Eric Lambin, a geographer and environmental scientist, divides his time between the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) and Stanford University, where he occupies the Ishiyama Provostial Professorship at the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Woods Institute for the Environment.

His research tries to better understand the causes and impacts of land use changes in different parts of the world. He was Chair of the international scientific project Land Use and Land Cover Change (LUCC) from 1999 to 2005. He was awarded the 2009 Francqui Prize, the 2014 Volvo Environment Prize, and the 2019 Blue Planet Prize. His current research tries to understand how globalization affects global land use, and how private and public regulations of land use interact to promote more sustainable land-use practices.