The School of Ecology and Environment of Hainan University was founded in 1958 as the Ecology Research Laboratory of South China Tropical Agricultural University, which was approved as a master authorization site for ecology and environmental science and engineering in 1986 and 2004 respectively. It was approved as a doctoral authorization site for ecology in 2011 and as a post-doctoral program for ecology in 2020.

The school has formed an integrated talent training system of "undergraduate, postgraduate, doctoral and postdoctoral", with two undergraduate majors in ecology and environmental science, three postgraduate majors in ecology, environmental science and engineering, resource utilization and plant protection, and a doctoral major in ecology. The school also has a post-doctoral programme in ecology.

Currently, there are 916 undergraduates, more than 525 graduate students (including 111 doctoral students), and more than 10 international students. The school has "State Key Laboratory of Marine Resources Utilization in the South China Sea", "Hainan Tropical Ecological Environment Restoration Engineering Research Center", "Hainan Key Laboratory of Agricultural and Forestry Environmental Processes and Ecological Regulation", "Academician's Workstation in Hainan Province", "Hainan Provincial Academician's Team Innovation Center" and other scientific and educational platforms, with more than 5,000 m²of well-equipped laboratories for teaching and scientific research.

There are more than 130 faculty members in the school, with 93 full-time teachers, most of whom have experience of working and studying in famous foreign universities and research institutes.

The school is committed to promoting the construction of ecological civilization in tropical areas, and its main research fields include monitoring and assessment of ecological functions of tropical islands, pollution prevention and control and ecological restoration of land and sea, marine ecological environment and human health, utilization of solid waste resources and innovation, low-carbon energy, environmental functional materials, coastal blue carbon, and so on. It has long been cooperating with a number of domestic and foreign scientific research institutes and renowned universities for scientific research and joint cultivation of students.