Manfred Max-Neef

The Manfred Max-Neef keynotes delve into global issues like international debt, suicide and starvation from the lens of economics.

Max Neef became a professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley before travelling through Latin America and the United States to do research on development in the midst of poverty and ecological disaster. It was from this experience that he was inspired to start the Center for Development Alternatives (CEPAUR) and won the Right Livelihood Award in 1982. He served as the appointed rector of the Universidad Austra de Chile for eights years since 1993.

He authored From the Outside Looking In, a documentation of his travels and findings.

He is currently a council member of the World Future Council.

By making conventional social development issues accessible through economics, the Manfred Max-Neef keynotes show why the Chilean environmentalist is world-renowned.