Joel K Bourne is an award-winning author and journalist who has spent his career traveling the globe to report on the volatile, co-dependent relationship between humans and the natural world. He is also an advisory committee member for the Jameel Index for Food Trade and Vulnerability (Jameel Index), a research project initiated by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Supported by Community Jameel, the Jameel Index studies the implications of climate change on food security and how they relate to trade.
As a frequent contributor and former senior editor for the environment at National Geographic, Joel has covered many of the significant major environmental issues of our time, including the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the global rush to biofuels, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and California's recurrent droughts.
With an undergraduate degree in agronomy from NC State University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, Joel's writing and reporting also extends to the global food system, most recently covering the impact of the war in Ukraine on the grain and fertiliser trade. He contributed two articles to National Geographic's eight-part series, 'The future of food', which won the prestigious AH Boerma Award from the FAO, reporting on the agricultural land rush in Africa, as well as new sustainable methods of aquaculture.
In addition to his journalism, Joel's book 'The end of plenty: The race to feed a crowded world' (2015) has received recognition. It explores the looming food crisis and ways to feed the planet without destroying it and was a finalist for the 2016 PEN/EO Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and was a selection for the Financial Times of London books of the year.
