Kevin Hicks

Kevin Hicks has been a Research Associate at SEI York since 1997 and served as Deputy Director of the centre between 2014 and 2018. His current research interests cover integrated nitrogen management, air pollution impacts on terrestrial ecosystems, linkages between air pollution and climate change, and the transfer of scientific information to policy process at local to international scales.

He has organised 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 an author in the European Nitrogen Assessment and UNECE Guidance Document on Integrated Sustainable Nitrogen Management. He was the European Director of the International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) for two terms between 2016 and 2022 and co-chair of an activity assessing nitrogen fluxes in the environment under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded International Nitrogen Management Systems (INMS) project. He has also worked on projects for the UK government and agencies related to air pollution impacts and the development of the ecosystem services approach and was the project manager at the Directorate for NERC-funded Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Sustainability (BESS) programme from 2012 to 2017. He also co-ordinated the Towards a Comprehensive Approach to Nitrogen in the UK report for the WWF in 2022. He has over 30 peer-reviewed publications, over 50 reports and has contributed as editor and author to several books related to nitrogen pollution and ecosystem protection.

He also has extensive experience of international cooperation on air pollution issues in developing countries, especially working with the Malé Declaration in South Asia (with UNEP), on the development of APINA, the Air Pollution Information Network for Africa, and the Global Atmospheric Pollution Forum. He helped coordinate the 2011 UNEP/WMO Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone and is active in the follow-up work in developing countries under the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC), where he has coordinated development of national action planning for action on short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). In 2019, he coordinated the UNEP/Asia Pacific Clean Air Partnership (APCAP)/CCAC Air Pollution in Asia and the Pacific: Science-based Solutions report. He also coordinated the African Union Commission/UNEP/CCAC/SEI Integrated Assessment of Air Pollution and Climate Change for Sustainable Development in Africa. He sits on the Advisory Group of the Asian Co-benefits Partnership and the UKRI-funded South Asia Nitrogen Hub.