Professor Rafael Calderón Contreras is a B.Sc. in Geography and Territorial Planning from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico. M.Sc. in Environment and International Development and PH.D. in International Development from the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Mexico and England. He has extensive experience analyzing access to natural resources, particularly interested in the practices and processes that constitute social and natural relationships in a systemic context. His academic and research interests include access to natural resources, socio-territorial and environmental policy analysis, geographic information systems, risk, vulnerability, and resilience to climate change in Socio-ecological Systems and Ecosystem Services.

He is a full-time tenured professor of the Department of Social Sciences of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Cuajimalpa Campus, where he has developed research agendas on risk and evaluation of the resilience of metropolitan socio-ecological systems to the impacts of global climate change in the context of the Anthropocene. He served as coordinator of the Socioterritorial Studies Undergraduate programme, coordinator of the Laboratory of Cities in Socioecological Transition at the Cuajimalpa Campus of UAM. Member of the Scientific Committee of the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS). He belongs to the Academic Technical Committee of the Conacyt Network of Socioecological Systems and Sustainability, Lead Author of the Evaluation of Transformative Change of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and is a Member of the National System of Researchers Level I.