Michael Vardon

Dr Michael Vardon is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, where he researches and teaches natural capital and ecosystem services accounting and its application to decision-making across the public and private sectors. His expertise spans the full accounting chain — from data collection through account compilation to analysis, indicators and policy use — with particular depth in biodiversity conservation and water management.

His career bridges science, official statistics and academia. After completing a PhD at ANU on the ecology of flying-foxes in monsoonal Australia, he joined the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2000, working across a wide range of environmental topics and becoming Director of the Centre of Environment and Energy Statistics before leaving in 2014. During this time he was seconded to the National Water Commission (2006), the United Nations (2007–2009) and the Bureau of Meteorology (2012–13).

Michael has helped more than 30 countries produce, apply and evaluate environmental accounts, much of it through the United Nations and the World Bank's Wealth Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services (WAVES) partnership. He served on the editorial boards that developed the UN System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) and is among the experts updating the SEEA Central Framework. Since 2004 he has contributed papers to many meetings of the London Group on Environmental-Economic Accounting, the international expert group whose work underpins the SEEA standards. He currently serves on the Australian Government's Technical Advisory Panel on Environmental-Economic Accounting, advises the World Bank's Global Sustainability Program, and reviews for the IPBES Business and Biodiversity Initiative.

His current research develops ecosystem accounting for Indigenous land, seas and values; agricultural landscapes; ridge-to-reef management; biodiversity conservation; and water-related ecosystem services. He also led the Water Accounts and Water Accounting technical report for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, and communicates his work to broader audiences through The Conversation, the Global Water Forum and Sustainability Bites.