Lewis Akenji

Lewis Akenji is Executive Director of the Hot or Cool Institute in Berlin, a public interest think tank with a mission is to challenge the status quo, supporting people and organisations to reimagine what is possible and enable systemic change. His work takes a political economy lens to issues of structurally driven consumption, interlinkages between social tensions and climate breakdown, and fair allocation of resources and opportunities in future economies and governance to ensure collective wellbeing within ecological limits.

Akenji is also full member of the Club of Rome and co-chair of the Materials and Consumption Taskforce. He has held leadership roles at the Japan-based Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), where he worked on international initiatives related to sustainability governance and resource efficiency; SEED, the UN partnership to promote entrepreneurship for sustainable development; and is publicly recognized for significant contributions to social and policy research, and in working with international policy processes and institutions addressing lifestyles and social aspects of environmental and technological unsustainability.

Akenji has an M.Sc. in Sustainable Resource Management (Technical University Munich, Germany) and a Ph.D. in Political Economy (University of Helsinki, Finland).