international roundtable 2009

Global Environment: The Eleventh Hour?
October 8–10, 2009

Speakers

Robert Costanza is the Gordon and Lulie Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. The Gund Institute is a transdisciplinary research and teaching institute integrating the natural and social sciences to address environmental research, policy, and management issues at multiple scales. Dr. Costanza received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Architecture and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering Sciences (Systems Ecology and Economics), all from the University of Florida. Co-founder and past-president of the International Society for Ecological Economics, he was chief editor of the society's journal, Ecological Economics, from its inception in 1989 until 2002. On the editorial board of eight international academic journals, his awards include a Kellogg National Fellowship, the Society for Conservation Biology Distinguished Achievement Award, a Pew Scholarship in Conservation and the Environment, the Kenneth Boulding Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions in Ecological Economics, and an honorary doctorate in natural sciences from Stockholm University. Author or co-author of more than 400 scientific papers and 20 books, his article on “The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital” in Nature (1997), is the second most highly cited article in ecology/environment in the last decade. His specialties include transdisciplinary integration, systems ecology, ecological economics, landscape ecology, ecological modeling and design, energy analysis, environmental policy, social traps, and incentive structures.

Elizabeth Economy is the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her most recent book, The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (2004), won the 2005 International Convention on Asia Scholars Award for best social sciences book on Asia and was named in the Cambridge Top 50 Sustainability Books in 2008 and as one of the top ten books of 2004 by The Globalist. She co-edited China Joins the World: Progress and Prospects (Oksenberg, 1999) and The Internationalization of Environmental Protection (Schreurs, 1997). She has published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Asia Quarterly, Survival, and Current History. Her op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and International Herald Tribune. Her most recent piece, “The G-2 Mirage,” in Foreign Affairs (co-author Segal, May/June 2009), explores the complex layers of the U.S.-China relationship and the limitations to upgrading bilateral cooperation. A frequent guest on nationally broadcast radio and television programs, she has testified before Congress on numerous occasions, and regularly consults for U.S. government agencies and companies on Chinese environmental issues. She is currently working on a new book focusing on the implications of China's global quest for natural resources. Dr. Economy received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, her A.M. from Stanford University, and her B.A. from Swarthmore College. In 2008, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Vermont Law School.

Shawn Miller is Chair of the History Department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, having joined the Department in 1997. He earned his B.A. at Brigham Young as well. Dr. Miller received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History at Columbia University. His most recent book is An Environmental History of Latin America (2007), which won the 2008 Melville Book Prize for the best publication on environmental history, conferred by the Conference on Latin American History. Another work is Fruitless Trees: Portuguese Conservation and Brazil’s Colonial Timber (2000). Among his articles are “Stilt-root Subsistence: Colonial Mangrove Conservation and Brazil’s Free Poor,” in Hispanic American Historical Review (2003), and “Fuelwood in Colonial Brazil: the Economic and Social Consequences of Fuel Depletion for the Bahian Recôncavo, 1549–1820,” in Forest and Conservation History (1994). He has produced articles for encyclopedias that include “Rubber,” in The World History Encyclopedia (2008) and “Vulcanization” in The Encyclopedia of the History of Science (forthcoming). In recognition of meritorious service in teaching at Brigham Young, Dr. Miller received the Class of ’49 Young Faculty Award in 2006. He also serves as a manuscript reviewer for Cambridge University Press, University of New Mexico Press, Environmental History, Agricultural History, and the Luso-Brazilian Review. One of his current projects is entitled, “We Danced in the Street: An Environmental History of the Street, the Body, and the Car in Rio de Janeiro.”