It was a visionary initiative, 20 years ago, to start a journal devoted to the intersection between environmental, resource and development economics. At the time, the ‘Brundtland Report’ was old enough to be recognized in policy discussions at many possible levels, IPCC had already published its first and second assessment reports, and the Kyoto Protocol was just shaping up. Over the first 20 years of EDE's life, interest in environment and development grew quickly if not explosively, both in research and in the (policy) field, as was witnessed by the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, ‘Green Growth’ initiatives (from 2008 onwards at UNEP, OECD and World Bank), and at Rio +20 in 2012; IPCC's fifth assessment report is expected this year.