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Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2002 |
Speakers |
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Mr Lester R Brown President, Earth Policy Institute
Brown earned an MS in agricultural economics from the University of Maryland and an MPA from Harvard. In 1964, he became an adviser to Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman on foreign agricultural policy. In 1966, the Secretary appointed him Administrator of the department's International Agricultural Development Service. At the beginning of 1969, he left government to help establish the Overseas Development Council. In 1974, with support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Lester Brown founded the Worldwatch Institute, a research institute devoted to the analysis of global environmental issues. In 1984, Brown launched the State of the World reports. These annual assessments, translated into some 30 languages, have become the Bible of the global environmental movement. In 1988, Brown expanded Worldwatch's publications by launching World Watch, a bimonthly magazine featuring articles on the Institute's research. In 1991, the Institute inaugurated the Environmental Alert book series, with a book Brown co-authored entitled Saving the Planet: How to Shape an Environmentally Sustainable Global Economy. In 1992, he launched and co-authored a new annual: Vital Signs: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future. In 1995, he wrote Who Will Feed China?, which challenged the Chinese view of its food prospect and led to hundreds of conferences, seminars, and new assessments of China's food prospect. In 1999, he co-authored Beyond Malthus: Nineteen Dimensions of the Population Challenge. Among his earlier books are Man, Land and Food, World Without Borders, and Building a Sustainable Society. In May 2001, he founded Earth Policy Institute, publishing Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth in November. The purpose of the Earth Policy Institute is to provide a vision and road map for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy, and an ongoing assessment of progress in this global effort. Awarded 22 honorary degrees, he is also a MacArthur Fellow ($250,000), and the recipient of many prizes and awards, including the 1987 United Nations' Environment Prize, the 1989 World Wide Fund for Nature Gold Medal, and the 1994 Blue Planet Prize ($500,000) for his ‘exceptional contributions to solving global environmental problems.’ |
Lester R Brown has been described by the
Washington Post as ‘one of the world's most influential thinkers.’ Brown
started his career as a farmer, growing tomatoes in southern New Jersey with his younger
brother during high school and college. Shortly after earning a degree in agricultural
science from Rutgers University in 1955, he spent six months living in rural India. In
1959 Brown joined the US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service as an
international agricultural analyst.