After studying political science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Grinevald went on to obtain a doctoral degree in epistemology and the history of science from Paris Nanterre University.[7][8][9]
Grinevald is best known for helping bring the idea of degrowth to prominence in 1970s France by translating into French (alongside Swiss law professor Ivo Rens (fr)) the works of its prominent theorist the ecological economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen.[12][13]
La Biosphère de l'Anthropocène: pétrole et climate, la double menace: repères transdisciplinaires, 1824–2007. (Geneva, Georg) (2007) 292p.
Demain la décroissance: Entropie - Écologie - Économie. By N. Georgescu-Roegen, ed. by J. Grinevald and I. Rens (Paris, P.-M. Favre Editions) (1979) 254p.
"The Anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives," co-authored with Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen and J. R. McNeill, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (2011).
"Was the Anthropocene anticipated," co-authored with Clive Hamilton, The Anthropocene Review (2015).
^Grinevald, Jacques (1987), Preiswerk, Yvonne; Vallet, Jacques (eds.), "Le développement de/dans la biosphère", L’homme inachevé : Un devenir à construire : les « possibles » de l’homme, Cahiers de l’IUED (in French), Genève: Graduate Institute Publications, pp. 29–44, ISBN978-2-940549-84-9, retrieved 2024-10-11