Prof Martin Price

Centre for Mountain Studies
Perth College UHI
Crieff Road
Perth
PH1 2NX

martin.price@perth.uhi.ac.uk
tel: +44 (0) 1738 877217

Available to talk to the media about

  • Mountain environments
  • Climate change
  • Biosphere reserves
  • Land management in upland/mountain areas

In these languages

English, French, German

Biography

Professor Martin Price is Director of the Centre for Mountain Studies at Perth College UHI, in Perth. He is also Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Sustainable Mountain Development, the first such chair in Scotland, which recognises his global role in mountain research and knowledge exchange. In 2018, he was selected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his contributions to Public Engagement and Understanding.

The main focus of Professor Price’s work is on mountain people and the environments on which they depend.   This work has been, and is being, undertaken at three main levels: global, European, and Scotland.

At the global scale, he contributed to the preparation of the mountain chapter of ‘Agenda 21’ at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and was involved in the process leading up to the Rio+20 meeting in 2012, continuing from work with international organizations including FAO, IUCN, UNEP, UNESCO, and WWF.  As a Principal Lead Author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he, and other members of the IPCC, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore.  He was also a Lead Author of the mountain chapter in the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.  In 2010, he organised the largest ever international conference of mountain scientists in Perth, bringing together 450 people from 60 countries on five continents. In 2012, the King Albert I Memorial Foundation awarded him the King Albert Mountain Award: the citation states that “Martin Price, with his exceptional knowledge and his editorial competence, has played a vital role for the mountains of the world”.

At the European scale, Professor Price has coordinated two major state-of-the-art reports on Europe’s mountains, for the European Commission in 2004 and the European Environment Agency in 2010. He has participated in many projects funded by the European Commission and is a member of the Board of Euromontana, the European association for cooperation and development of mountain areas. He also developed and has led a unique online MSc in Managing Sustainable Mountain Development since 2004, available worldwide.

In Scotland, Professor Price led a ground-breaking project on ‘Sustainable estates for the 21st Century’ (2007-12), this received significant recognition from the landowning/managing sector and was used by Scottish Land and Estates’ in its evidence to the Scottish Government’s Land Reform Review Group (LRRG) and its Community Engagement programme and Landowner’s Commitment. The book synthesising the project, ‘Lairds, Land and Sustainability: Scottish perspectives on Upland Management’ was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2013. It has been described by Prof. Chris Smout of the University of St. Andrews as “A book for everyone seriously concerned about the future of the Highlands” and has been favourably reviewed in a number of academic journals.  From 2011 to 2014, Professor Price served as a Ministerial Appointee on the Board of the Cairngorms National Park Authority. In 2017, he was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Committee of Scottish Natural Heritage. Since 2005, he has represented the University of the Highlands and Islands on the Executive Committee of the Edinburgh/Scottish (from 2012) Consortium for Rural Research.

In addition to mountain areas, other areas of Professor Price’s expertise include the links between biodiversity conservation and sustainable development, particularly in the context of Biosphere Reserves designated within UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme, in which he has played key roles both globally and in the UK; the human dimensions of global change; and the effective implementation of interdisciplinary research.

Professor Price has also worked for the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Unit (now Institute), the Institute of Geography of the University of Bern, Switzerland; the International Centre for Alpine Environments, Bourget-du-Lac, France; and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

He has edited and written 15 books and authored or co-authored nearly 200 papers, articles, and book chapters. His roles on the boards of academic journals include Associate Editor-in-Chief of the 'Journal of Mountain Science' and Book Review Editor of the quarterly journal 'Mountain Research and Development'; he was also the founding Editor-In-Chief (2005-9) of the ‘International Journal of Biodiversity Science and Management’, now the 'International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management'.

Current research

  • Sustainable development of mountain areas
  • Biodiversity and sustainable development
  • Biosphere reserves
  • Climate change: mountains; adaptation
  • Global change, especially human dimensions

Research groups and interests

  • Forest management and policy
  • Interdisciplinary research

Selected publications

Books and reports

  • Egan P, Price MF. 2017. Mountain ecosystem services and climate change: A global overview of potential threats and strategies for adaptation. UNESCO, Paris.
  • Gloersen E, Price MF, Borec A, Dax T, Giordano B. 2016. Cohesion in mountainous regions of the EU.  Directorate-General for Internal Policies, European Parliament, Brussels.
  • Price, M.F. (2015) Mountains: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford: in press.
  • Price, M.F., Byers, A.C., Friend, D.A., Kohler, T. and Price, L.W. (eds.) (2013) Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions. University of California Press, Berkeley.
  • Glass, J., Price, M.F., Warren, C. and Scott A. (eds.) (2013) Lairds, Land and Sustainability: Scottish perspectives on upland management. University of Edinburgh Press, Edinburgh.
  • European Environment Agency (2010) Europe's ecological backbone: recognising the true value of our mountains. European Environment Agency, Copenhagen.
  • Price M.F. (ed.) (2007) Mountain Area Research and Management: Integrated Approaches. Earthscan, London.
  • Price, M.F. (ed.) (2006) Global Change in Mountain Regions. Sapiens Publishing, Duncow.
  • Thompson, D.B.A., J. Newman, M.F. Price and Galbraith, C.A. (eds.) (2005) The Mountains of Northern Europe: Conservation, Management and Initiatives. The Stationery Office, London.
  • European Commission (2004) Mountain areas in Europe: Analysis of mountain areas in EU Member States, acceding and other European countries. Report 2004: 1, Nordregio, Stockholm.
  • Price, M.F., L. Jansky and Iatsenia, A.A. (eds.) (2004) Key issues for Mountain Areas. United Nations University Press, Tokyo.
  • Price, M.F., B.L. Dixon, C.R. Warren and Macpherson, A.R. (2002) Scotland’s mountain areas: Key issues for the future. Scottish Natural Heritage, Battleby.
  • Price, M.F. and N. Butt (eds.) (2000) Forests in sustainable mountain development: A state-of-knowledge report for 2000. CAB International, Wallingford.

Papers and articles

  • Valluri-Nitsch C, Metzger MJ, McMorran R, Price MF. 2018. My land? Your land? Scotland? — understanding sectoral similarities and differences in Scottish land use visions. Regional Environmental Change doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1279-9
  • Price MF. 2017. The re-territorialisation of Biosphere Reserves: the case of Wester Ross, Northwest Scotland. Environmental Science and Policy 72: 30-40.
  • Gleeson E, Wymann von Dach S, Flint C, Greenwood G, Price MF, Balsiger J, Nolin A, Vanacker V. 2016. Mountains of our Future Earth - Defining Priorities for Mountain Research. A Synthesis from the 2015 Perth III Conference. Mountain Research and Development 36: 537-548.
  • Price MF. 2016. Mountains move up the European agenda. Mountain Research and Development 36: 376-379.
  • Price, M.F. (2014) Transnational governance in mountain regions: Progress and prospects, Environmental Science & Policy: doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2014.09.009.
  • Björnsen Gurung, A., Wymann von Dach, S., Price, M.F., Aspinall., R., Balsiger, J., Baron, J., Sharma, E., Greenwood, G. and Kohler, T. (2012). Global change and the world's mountains: Research needs and emerging themes for sustainable development.  Mountain Research and Development 32(supplement): 47-54.
  • Price, M.F., Park J.J. and Bouamrane, M. (2010) Reporting Progress on Internationally-designated Sites: The Periodic Review of Biosphere Reserves. Environmental Science and Policy 8: 549-557.
  • Midgely A., and Price, M.F. (2010) What future for upland biodiversity? In Rural Scotland in Focus, Scottish Agricultural College, Edinburgh: 80-87.
  • Debarbieux, B. and M.F. Price (2008) Representing mountains: From local and national to global common good. Geopolitics 13: 148-168.
  • McMorran, R., Price, M.F. and Warren, C.R. (2008) The call of different wilds: the importance of definition and perception in protecting and managing Scottish wild landscapes. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 51:177-199.
  • Price, M.F. (2008) Maintaining mountain biodiversity in an era of climate change. In Borsdorf, A, J. Stötter and E. Veulliet (eds.) Managing Alpine Future. Proceedings of International Conference October 15-17, 2007. Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, Vienna: 17-33.
  • Price, M.F. (2008) Mountains. In D. Cuff and A.S. Goudie (eds.) The Oxford Companion to Global Change. Oxford University Press: 435-438.
  • Price, M.F. (2007) Tertiary education for mountain needs. Mountain Research and Development 27: 89.
  • Price, M.F., Björnsen Gurung, A., Dourojeanni, P. and Maselli, D. (2006) Social monitoring in Mountain Biosphere Reserves: Conclusions from the EU GLOCHAMORE Project. Mountain Research and Development 26: 174-180.
  • Koerner, C. and Ohsawa M. (Coordinating Lead Authors; M.F. Price, Lead Author) (2005) Mountain systems. In: R. Hassan et al. (eds.) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends, Volume 1, Island Press, Washington DC: 681-716.
  • Price, M.F. (2005) Forests in sustainable mountain development. In: Huber U.M., Bugmann H.K.M. and Reasoner, M.A. (eds.) Global Change and Mountain Regions: An Overview of Current Knowledge. Springer, Dordrecht: 521-529.
  • Price, M.F., Lysenko, I. and Gloersen, E. (2004) La délimitation des montagnes européennes/Delineating Europe’s mountains. Révue de Géographie Alpine/Journal of Alpine Research 92(2): 61-86.
  • Price, M.F. (2002) The Periodic Review of Biosphere Reserves: A mechanism to foster sites of excellence for conservation and sustainable development. Environmental Science and Policy 5(1): 13-19.