Kevin Hicks, PhD (The Importance to Upland Vegetation of Enhanced Nitrogen Deposition at High Altitude), BSc (Hons) (Plant Science) has been a Research Associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute centre at York (SEI-Y) since 1997. His research interests cover air pollution impacts on terrestrial ecosystems from local to global scales, ecosystem services, air pollution issues in developing countries, linkages between air pollution and climate change, and the transfer of scientific information to the policy process.

A main responsibility at SEI has been co-ordination and project management of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) funded Regional Air Pollution in Developing Countries (RAPIDC) and Global Atmospheric Pollution Forum (GAP Forum; http://www.sei-international.org/rapidc/gapforum/html/index.php) Programmes, which have led to the development of inter-governmental agreements at Ministerial level on air pollution issues in South Asia (Malé Declaration), Southern Africa (Lusaka Agreement), Eastern Africa (Nairobi Agreement) and Western Africa (Abidjan Agreement). Work with the GAP Forum highlighted the potential for developing integrated co-benefit strategies for air pollution and climate change and led to SEI’s involvement in a UNEP/WMO Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone, for which he was the co-ordinator and managing editor at the secretariat for the assessment based at SEI. This work has led to his being the principle investigator of a US State Department Grant entitled ‘Facilitating Action on Short-Lived Climate Forcers in Developing Countries’ and to his involvement with the regional intergovernmental consultations and the national action planning and regional assessment activities of the Climate and Clean Air Association (CCAC; http://www.unep.org/ccac/) to reduce concentration sof Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (SLCPs) in the atmosphere, such as black carbon, tropospheric ozone, methane and HFCs.

He has organized international workshops on nitrogen deposition impacts to ecosystems and attended UN/ECE scientific and other national/international meetings on air pollution issues, as well as being involved in the European Nitrogen Assessment and the EU FP7 funded ECLAIRE (Effects of Climate Change on Air Pollution and Response Strategies for European Ecosystems; http://www.eclaire-fp7.eu/) project. He currently sits on the Steering Committee of the European Centre of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI; http://initrogen.org/). He has also worked on projects for the UK government related to air pollution impacts and the development of the ecosystem services approach and is currently the project manager at the Directorate for the NERC funded Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Sustainability (BESS; http://www.nerc-bess.net/) Programme. He has over 25 peer-reviewed publications and over 40 reports and book contributions.