Ward, Barbara Mary, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

Ward, Barbara Mary, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth (1914-1981), British economist, environmentalist, and political scientist, whose work focused on developing countries and sustainable development. Born in Heworth, North Yorkshire, Ward was educated at the Sorbonne, in Paris, before studying philosophy, politics, and economics at Somerville College, Oxford University.

After graduating, Ward undertook further research on Austrian politics and economics, and in the 1930s became involved with the Sword of the Spirit organization, which united Catholics and Anglicans against Nazism and Anti-Semitism. Her publications for this organization, concerning international economic policies, led to her joining The Economist. By 1950 she was the magazine’s foreign editor, and had cultivated an active interest in the economic trends of developing countries. Following her marriage in 1950 to Australian UN administrator Sir Robert Jackson, she spent long periods living in West Africa, where she formulated a number of theories on practical approaches to aiding the economies of less well-off countries. The concept of sustainable development was born as Ward identified a clear relationship between the distribution of wealth and the conservation of natural resources and commodities.

Ward separated from her husband, and continued to travel the world giving lectures on international foreign policy. Lecture tours of Canada, Ghana, and India were followed by a move to the United States, and she worked closely with the Carnegie Foundation. Ward gained a reputation as an influential advisor in the field of ethical international policy making, and her views on practical ways for developed countries to provide economic and environmental aid to poorer nations were sought by a number of high-profile figures, including John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert McNamara. In 1968 she was appointed Schweitzer professor of international economic development at Columbia University, New York. She founded the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit organization promoting research into worldwide sustainable development. Ward retired in 1973, returning to England where she took up residence in Lodsworth, West Sussex.

Ward’s notable publications include The West at Bay (1948), Policy for the West (1951), The Interplay of East and West (1957), The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations (1962), Nationalism and Ideology (1966), Only One Earth (with French-born American bacteriologist René Dubos, 1972), and Progress for a Small Planet (1980). She became a Dame of the British Empire in 1974 and two years later was granted a life peerage.