Honorary Professor Colin Butler

Colin’s primary expertise concerns global environmental change (including climate change and infectious diseases) and health. He has authored more than 300 scientific publications, almost all relevant to these topics, since 1991.

In 2014 he became the first Australian contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be arrested for civil disobedience, protesting inaction on climate change by the Australian government.

Among his several awards he was named as “one of a 100 doctors for the planet”, by the French Environmental Health Association, in 2009. In 2018 he received the Tony McMichael public health ecology and environment award, from the Public Health Association of Australia. He is also a recipient of the Borrie Prize, awarded by the Australian Population Association.

The relationship between human population growth, poverty and development is a topic of great relevance to Colin’s academic work. In 2020 Colin published the first scientific article written by an Australian academic arguing that the cause of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic may be from a laboratory.

Colin has also championed the ongoing relevance of Limits to Growth, to health and well-being. He co-founder the NGOs BODHI and BODHI Australia, in 1989. In 2001 he became a founding board member of Doctors for the Environment, Australia.