Walter Hecq was a faithful member, actively participating in many activities. He was often wearing his CoR-EU badge in our public meetings, proud to be part of the club. He was a kind colleague, very modest, with an open mind.

A co-director of the Centre for Economic and Social Studies on the Environment (CEESE), attached to the Centre Emile Bernheim of the Solvay Business School of Economics and Management at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, he has been involved in several research programmes at regional, Belgian and European level.

His first breakdown studies on energy and air pollutants date back to the early ‘70s, as well as its first cost-effectiveness analyses. It was in those years that I first met him in a working group we, environmental activists, had set up with some committed scientists. His work had allowed him to expand its expertise in estimating environmental externalities, taxes, tradable permits, flexible mechanisms, barriers to the implementation of environmental policies as well as the use of tools (cost-benefit analysis, multicriteria analysis, LCA,…).

Walter further extended his activities to include water-related issues, through its involvement in EU and other integrated projects that connect ecological and socio-economic dimensions of impacts in coastal zones and their ecosystem. He also managed projects on the evaluation of adaptation costs and measures related to the impacts of climate change and nitrate pollution on Belgian hydrographic basins.

Holding a Ph.D. in chemical sciences (ULB, 1974 with greatest distinction), Walter was Professor in Environmental Economics within the ULB’s postgraduate program in Environmental Management from 1983 to 2008, organizing seminars on economic and financial tools for environmental management and co-supervising Master theses and PhD dissertations on these topics.

He was awarded the Stas Prize from the Belgian Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine-Arts (1974). Since 2000 he was a referee for the international journal Ecological Economics and, in 2013, for the Journal of Environmental Management. As from 2001 he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Programme Primequal 2, Ministry of Ecology, sustainable development, and energy in France.

We will miss his interventions at our Aurelio Peccei Lectures and his gentle presence in our after-conference networking gatherings.

Mark DUBRULLE

President emeritus, The Club of Rome EU-Chapter