PROFILE

PhD in Economics, Neuchâtel University

Gilles Carbonnier is Professor of development economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute (since 2007) and co-Director of executive education. From 2018 to 2026, he was the Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). 

His research and publications focus on geoeconomic dynamics with a focus on energy transition and the nexus between natural resources and development. His work also addresses war economies as well as international cooperation, humanitarian action and diplomacy. 

Until early 2018, Prof. Carbonnier was President of the Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action and Editor-in-Chief of International Development Policy journal. He also served as Vice-President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes and member of the Swiss Federal Commission for International Development Cooperation. 

Professor Carbonnier has over 30 years of professional experience in international trade, development cooperation and humanitarian action. From 1989 to 1991, he was a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and El Salvador. He joined the ICRC again from 1999 to 2006 as the organisation’s economic adviser and head of private-sector relations. Between 1992 and 1996, he was in charge of international development cooperation programmes and multilateral trade negotiations with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and advised Vietnam on its accession to the WTO between 1996 and 1999. Gilles Carbonnier advises companies and investment funds over sustainability and human rights issues.

THEMATIC EXPERTISE
 

• Development, cooperation, aid policies
• Public-private partnerships
• Humanitarian action & intervention
• Extractive economies, commodities & natural resources
• Climate change & natural disasters
• Sustainability, sustainable development & SDGs
• Armed conflicts, violence
• Peacekeeping, peacebuilding, reconstruction policy
• Trade, WTO & regulation
• Multilateral diplomacy, international negotiations
  
   

GEOGRAPHICAL EXPERTISE
 

• Democratic Republic of Congo
• Burkina Faso
• Ghana
• Nigeria
• El Salvador
• Guatemala
• Honduras
• Nicaragua
• Bolivia
• Colombia
• Peru
• Venezuela
• Iraq
• Libya

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

• Humanitarian Economics – War, Disaster and the Global Aid Market (2015), New York/London: Oxford University Press/Hurst.

Edited Volumes and Special Issues

• International Development Policy / Revue internationale de politique de développement (London : Palgrave Macmillan (until 2014). Boston: Brill Nijhoff (2015-).
• 2017: Alternative Pathways to Sustainable Development: What can We Learn from Latin-America?
• 2017: Development as a Battlefield – Focus on the MENA Region
• 2016: Combining Economic and Political Development – The MENA Experience
• 2015: Large-Scale Land Acquisition – Southeast Asia
• 2014: Education, Training, Learning – Critical Issues for Development
• 2013: Religion and Development
• 2012: Aid, Emerging Economies and Global Policies
• 2011: Energy and Development
• 2010: Africa – 50 Years of Independence

Journal Articles

• Mönks, Joost, Gilles Carbonnier, Aude Mellet and Leo de Haan (2017), ‘Towards a Renewed Vision of Development Studies’, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], 8.1.
• Carbonnier, Gilles and Natascha Wagner (2015), ‘Resource Dependence and Armed Violence: Impact on Sustainability in Developing Countries’, Defence and Peace Economics 26 (1): 115-132.
• Carbonnier, Gilles (2015), ‘Reason, Emotion, Compassion: Can Altruism Survive Professionalisation in the Humanitarian Sector? Disasters 39 (2): 189-207. Carbonnier, Gilles & Tiina Kontinen (2015), ‘Institutional Learning in North-South Research Partnerships’, Revue Tiers-Monde 221 (2): 149-162.
• Arbia, Ali & Gilles Carbonnier (2014), Human nature and development aid: IR and the biology of altruism, Journal of International Relations and Development, August 2014.
• Andonova, Liliana & Gilles Carbonnier (2014), Business-Humanitarian Partnerships: Processes of Normative Legitimation, Globalizations (11) 3: 349-367.
• Carbonnier, Gilles & Scott Jerbi (2013), Strengthening Governance in Fragile States: Why and How Should Extractive Industries Get Involved? Oil, Gas & Energy Law Intelligence, No. 5.
• Carbonnier, Gilles & Elizabeth Jimenez (2013), Can Lithium Energize Sustainable Development in Bolivia ? Institutional and Policy Challenges. Jounal of Environmental Science and Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 10.
• Carbonnier, Gilles (2013). Reconsidering the secular as the Norm, International Development Policy No. 4, pp. 7-12.
• ____ (2013). La malédiction des ressources naturelles et ses antidotes. Revue internationale et stratégique, No. 91. pp. 38-48.
• ____ (2012). Repenser la cooperation internationale face aux mutations du monde en développement. Techniques financières, No. 109, pp. 27-35.
• Carbonnier, Gilles and Andy Sumner (2012), Reframing Aid in a World Where the Poor live in Emerging Economies. International Development Policy No. 3, pp. 9-26.
• Carbonnier, Gilles, Fritz Brugger & Jana Krause (2011), Assessing Policy Responses to the Resource Curse: Can Civil Society live up to the expectations? Global Governance, 17 (2): 247-264.
• Carbonnier, Gilles (2010), Extractive Industries in Fragile States and the Role of Market Incentives and Regulation, The Economics of Peace and Security Journal, 5 (2), 2010: 30-37.
• ____ (2010), Security Management and the Political Economy of War, Humanitarian Exchange No. 47, pp. 18-21.
• ____ (2006) Privatisation & outsourcing in wartime: the humanitarian challenges, Disasters 30 (4): 402-416.
• ____ (2003), Undoing War Economies: A Prerequisite for Peace? Refugee Survey Quarterly, 22 (4): 165-77.
• ____ (2003), Economie et conflit armé: vers une responsabilité humanitaire de l'entreprise, Géoéconomie, No. 26, pp. 9-36.
• ____ (2002), The Competing Agendas of Economic Reform and Peace Process: A Politico-Economic Model Applied to Guatemala, World Development, 30 (8): 1323-39.
• ____ (2002), Corporate Responsibility and Humanitarian Action: What relations between the business and humanitarian worlds? International Review of the Red Cross. No. 844. pp. 947-968.

Book Chapters

• Carbonnier, Gilles and Piedra Lightfoot (2016), ’Business in Humanitarian Crises: For Better or for Worse?’ in Sezgin, Zeynep and Dennis Dijkzeul, The New Humanitarians in International Practice. Emerging Actors and Contested Principles, London: Routledge, pp. 169-191.
• Carbonnier, Gilles (2015), ‘The Rise of Disaster Risk Insurance and Derivatives’, in Brassard, C. Giles, D and A. Howitt (Eds), Natural Disaster Management in the Asia-Pacific, Tokyo: Springer, pp. 175-188.
• Andonova, Liliana and Gilles Carbonnier (2015), ‘Business-Humanitarian Partnerships : Processes of Normative Legitimation’, in Bexell, Magdalena (Ed.), Global Governance, Legitimacy and Legitimation. London: Routledge.
• Carbonnier, Gilles (2013), Humanitarian and Development Aid in the Context of Stabilization: Blurring the Lines and Broadening the Gap, in Muggah, R. (Ed.), Stabilization Operations, Security and Development – States of Fragility. New York: Routledge, pp. 35-55.
• Carbonnier, Gilles & Achim Wennmann (2013), Natural Resource Governance and Hybrid Political Orders, in Chandler, D. & T. Sisk (eds) Routledge Handbook of International Statebuilding. New York: Routledge, pp. 208-218.
• Carbonnier, Gilles & Fritz Brugger (2013), The Development Nexus of Global Energy, in Goldthau, A. (Ed.) The Handbook of Global Energy Policy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 64-79.
• Carbonnier, Gilles & Sijbren de Jong (2012), The Global Governance of Energy and Development, in Ziccardi Capaldo, G. (Ed.) The Global Community YILJ 2011. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 41-68.
• Carbonnier, Gilles (2009). Private Sector, in Vincent Chetail (Ed.) Post-conflict Peacebuilding: a Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 245-255.

Research papers

• Oil, Gas and Minerals: The Impact of Resource-Dependence and Governance on Sustainable Development, with N. Wagner and F. Brugger, CCDP Working Paper No. 8. September 2011, Geneva: The Graduate Institute.
• Asian and African Development Trajectories: Revisiting Facts and Figures, with P. Chakraborky and E. Dalla Mulle. Working Paper 1, International Development Policy. Geneva: IHEID. 14 December 2010.
• Les effets économiques de l’aide publique au développement en Suisse, avec M. Zarin-Nejadan, Institute of Economic Research Working papers, No. 09-01, University of Neuchâtel, 2009.