INTRODUCING THE THEME CO-CHAIRS

Culture and Conservation (TCC)   

Elise Huffer, (France and USA). Elise Huffer is the Culture Adviser in the Human Development Programme of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community based in Noumea, New Caledonia. In this position she is responsible for the promotion of culture in the Pacific Islands region. This entails implementation of model laws for the protection of traditional knowledge, the promotion of measures to assist the development of the arts and crafts sector (including the protection and promotion of natural resources the arts and crafts sectors depend on) and the promotion of cultural epistemology. The SPC covers 22 Pacific Islands Countries and Territories and works closely with member countries, the civil society sector and other governmental and non-governmental regional and... Read more >>>

Kenneth Iain MacDonald, (Canada). Kenneth MacDonald teaches in the Department of Geography; the Program in International Development Studies; and the Program in Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has conducted field research, primarily in northern Pakistan and India, since 1986 in areas as diverse as glacial hydrology, agro-ecology, cultural analyses of risk, the politics of labour relations in the mountaineering industry, the cultural politics of conservation, and the production of cultural identity. These projects are held together by a desire to understand how communities and environments function in a world in which the lives of individuals are tied together through spatially extensive relations... Read more >>>

Aroha Te Pareake Mead, (New Zealand). Aroha Te Pareake Mead  is from the Ngati Awa and Ngati Porou tribes (Maori) of Aotearoa, New Zealand.  She has served two terms on the IUCN Council, 2000-2008 and one term as Co-Chair of the Theme on Culture & Conservation. She has been involved in indigenous cultural and intellectual property and environmental issues for over 30 years at tribal, national, Pacific regional and international levels. Currently a Senior Lecturer in Maori Business, Treaty of Waitangi, Maori Resource Management and Indigenous Cultural & Intellectual Property issues at Victoria University of Wellington's School of Management and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Law, Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia... Read more >>>

Environment, Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment (TEMTI) 

Peter Herman May, (Brazil and USA). Peter May is President of the International Society for Ecological Economics. He received his PhD in Resource Economics from Cornell University in 1986. Professor of the Department of Development, Agriculture and Society of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil since 1991, he is now also an Associate Director of Friends of the Earth-Brazilian Amazon. Author and editor of 12 books in the areas of ecological economics, agro ecology and environmental policy, including The Subsidy from Nature , Pricing the Planet and Natural Resource Valuation and Policy in Brazil (all published by Columbia UP),  He previously served as program officer at the Ford Foundation's Brazil office and as Forestry Officer... Read more >>>

Alejandro Nadal, (Mexico). Alejandro Nadal is a professor at El Colegio de México, where he directs  the research Program on Science, Technology and Development (1982-2007). He has a B.A. in Law from the National Autonomous University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Paris X (Nanterre). He has carried out research on macroeconomics, general equilibrium theory, technical change, nuclear weapons and sustainable resource management. He was responsible for the course on Comparative Economic Theory in the MA and PhD programs at the Center for Economic Studies, El Colegio de México (1982-2006). He was chair of the Collaborative Research Competition of the John D. and Caherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1991-1992), where he was also Distinguished... Read more >>>

Pavan Sukhdev, (India). Pavan Sukhdev is the Project Leader for UNEP's “Green Economy” initiative, a major UNEP project suite to demonstrate that the greening of economies is not a burden on growth but rather a new engine for growth, employment, and the reduction of persistent poverty. Pavan is also Study Leader for the G8+5 commissioned report on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (“TEEB”), a project he was appointed to lead in March 2008 by the EU Commission and Germany whilst still working full time at Deutsche Bank. TEEB's Interim Report was welcomed globally for its fresh economic outlook, showing the economic significance of the loss of nature's services, and connecting... Read more >>>

Environment and Security (TES)

Arzu Rana Deuba, (Nepal). Arzu Deuba is an M.P. in Nepal. She is Chair of the CEESP Theme on Environment & Security and is also a member of CEC. She graduated from St. Bedes College, Himalchal Pradesh University and Punjab University from where she not only got her Master's degree but also her Ph.D in organizational Psychology in 1990. The time after her graduation was a period of both realization and decision making for Deuba. It was in the late 1980s and the early 1990s that the importance of issues related to environment came to forefront in Nepal due to a number of developments that occurred during that period. The primary factor that gave momentum to the issue of... Read more >>>

Governance of Natural Resources, Equity & Rights (TGER)

Janis Bristol Alcorn, (USA). Janis Alcorn has over thirty years experience in conservation of biodiversity, international development, and research in tropical ecology and indigenous natural resource management systems, in Asia, Africa and the Americas. She received her Ph.D. in Botany, with a minor in Anthropology, from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982. She served on the faculty at Tulane University, as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in USAID, Fellow in the Governance program at World Resources Institute, and as Director for Asia & Pacific and the global Peoples, Forests and Reefs Program at the Biodiversity Support Program at WWF. She is currently an independent consultant... Read more >>>

Li Bo, (China). Li Bo is a member of the Bai ethnic group from North Western Yunnan (China) [the Bai are an indigenous minority of four million people]. President of Friends of Nature in Beijing –  the largest Chinese domestic environment NGO.  Li Bo holds a Master of Science Degree on Natural Resources Management from Cornell University and since 1994 has been working with non-governmental initiatives in South West China as farmers' rights activist, project officer, trainer, researcher and consultant on issues of livelihoods of mountain communities and biodiversity conservation.  Throughout these twelve years, he developed an enduring passion... Read more >>>

Indigenous & Local Communities, Equity & Livelihood Rights in Protected Areas (TILCEPA)

Nigel Crawhall, (South Africa). Nigel Crawhall holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics from the University of Cape Town. He is currently the Director of Secretariat for the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) based in Cape Town, South Africa. He is an occasional consultant to UNESCO's Culture Section, Division for Cultural Policies and Intercultural Dialogue. He is formerly the Cultural Programme Manager of the South African San Institute and the Director of the South African National Language Project. Nigel is cooperating with the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation on developing participatory mapping related training materials. Read more >>>

Jannie Lasimbang, (Malaysia). Jannie Lasimbang is Kadazan, one of 39 indigenous groups in Sabah, Malaysia. She is currently the Coordinator, Indigenous Knowledge and Biodiversity Programme at the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) and an Expert/Member on the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,of the UN Human Rights Council. Formerly she was the Secretary General of the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) Foundation based in Thailand. Jannie has been actively engaged in discussions of indigenous perspectives on... Read more >>>

Social & Environmental Accountability of the Private Sector (SEAPRISE)

Emmanuel Asuquo Obot, (Nigeria). Emmanuel Obot is the Executive Director of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation. He has a PhD (Botany) and his main areas of work and experience are as follows:  Biodiversity Conservation, Biodiversity Related Research, Project management, Sustainable Development, Forest Resources Policy, Forest Resources Management, Training in Natural Resources Management, Natural Resources Policy Advocacy, Community Based Conservation Management, Wetland Resources Management. He has worked, for twenty-eight years, on the design and implementation ... Read more >>>

María Pacheco, (Guatemala). Maria Pacheco is a biologist and an organic farmer. In 1993, María was approached by a group of villagers from a war-torn village who wanted her help in finding a way out of poverty. Ten farmers started the project, and with María's guidance and assistance, worked on reforestation and helped the land recover, eventually developing products such as wooden educational toys for sale, developing markets, and finding financial assistance. Then, in 2001, María was asked to help another group of villages in Jocotán near the border with Honduras, a community of Chortí Maya. (In prehispanic times, the Chortí Maya were the weavers of the rugs, the mats on which the kings sat ... Read more >>>

Clive Montgomery Wicks, (United Kingdom). Conservation and Development Consultant, Specialising in the Impact of Extractive Industries on the Environment. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management UK.  He has 48 years of experience of working in engineering, agriculture and on environmental issues.  He is Vice Chair of CEESP the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy and Co-Chair of SEAPRISE the... Read more >>>

Sustainable Livelihoods (TSL)

Taghi Farvar, (Iran). Taghi Farvar is the former Chair of CEESP (2000-2008). He has over 35 years of international professional experience in Africa, Asia, Latin America/Caribbean as well as Europe and North America as field worker, researcher, trainer, advisor, planner, manager, organiser and policy-maker for programmes and projects in integrated, sustainable and participatory management of natural resources; promotion of sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation; conflict resolution on natural resources... Read more >>>

Lucy Mulenkei, (Kenya). Lucy Mulenkei is a Maasai from Kenya who has began as a broadcast journalist in the government-run radio for 17 years on issues of the environment and development. Her programming focused on environment problems in rural Kenya and the East African Region. Lucy also runs the Indigenous Information Network (IIN) in Kenya, which publishes the popular grassroots publication, Nomadic News, focusing on environmental issues and successes affecting pastoralists and hunter-gatherers in Africa. IIN also disseminates environmental information related to the indigenous movement worldwide, and organizes... Read more >>>

Michel Pimbert, (France and UK). Dr. Michel Pimbert is currently Director of the Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and Livelihoods Program at the UK based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED www.iied.org). An agricultural ecologist by training, he previously worked at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India, the University François Rabelais de Tours in France, and the World Wide Fund for Nature in Switzerland. Dr. Pimbert has been a Board member of several international NGOs working on food sovereignty, sustainable agriculture and... Read more >>>