Gregory M. Thaler

Gregory M. Thaler is an Associate Professor of Environmental Geography and Latin American Studies at the University of Oxford. He co-directs the Brazil Natural Resource Governance Initiative with colleagues from the University of Georgia (USA) and the Federal University of Pará (Brazil). His research integrates political ecology, political economy, and agrarian studies to analyze global environmental governance and development.

• Research Disciplines: Environmental Geography, Latin American Studies
• Methodologies: Comparative research, Ethnographic methods, Action research

Research Focus: Thaler's work examines the interplay between environmental governance, agrarian politics, and social justice in tropical regions, particularly Brazil, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Ecuador. His 2024 book Saving a Rainforest and Losing the World: Conservation and Displacement in the Global Tropics critiques conservation-driven displacement in these areas.

Publication Trends: Recent articles address themes like transformative governance in the Amazon estuary (2025), environmental discourse in NGOs (2023), equifinality in smallholder agriculture (2021), and land sparing policies in the Brazilian Amazon (2017). These works emphasize interdisciplinary analysis, often combining political ecology with ethnographic and organizational approaches.

• Email: gregory.thaler@lac.ox.ac.uk

Future Work: Thaler advocates for systemic responses to social and ecological injustices, emphasizing the inseparability of human well-being from ecological relationships.