Senior Climate Economist
Agence Française de Développement (AFD)
Étienne Espagne is an economist specializing in climate and financial issues at the French Development Agency (AFD) and an affiliated researcher at CERDI. His research focuses on the macro-financial aspects of carbon mitigation policies and their impacts on climate and nature, particularly in the context of developing and emerging economies.
From 2022 to 2025 at the World Bank, he led two major programs on the development of analytical tools and capacity building for Ministries of Finance. Previously, he developed and contributed to the GEMMES program on modeling and assessing climate damages, as well as adaptation and mitigation strategies, notably in the context of Vietnam.
He holds a PhD in environmental economics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and is also a graduate of the École des Mines de Paris and the Paris School of Economics. He has published several articles in academic journals in the fields of climate change and energy economics, and regularly teaches at Paris 1 University, EHESS, École Polytechnique, and ENSTA ParisTech. He has previously worked at France Stratégie, CEPII, and CIRED.
Étienne Espagne is also the co-author, with Michel Aglietta, of the book For a Political Ecology Beyond the Capitalocene, published by Odile Jacob (2024).