Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project. Barlow serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a councilor with the Hamburg- based World Future Council. Barlow is the recipient of six honorary doctorates, the 2005/2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, and the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”) for her work in global water justice. She is also the best-selling author or co-author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water and the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
Website: www.canadians.org/about/Maude_Barlow/
Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute he founded in 1976, was born in 1936 on a farm near Topeka, Kansas. The Land Institute has worked for more than 20 years on issues in agriculture, with the primary aim of developing an agricultural system with the ecological stability of a prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops. One of the Institute’s major projects is the development of perennial grains.
Dr. Jackson’s writings include both books and research papers. His most recent work, The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge, co-edited with William Vitek, was released by University of Kentucky Press in 2008 and will be available at the Conference.
The work of The Land Institute has been covered extensively in the popular press including The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, National Geographic, Time Magazine, The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, and National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” Life Magazine named Wes Jackson as one of the “100 most important Americans of the 20th century.” In the November 2005 issue, Smithsonian Magazine named Jackson one of “35 Who Made a Difference.”
Wes Jackson is a recipient of the Pew Conservation Scholars Award (1990), a MacArthur Fellowship (1992), and Right Livelihood Award (Stockholm), known as “Alternative Nobel Prize” (2000). He has received four honorary doctorates and in 2007, received the University of Kansas Distinguished Service Award.
Website: www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v
Roger Doiron is an advocate for local and regional food systems. He is founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI), a nonprofit network of more than 6500 individuals from 100 countries who take a hands-on approach to “relocalizing” food supplies. In 2007, Doiron was chosen as a Food and Society Policy Fellow.
In addition to his work for KGI, Doiron is a free-lance writer and public speaker who specializes in gardening and sustainable food systems. His articles on food, agriculture and gardening have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Organic Gardening magazine, Mother Earth News, and Saveur. Doiron’s work has been featured in many publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune.
Although grounded in his own local food system, Doiron remains interested in and connected to international food issues. Doiron first became involved in food issues in Europe as head of Friends of the Earth’s European office in Brussels at the height of the Europe’s mad cow furor of the 1990s.
Doiron is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Holy Cross College and holds a Master of International Relations degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He lives on the coast of Maine with his three Belgo-American sons Francois, Maxim, and Sebastian, and his wife Jacqueline. The Doiron family enjoys cooking, gardening and eating.
Website: www.kitchengardeners.org/2005/10/about_roger_doiron.html
In 2005 Fine moved to an obscure valley in Southern New Mexico to write Farewell, My Subaru, a book about his effort to live without fossil fuels and find salvation in the process. From solar panels to goat husbandry to driving a veggie-fueled oil truck, Fine explores whether an American can live a green life without being electrocuted or overwhelmed by contradiction. Farewell, My Subaru was released by Random House in March, 2008.
As a young freelancer, Fine reported for The Washington Post, Salon, U.S. News and World Report, Sierra, Wired, Outside and other publications from little-visited jungle war zones like Burma, Rwanda, Laos, Guatemala and Tajikistan. He became a world-class adventure writer and investigative journalist, writing culturally-insightful and funny dispatches. One of these, about democracy efforts in Burma, was read into the Congressional Record.
Fine is a regular contributor of adventure and investigative features to National Public Radio.
Website: www.dougfine.com/the-premise/
David S. Gutzler is Professor of Meteorology and Climatology in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico. He teaches courses on basic principles of weather and climate, and conducts research on climate change and predictability. Much of Gutzler’s research has the overarching goal of improving the skill and usefulness of climate predictions on seasonal and longer time scales. He currently works on projects aimed at improving modeling and predictions of the North American summer monsoon, analyzing atmospheric moisture transport paths onto the North American continent, understanding land-atmosphere interactions and the dynamics of drought, and examining the impacts of climate variability and change on the Southwest.
Website: epswww.unm.edu/facstaff/gutzler/home.htm
Toby Hemenway is the author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. For the past six years, his book has been the world’s best-selling book on permaculture, a design approach based on ecology for creating sustainable landscapes, homes, communities, and workplaces. He is also an adjunct professor in the School of Graduate Education at Portland State University and Scholar in Residence at Pacific University. Hemenway teaches, consults, and lectures on permaculture and ecological design throughout the United States and other countries. His articles have appeared in magazines such as Whole Earth Review, Natural Home, and Kitchen Gardener.
From 1999 to 2004, Hemenway was the editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture. One of his current projects is working with the Learning Gardens Laboratory, a 12-acre educational site that links Portland, Oregon public school students, teacher-training graduate students, and community members in hands-on learning focused on food, nutrition, food culture, and agriculture. He is also a member of ReCode Portland, a citizens’ initiative to eliminate code obstructions to sustainable technologies such as graywater re-use and natural building.
Website: www.patternliteracy.com/bio.html
Basia Irland, Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico Department of Art and Art History, creates international water projects. Nine of those projects are featured in Water Library (University of New Mexico Press, 2007). These projects have been created over the last thirty years in Africa, Canada, Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Through her work, Irland offers a creative understanding of water, while examining how communities of people, plants, and animals rely on this vital element.
With a humanistic and artistic approach anchored in science, Water Library is a tribute to ecology expressed through art. Irland’s art projects explore practical ways to conserve water through rain harvesting systems, how to foster dialogue and cooperation along the entire length of a river, and the dangerous impact of waterborne diseases on human health. By offering thought-provoking information, presented poetically, Water Library inspires in readers a broader appreciation of water’s importance in their everyday lives.
Irland is the recipient of more than forty grants, including a Senior Fulbright Research Award for Southeast Asia, a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship Grant, and a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Grant. She has had 30 solo international exhibitions, and participated in hundreds of group shows. Essays about Irland’s work have been included in books published in Germany, Switzerland, England, and the U.S. Her art is featured in collections around the world.
Irland has produced and filmed seven video documentaries, including: A Gathering of Waters: The Rio Grande, Source to Sea Bilharzia Blues; An artist’s view of Schistosomiasis in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Nepal Sacred Sewer; The Bagmati River, Nepal Waterelephant.
Website: www.greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-80.html
Brad Lancaster is a permaculture teacher, designer, consultant and co-founder of Desert Harvesters. Brad has taught programs for the ECOSA Institute, Columbia University, University of Arizona, Prescott College, Audubon Expeditions, City of Asheville, North Carolina and many others. He has helped design integrated water harvesting and permaculture systems for homeowners and gardeners.
Lancaster is the author of the award-winning Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands, Volume 1: Guiding Principles to Welcome Rain Into Your Life and Landscape and Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, Volume 2: Water-Harvesting Earthworks (www.HarvestingRainwater.com). Lancaster lives on an eighth of an acre in downtown Tucson, Arizona, where annual rainfall is less than 12 inches. While most rainwater typically ends up in storm drains, Brad has harvested more than 100,000 gallons of rainwater a year. Rather than divert that water to the stormdrain, he directs it to living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees; abundant gardens; and a thriving, flood-controlling landscape that includes habitat for wildlife.
Website: www.harvestingrainwater.com
Andy Lipkis is a visionary leader who began planting trees to rehabilitate smog and fire damaged land around Los Angeles when he was 15 years old. He founded TreePeople in 1973 at age 18, and continues to serve as its President. TreePeople’s work in LA inspires people to take personal responsibility for the urban forest. They educate, train, and support residents in planting and caring for trees that improve their own neighborhoods. In 2003, the United Nations World Forestry Organization recognized TreePeople as a global model for large cities.
Lipkis’ personal mission is to inspire urban dwellers to take immediate, effective action to heal their environments. Over the past 15 years, Andy has spearheaded the use of Functioning Community Forests to engage people in restoring the forest’s natural ecosystem functions urban land by planting and caring for trees and using tree-mimicking technologies to capture, clean, and store rainwater and recycle greenwaste. In the face of climate change, Functioning Community Forests offer critical protection against droughts and floods, reduce carbon emissions, water and air pollution, prevent diseases such as skin cancer and asthma, and provide sustainable jobs.
In his long history as an environmental leader, Lipkis has inspired the creation of the International Citizen Forestry movement, successfully led the planting of one million trees in Los Angeles before the 1984 Summer Olympics, coordinated numerous disaster relief efforts during flood and fire, co-authored the “bible” of citizen forestry, The Simple Act of Planting a Tree, and shaped L.A.’s integrated watershed management policies. Lipkis’was named to the U.N. Environment Programme’s Global 500 Roll of Honour (with wife Kate). In 2007, Andy was named a Durfee Fellow and received the Boeing Crystal Vision Award.
Website: www.treepeople.org
Deborah Madison is founding chef of San Francisco’s Greens restaurant. She has long been committed to finding local and sustainable ways of teaching people to feed themselves. Madison cooks, writes, teaches and helps chefs, home cooks, and young people make that connection for themselves. So, for example, Greens, which opened in l979, was one of the first restaurants to make foods from local farms and gardens the driving force behind its menu. Madison collaborated with Green Gulch Farm, to introduce new foods to the dining public, such as Arugula, fingerling potatoes, the many colorful varieties of lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes, and other edibles that are now a familiar part of the culinary landscape.
Madison is the author of nine cookbooks, several of which have garnered national awards. Her 2002 publication Local Flavors, Cooking and Eating from Americas Farmers’ Markets explores the joys and benefits of shopping, cooking, and eating locally. Madison has been a contributor to magazines such as Gourmet, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, Organic Gardening, Garden Design, Saveur, and Orion, as well as numerous blogs. A long-time member of Slow Foods, Madison has served on Slow Food’s Ark and Presidia Committee, which endeavors to list and preserve endangered foods of high quality and historical significance. Currently she is a board member of The Foundation for Biodiversity in Italy, The Seed Savers Exchange in the Untied States and the Southwest Grasslands Livestock Association.
Website: www.deborahmadison.com
Prof Andrew Parker is a Research Leader at the Natural History Museum, London, and at Green College, Oxford University. He has been named by The Times (UK) as one of the three most important young scientists in the world for his work investigating and answering the great riddle of the Cambrian explosion. Parker is a leading proponent of biomimetics—applying designs from nature to solve problems in engineering, materials science, medicine, and other fields, including water conservation.
Parker was highlighted in the feature article in April 2008 National Geographic – “Biomimetics – Design By Nature” – an article describing water gathering and water conservation techniques discovered in Nambian beetles, a kind of reptile that can drink with its leg.
Andrew Parker was one of the eight “Scientists for the New Century” selected by The Royal Institution (London) and The Times/Novartis in 2000. He is currently writing a computer programme for The Prince of Wales to help business reduce their environmental footprint (at minimal financial loss), which includes saving water.
Website: green.ox.ac.uk/academic/warden-fellows/research-fellows/andrew-parker.html
Judith Phillips is award winning landscape designer, faculty member of UNM Landscape Architecture Department, plant consultant and propagator at a native plant farm and author of design and native plant books.
As owner of Judith Phillips Design Oasis, she specializes in design and consulting in ecosystem based landscapes. Design projects include 1000+ residential gardens and public projects such as the Visitor’s Center Habitat Garden at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, the Community Xeriscape Demonstration Garden for the Valley Improvement Association at Belen, NM, and the xeric renovation of the landscape for the Santa Fe office of the New Mexico State Land Office using primarily native New Mexico plants in related ecosystem groupings. As a consulting member of a design team, projects include the Rio Grande Corridor Improvements, the outdoor classroom at Las Padillas Elementary School, the High Desert Management Plan, the Japanese Garden at the Rio Grande Botanic Gardens, and the desert trail at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. 1980 to present.
She is also on the faculty in the Landscape Architecture Department of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, University of New Mexico, Main Campus. She has taught a graduate level plants class focusing on native and climate adapted plants for high desert landscapes, planning and landscape architecture, 2002 to present.
Consultant/propagator at Bernardo Beach Native Plant Farm, Veguita, NM, an artisan nursery specializing in xeric landscape ornamentals. Research and development of new plant introductions is a priority. Current production includes 220 plant species: 75% southwestern natives, 25% adaptive xeric plants from the Mediterranean, South Africa and Asia. 1980 to present.
Website: bernardobeachnatives.com
Paul Stamets has written six mushroom-related books. Several of his books are used as textbooks by the gourmet and medicinal mushroom industries around the world. Stamets is author of many scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals (The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms; Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM, Oxford University Press; Herbalgram, and others).
Paul will link the water-food topic by discussing how humans are contributing to climate change through deforestation and population increases. As once forested lands and grasslands progress to desertification, water resources become more stressed. As all landscapes are infused with fungal mycelium, and since mycelium’s sponge-like properties hold and retain moisture, helping reflourishment and ecological recovery, knowing how use mycelium’s powerful properties for water transport and sequestration can help mitigate ecological damage from droughts, and diseases.
Stamets has received several environmental awards. He is an advisor to the Program of Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Medical School, Tucson; on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, and was appointed to the G.A.P./G.M.P. Board of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia. Stamets is the supplier and co-investigator of the first two NIH funded clinical studies using medicinal mushrooms in the United States. His strain collection is extensive and unique, with many of the strains coming from old growth forests. He is involved in several medical research trials.
Stamets received the 1998 “Bioneers Award” from The Collective Heritage Institute, and the 1999 “Founder of a New Northwest Award” from the Pacific Rim Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils. In 2008, Stamets received the National Geographic Adventure Magazine’s Green-O-vator award and the Argosy Foundation’s E- chievement award.
Stamets is married to C. Dusty Yao, a plant fanatic, who shares a passion for fungi and a love of the old growth forests. Both believe that people properly armed with fungal wisdom can help save the planet. Visit www.fungi.com for more information.
Website: fungi.com/front/stamets/index.html
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