy, Spain, UK and USA.
Over the past years, she has contributed to many EU policy-oriented studies concerning the economics of biodiversity and forest ecosystems, socio-economic impacts of biodiversity policy, and the steps to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in the EU. She is also an author/co-author of 40+ peer-reviewed scientific journal papers, policy briefs and technical reports, book and book chapters. Among her professional achievements, Helen‘s PhD research on the “Economic Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being” has received the 2011 UNECE/FAO PhD Thesis Award for recognizing its significant contribution to the "Sustainable Forest Management in the UNECE region”.
Helen holds a PhD degree in Science and Management of Climate Change from Italy, a MSc in Environmental Sciences with specialization in Environmental Economics and Natural Resources from the Netherlands, and a BA in Economics and Finance from China.
