Rethinking the industry-sustainable development challenge; How can industries be part of the solution to problems of sustainable development?

Ecotourism

Picking Up the Pieces: the CIS in Transit

This session is being organized by LEAD International and LEAD CIS to support the upcoming International Training Session titled: Disintegration or Integration: The Sustainability of Societies in Transition

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Mr. Andrey Vavilov was born in 1936 in Leningrad, USSR (now St.Petersburg).
He studied Oriental Languages and History at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and received his Diploma in 1960. He also graduated the Diplomatic Academy, Moscow in 1981. He holds a Ph.D. in History.
Since joining the USSR Foreign Service in 1960 he was stationed in Embassies in India, UK and Kenya. His long-term interest has been United Nations affairs and multilateral negotiations on arms control, security and the environment.
In 1987 he was appointed Chief of the newly established Department of the Environment and Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the Foreign Ministry. His responsibilities included Interagency and inter-Republican coordination, national strategy development, Parliamentary and NGO liaison. In 1990 he led the USSR Delegation at the Preparatory Committee for the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).
He was invited to join the UNCED Secretariat the same year as Head of External Relations, liasing with Geneva Permanent Missions, the UN agencies, Intergovernmental Organizations, NGOs and media, and serving as focal point for Eastern Europe and the CIS. He also chaired the UNCED working party on environmental education, awareness and training for Agenda 21 (Chapter 36) and coordinated the special event at the 1992 Rio Summit on “Education and Ethics”.
Following UNCED, he worked for the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on the Convention to Combat Desertification, until its completion in 1994.
In 1995 he was appointed Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to UNEP and Habitat, and was stationed in Nairobi for five years (he describes them as “his most satisfying”).
He received the Meritorious Service Award from the President of the Russian Federation in 2000, to mark a long and distinguished career in diplomacy.
He is currently Senior Researcher at the Diplomatic Academy, Moscow.
His writings have focussed on security and sustainable development issues. His book “The Environmental Consequences of the Arms Race” outlined the negotiating history of the Environmental Modification Convention. He has also lectured at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, at UNITAR orientation seminars for Geneva Permanent Missions, the European University and the Peace Research Institute (Oslo).
His wife Marianna Vavilova is Associate Professor in language teaching and a playwright. They have a son and are living in Moscow.

August 21, 2001

Globalization and its impact on local communities

This session is being organized by LEAD India to support the National Training Session for Cohort 9 taking place in New Delhi and Ladakh from the 25th of June 2001 till the 7th of July 2001. The theme of the session is Sustainable Development: A Challenge for Ecological, Economic, Political and Socio-Cultural Management – A Case Study of Ladakh .

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Helena Norberg-Hodge is a leading analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures around the world. A linguist by training, she was educated in Sweden, Germany, England and the United States, and speaks seven languages. She has lectured and taught extensively around the world—from the Smithsonian Institution to Harvard and Oxford universities.

Ms. Norberg-Hodge is founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), which runs programs on four continents aimed at strengthening ecological diversity and community, with a particular emphasis on local food and farming. She also directs the Ladakh Project, renowned for its groundbreaking work in sustainable development on the Tibetan plateau.

She is the author of numerous works, including the inspirational classic, Ancient Futures, which— together with an award-winning film of the same title—has been translated into more than 30 languages by grassroots groups worldwide. She is co-founder of the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Eco-village Network, and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, or “Alternative Nobel Prize”.

June 26, 2001 - 3PM London Time

Kerala’s Development Experience - An Overview

This session is being organized by LEAD India in order to prepare LEAD India Cohort 8 Associates for the upcoming session: Lessons from Field Studies in Lakshadweep and Kerala . For background reading material visit LEAD India's web site. Others are welcome to join.

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Professor M A Oommen, currently Senior Fellow, Indian Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi is an economist of repute with a rich collection of professional papers and twenty books to his credit. A postdoctoral scholar of the Rockefeller Foundation and a Visiting Fellow at the Yale University, he was also a Senior Fulbrighter. He has taught in the Universities of Kerala, Calicut and Botswana over a span of more than three decades, and has occupied several important positions, besides serving several important commissions and committees in India and abroad.

His books include Land Reforms and Socio-Economic Change, Kerala Economy. Economics of Cinema Issues in the Teaching of Economics in Indian Universities, Panchayats and their Finance, and Rethinking Development: Kerala’s Development Experience (in two volumes).

Event's Date: April 26, 2001 from 11:30AM to 13:30PM London Time

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This live event was be presented by Dr. Najma Siddiqi. Dr. Siddiqi is a Senior Social Development and Learning Specialist in the Social Development Department of The World Bank. She leads the Skills Enhancement and Team Building Program, with a special component on building effective partnerships with NGOs and other organizations of civil society. She joined the Bank in 1996 and has worked in operations, policy development, and capacity enhancement within and outside the Bank in global and regional initiatives. She represents Multilateral agencies and IFIs on the Steering Committee of the International Forum on Capacity Building for NGOs, and leads a program of learning and training for Bank staff, client governments, civil society, and other actors in development and poverty reduction policies and programs at the national and regional level.

Ms. Siddiqi brings to the Bank 25 years of experience in Scandinavian and Asian countries where she worked with governments as a psychologist, training specialist & adviser on migration, employment, community forestry, and issues of human resources and natural resource management. She has worked with international development agencies and the non-government sector as staff development, management, gender, rural support, community mobilization, and impact evaluation specialist.

Ms. Siddiqi is one of the speakers for the Pakistan 2001 - LEAD International Training Session

Event's Date: February 1, 2001 from 13:00 to 14:30PM London Time

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Dr. Gordon Smith is Director of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria, a centre which focuses on global governance. In addition, he is a Fellow at the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues at the University of British Columbia and Chairman of the Board of the International Development Research Centre. Dr. Smith is on a large number of boards of other institutions. When he left the Canadian Government in 1997, he was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Personal Representative for G7/G8 Summits. He has been Ambassador to NATO and the EU. Dr. Smith has served as Secretary to the Cabinet for Federal-Provincial Relations, Secretary of the Ministry of State for Social Development and as Associate Secretary to the Cabinet where his work included directing the Machinery of Government secretariat.

Event's Date: July 24, 2000 from 11:30AM to 13:00PM New York Time

International Institutions for Environment and Development

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Lee Kimball began working as an NGO (non-governmental organization) in the UN System in 1975 - on the negotiation of the Law of the Sea Convention - continuing for 15 years. She worked as an NGO in the Antarctic Treaty System - a non-UN treaty process -- for 10 years: from 1981-1991. Where she was one of a handful of NGOs that helped open up the Ant. Treaty System to participation by a wider number of States, create the means for NGOs to take part as observers, and substantially increase the transparency and accountability of that System. For the last 10 years she has concentrated on relationships among intergovernmental organizations and conventions related to Environment & Development. She attributes her interest and knowledge in this area to 25 years of dealing with the dozens of IGOs (inter-governmental organization) and conventions in the oceans field.

Event's Date: June 6, 2000 from 10:00AM to 11:30AM New York Time

The Latest Word on Limits to Growth

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Dennis Meadows has devoted his professional life to understanding the causes and consequences of long-term behavior patterns in social, economic, and environmental systems. He is especially concerned with communicating that knowledge in a way that is understandable and useful to others.

He has a BA in Chemistry from Carleton College, a PhD in Management from MIT, and three honorary doctorates from European universities for his contributions to environmental protection and educational technology.

Since 1988, he has been Director at the University of New Hampshire of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research. He is past President of the International System Dynamics Society and the International Simulation and Games Association. He has authored or co-authored eight books; they have been translated into 35 languages and one was awarded the German Peace Prize. The most widely known of his publications is The Limits to Growth, voted among the ten most important environmental texts of this century.

He oversees the Browne Center a training facility where nearly 9000 people come every year to learn skills required for participation in high-performance teams. He has developed a variety of computer-assisted role-playing simulations that are used in universities and government training programs around the world. He has lectured or consulted in over 30 nations.

Presently he serves as a senior academic advisor to the LEAD Program.

Event's Date: April 26, 2000 from 10:00AM to 11:30AM New York Time

Perplexed by Sustainability Mysteries.
Can the eco-footprint give us some clues??
(Can our WEAK hearts commit to STRONG sustainability?)

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Mathis Wackernagel directs the True Sustainability program at Redefining Progress, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute. He has worked on sustainability issues for organizations in France, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Switzerland, and the United States and has lectured for community groups, NGOs, and at more than 70 universities in 17 countries. He has authored or contributed to over two dozen academic articles and co-authored various books on sustainability and the question of embracing limits and developing indicators to assess sustainability, including Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. After earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, he completed his Ph.D. in community and regional planning at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. It was there that he developed, under Professor William Rees, the “Ecological Footprint” concept as his doctoral dissertation, now a widely used measure of sustainability. Mathis also directs the Centre for Sustainability Studies at Anáhuac University of Xalapa, Mexico.

Event's Date:March 8, 2000 from 10:30AM to 12PM New York Time

Global Public Goods
International Cooperation in the 21st Century

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Event's Date:February 22, 2000 from 10:30AM to 12PM New York Time

Can we feed ourselves?

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Recognising the need for an Evergreen Revolution to extend the benefits of development to the most marginalised, Dr. M.S. Swaminathan established the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in 1988 as a non-profit, scientific trust. The Foundation is committed to a mission of harnessing science and technology for environmentally sustainable and socially equitable development. MSSRF's research, training, communication, extension and networking programmes, in the fields of agriculture and rural development, seek to link ecological security to livelihood security in a mutually reinforcing manner.

Dr. M.S. Swaminathan has worked for the past 45 years with scientists and policy makers on a wide range of problems in basic and applied plant genetics as well as in agricultural research and development. As Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operation, he developed a strong food security system in India. As one of the leaders of the Green Revolution in India, he now recognises the need for an Evergreen Revolution to extend the benefits of development to the most marginalised. His work in crop genetics and sustainable agricultural development in India and the Third World earned him the first World Food Prize in 1987, the Tyler and Honda Prizes in 1991 and the UNEP Sasakawa Award in 1994.

Dr. Swaminathan served as Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (1972-78) and of the International Rice Research Institute (1982-88). He served as Independent Chairman of the FAO Council (1981-85) and as the President of International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1984-1990). He was the president of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences of India and is member of various academies including the Royal Society of London, US National Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy, Italian, and Chinese Academies.

Event's Date:October 11 from 10:30AM to 12:00PM New York time

Agriculture and Food Security related web sites

Fellows Talk

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Event's Date:October 1 from 8:30AM to 12PM New York Time

Welcome and Introduction to LEAD

Event's Date: August 31 from 8:30AM to 12PM