Amelia Clarke

Professor
headshot of amelia clarke

Contact Information
amelia.clarke@uwaterloo.ca
519-888-4567, ext. 48910
EV3 4233

Municipal Net-Zero Action Research Partnership
Youth & Innovation Project

LinkedIn: Amelia Clarke's LinkedIn
Google Scholar: Amelia Clarke's Google Scholar
Twitter: @DrAmeliaClarke

Dr. Amelia Clarke has been working on environment and sustainability issues since 1989, including as President of Sierra Club Canada (2003-2006), the first Director of the University of Waterloo's Master of Environment and Business degree (2009-2018) and the Associate Dean Research for the Faculty of Environment (2018-2022). She is now a Full Professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) at the University of Waterloo.

Her main research focuses are related to implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals #8, #11, #13 and #17. She leads a $8.5M national team project called the municipal net-zero action research partnership (N-ZAP), and co-leads a second project on youth & innovation. She also has a long history of working on climate and sustainability action on university campuses, including co-authoring these classic publications on campus environmental management and student-led climate actions. She is a strong believer in youth-led change and on implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Dr. Clarke approaches her research on sustainable development, sustainable business, sustainable campuses and sustainable communities from a strategic management lens. Many of her theoretical contributions have been related to strategy implementation, designing cross-sector partnerships, and stakeholder/youth engagement. Her most cited work is on collaborative strategic management and some of her most recent work is on pathways to deep decarbonization in cities. Dr. Clarke’s work has been published as journal articles, book chapters and practitioner reports. For more details see her Google Scholar profile.

Dr. Clarke holds a PhD in Management (Strategy) from McGill University. She is currently also a founding member of Nature Canada's Women for Nature, a member of the GreenBiz Intelligence Panel, a member of WRI's global Advisory Council for the Ross Centre Prize for Cities, named on the #Thinklist30 as a social media influencer, and part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Amelia Clarke has a long history of impact. In 1996, she founded the Sierra Youth Coalition (SYC), and is proud of having launched SYC’s sustainable campus program which helped create significant change on more than 80 Canadian campuses. She is also proud of her efforts to help influence the creation of 10 new protected areas in New Brunswick. She was on the Canadian government delegation for the United Nations - World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) and spoke to ~2000 delegates at the United Nations' Habitat III conference (2016).  Now her work is improving local climate governance and the measurement of youth impact.

Connect on LinkedIn and Twitter.       

Courses Taught

  • ENBUS 602: Introduction to Sustainability for Business
  • ENBUS/SUSM 640: Strategy for Sustainable Enterprise
  • ENBUS 410: Stakeholder Engagement

Selected Publications

  • Eang, M., Clarke, A., & Ordonez-Ponce, E. (2023). The Roles of Multinational Enterprises in Implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals at the Local Level. BRQ Business Research Quarterly, 26(1), 79–97. DOI: 10.1177/23409444221140912
  • Marlowe, J. & Clarke, A. (2022). Carbon Accounting: A Systematic Literature Review and Directions for Future Research. Green Finance, 4(1), 71-87. DOI: 10.3934/GF.2022004
  • Linton, S., Clarke, A. & Tozer, L. (2022). Technical Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in Cities: Eight Best Practice Case Studies. Energy Research and Social Science, 86(April), 102422. DOI: 10.1016/j.erss.2021.102422
  • Clarke, A. & Crane, A. (2018). Cross-Sector Partnerships for Systemic Change: Systematized Literature Review and Agenda for Further Research. Journal of Business Ethics, 150(2): 303–313. DOI: 10.1007/s10551-018-3922-2

Degrees

  • Ph.D. - Strategy, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Quebec, 2010
  • M.E.S - Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, 2002
  • Engineering Diploma - Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, 1995
  • B.Sc. - Biology, Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, 1995