Dr Marco Springmann
About
Dr Marco Springmann is a Senior Researcher on Environment and Health at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. He is interested in the health, environmental, and economic dimensions of the global food systems and often uses systems models to provide quantitative estimates on food-related questions.
He has a multi-disciplinary background with more than nine years of research experience in the medical sciences (public health), and with degrees and research experience in both the natural sciences (physics) and the social sciences (sustainability and environmental economics).
Dr Springmann’s research has advanced different strands of research around food systems, public health, and the environment. The research questions he has worked on include:
- what impacts climate change could have on diets and diet-related mortality;
- what impacts diets and dietary change have on climate change, environmental resource use, nutrition and health;
- how our food system would need to change to stay within global environmental limits;
- and what policy measures could contribute to such a change.
His research has been published in leading journals, including Nature, Science, The Lancet, The BMJ, PNAS, and others. It has been cited more than 15,000 times in the last five years.
In addition, he has contributed to high-level reports, including those of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, and the Global Nutrition Report.
Expertise
- Sustainable diets
- Healthy diets
- Food systems
- Health and environmental impacts of dietary change
- Climate change impacts of and on diets
- Planetary boundaries
- Food policy
- Public health
Selected publications
- The healthiness and sustainability of national and global food based dietary guidelines: modelling study. The BMJ 370:m2322, Springmann, M., Spajic, L., Clark, M.A., Poore, J., Herforth, A, Webb, P., Rayner, M., Scarborough, P., (2020)
- Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet, 393, 447–492. Willett, W., Rockström, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., et al. (2019)
- Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries, 1990-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet. GBD 2017 Diet Collaborators (2019)
- Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature, 562, 519–525. Springmann, M., Clark, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Wiebe, K., Bodirsky, B.L., et al. (2018)
- Health and nutritional aspects of sustainable diet strategies and their association with environmental impacts: a global modelling analysis with country-level detail. Lancet Planetary Health, 2, e451–e461. Springmann, M., et al. (2018)
- Health-motivated taxes on red and processed meat: A modelling study on optimal tax levels and associated health impacts. PLoS One, 13, e0204139. (2018)
- Mitigation potential and global health impacts from emissions pricing of food commodities. Nature Climate Change, 7, 69–74. Springmann, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Robinson, S., Wiebe, K., Godfray, H.C.J., Rayner, M., Scarborough, P. (2017)
- Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: A modelling study. The Lancet, 387. Springmann, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Robinson, S., Garnett, T., Godfray, H.C.J., Gollin, D., Rayner, M., Ballon, P., Scarborough, P. (2016)
Media experience
Dr Marco Springmann is regularly interviewed by radio stations about his research. Amongst others, he has appeared on flagship programmes of the BBC, such as Radio 4’s Today programme, having been a guest twice, as well as the BBC programmes Inside Science, Science in Actions, The Food Chain, and Business Daily. Other radio and podcast programmes Dr Springmann has contributed to include The Guardian’s Today in Focus and The Naked Scientist.
Dr Springmann has also been featured on TV and videocasts, having appeared on the BBC’s News at Five and The Big Questions, an ITV documentary, a debating programme of TRT World, and videocasts of The Economist and Newsweek. The Economist video on ‘How could veganism change the world?’ was one of their most popular videocasts in 2018, viewed more than half a million times on Youtube and Facebook.
Dr Springmann was also interviewed about his research for several documentary films, including The End of Meat (dir: Marc Pierschel; 9/2017, Germany), #Powerplant (prod: Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation, 2/2019, Netherlands), Eating Our Way to Extinction (Broxstar Films, UK; to be released), and A Global Revolution (Outpost Pictures, UK; to be released).
Recent media work
- Podcast interview with Anna Ladd for How to Save a Planet (2021)
- Governments’ dietary guidelines are harming the planet, study finds (The Guardian, 2020)
- Podcast interview for Today in Focus, Peak meat: is veganism the future? (The Guardian, 2020)
- Radio interview for Business Daily, The meat-free burger (BBC, 2019)
- TED talk, We need to stop eating meat to save our planet (May 2019)
- Radio interview for Radio 4, Today Programme, on food system within environmental limits (BBC, 2018)
- Videocast, How could veganism change the world? (The Economist, 2018)
Languages
English, German