Jan Bakkes specializes in assessing and processing environmental information for decision-making. For example, he led the Getting into the Right Lane for 2050, a high-profile backcasting study into the key challenges facing the European Commission 2010-2014. For a period of 25 years, alternating with assignments abroad, he was senior project leader at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. He has worked with the OECD (Paris) and the World Bank (Washington DC) and was associated with UNEP (Nairobi) for a long period of time. These organizations he helped to kick-start broad-based assessments and outlooks for the future, such as the OECD Environmental Outlook. He fulfilled key roles in a range of science-policy interface projects for the European Commission and other EU organizations, such as Cost of Policy Inaction; and Beyond GDP; and EU Resource Efficiency in a Global Context.

Since 2010, Jan Bakkes has been assisting the China Council for International Collaboration on Environment and Development (CCICED) as a member of a number of high-level Task Forces and Policy Studies. Since his retirement from the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency at, end of 2014, Jan is a senior strategic advisor to the Director-general of PBL. Among other roles, Jan is vice-president of The Integrated Assessment Society (TIAS).