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The Global Ecological Integrity Group - Committee Members are:
Westra has been the Principal Investigator for SSHRC (1992-1999) and for NATO'S Advanced Scientific Research Workshop (1999) and has organized numerous meetings and sessions in that capacity, in Europe, Australia, the U.S. and Canada. She has won several fellowships including the Harley D. Hallett Fellowship (to pursue a law degree), and is currently funded by SSHRC for her second doctorate in Jurisprudence (2001- 2004). She has been a consultant for the World Health Organization, the University of Peace (Costa Rica) and the Ontario Government, and she has successfully worked on Environmental Justice together with the lawyers for an African American community in Birmingham, AL. She is legal consultant for a Health Canada Grant (2004-2006 on Governance Instruments and Child Health:Informing Canadian Policy); and Post Doctoral Student on a SSHRC Grant on "Controlling Ecoviolence:Linking Consumption and the Loss of Ecological Integrity to Population, Health, Ecojustice and International Law (2004-2006; University of British Columbia, PI William Rees). Most of Westra's work is on environmental ethics, policy and law, with special emphasis on human rights and global justice. Westra has published more than 80 articles and chapters in books, and 19 books/monographs:
Westra has taught in both Canada and the U.S. from 1983 to 2000, and her last full time position was Endowed Chair of Environmental Studies at Sarah Lawrence College (NY).
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Home Address: Colin Soskolne was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. He spent the first 31 years of his life there before moving, in 1978, to North America to study for his PhD. Presently, he is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Alberta where he has been based since 1985. In 1999, he completed a sabbatical year as Visiting Scientist with the World Health Organization's European Centre for Environment and Health in Rome, Italy. He is continuing with his joint work from Rome on the role that public health might have in the face of reports about collapsing life support systems. His sabbatical year resulted in his jointly-produced WHO Discussion Document entitled: "Global Ecological Integrity and 'Sustainable Development': Cornerstones of Public Health". The link between degrading environmental conditions and human health was first explored through a SSHRC grant (1996-1999) on which Dr. Soskolne was a co-investigator with Dr. Westra. The dire conclusions of this research led to an international Workshop in December 1998, where the merits of our SSHRC interdisciplinary research were recognized. Following the Workshop, an official World Health Organization (WHO) Discussion Document was produced which placed this topic prominently on the international public health agenda. Further research, growing from the findings of the papers that followed, has provided new indicators of environmental degradation, new indicators of human health and well-being, and methods for linking the two. Paradigm shifts in both the scientific method and policy recommendations arising from this work will be essential for effective social action. The contribution of Dr. Soskolne et al's work is pioneering in this area. Dr. Soskolne obtained his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1982. He won the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) annual student prize in 1983 for his PhD thesis. Directly post-PhD, he was Director of the Epidemiology Research Unit of the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics at the University of Toronto. He moved to the University of Alberta in 1985, where he established and directed its epidemiology program and, from 1994, he built the graduate training program for the Department of Public Health Sciences. His major research contribution out of Alberta has been a follow-up study to that conducted for his PhD. These two pieces of work formed the basis for the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), in 1991, designating "occupational exposure to strong-inorganic-acid mists containing sulfuric acid" as a definitive human (Group 1) carcinogen, one of only 75 carcinogens-carcinogenic mixtures so recognized, and one of only two so designated in the absence of animal data. Between 1984 and 1996, Dr. Soskolne spearheaded efforts to bring the question of professional ethics into focus for epidemiologists worldwide. He has authored and/or co-authored and/or edited and/or co-edited over 250 published papers, chapters, books, proceedings, and, in 1997-1998, he served as a senior editor for the International Labour Office''s Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety. Dr. Soskolne hosted the 1996 annual conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) in Edmonton. In 1997, he hosted that of the Society for Epidemiologic Research. In recognition of Dr. Soskolne's contributions to the ISEE he was, in 1998, honoured with a distinguished service award by the ISEE, as well as the Edmonton Ambassador Award. Recently, in 2002, Dr. Soskolne became a member of the Council of Fellows of the Collegium Ramazzini. The Collegium includes a select group of Fellows, not to exceed 180 throughout the world, each of clear personal distinction and integrity, distinguished by their contributions to occupational and environmental health, its science and its impact on policy.
CONTACT INFORMATION: Ron Engel is Professor Emeritus at Meadville Lombard Theological School (University of Chicago affiliate) and Senior Research Consultant, The Center for Humans and Nature, with offices in New York and Chicago. He taught in the fields of religious ethics, theology and ministry at Meadville Lombard 1964-2000. He also served as Lecturer in Ethics and Society at the Divinity School, University of Chicago 1977-2000 and as a member of the Environmental Studies Faculty, The College, University of Chicago. Ron helped pioneer the new academic fields of environmental ethics, history, and theology/philosophy. Through his work with the Eco-justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches, and as co-director of the Program on Ecology, Justice, and Faith in the Chicago Association of Theological Schools funded by the MacArthur Foundation, he contributed to the movement for eco-justice within the ecumenical religious community. Ron became active in international work on behalf of global ethics in the course of research with the MAB program of UNESCO. In 1984 he founded the Ethics Working Group in IUCN (the World Conservation Union) and helped lead the consultative process that led to the writing of the Second World Conservation Strategy, Caring for the Earth. He was a consultant to the drafting of the "Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development," a core member of the international drafting committee for the Earth Charter, and co-chair of the Ethics Specialist Group of the Commission on Environmental Law for the World Conservation Union 2000-2005. Ron has been a strong advocate for public ministry in the Unitarian Universalist Association and in the ecumenical community and has written and lectured widely on the religious, ethical, and philosophical dimensions of the democratic faith in world history. With Neil Shadle in 1964 he co-founded the Unitarian Universalist Center for Urban Ministry and in 1966 the Neighborhood Commons, the first community-development corporation in Chicago which continues today as the largest black-owned housing cooperative on the northside of Chicago. Ron was one of several co-founders of Collegium: Association for Liberal Religious Studies, and in 1998 was recognized as its Distinguished Scholar. In addition to numerous essays in books and journals, Ron is the author of Sacred Sands: The Struggle for Community in the Indiana Dunes, which won several book awards, including the Meltzer National Book Award; editor of Voluntary Associations: Socio-cultural Analyses and Theological Interpretation; co-editor of Ethics of Environment and Development: Global Challenge, International Response; and co-author of Justice, Ecology, and Christian Faith: A Critical Guide to the Literature. He is a member of the editorial boards of American Journal of Philosophy and Theology, Environmental Conservation, and Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion. Ron holds an A. B. from Johns Hopkins, a B.D. (with highest distinction) from Meadville Lombard, and an M.A. and Ph.D. (with distinction) from the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. Ron and Joan Engel have been married for 48 years. Joan, who holds a Ph.D. in creative writing, has been a public school and university teacher, and is active in environmental organizations in northwest Indiana. They have two children, Mark Engel, a pediatric ophthamologist in Princeton, New Jersey, and Kirsten Engel, who teaches environmental law at the University of Arizona.
CONTACT INFORMATION: Klaus Bosselmann Professor Klaus Bosselmann, PhD, holds a Personal Chair in international and environmental law at the University of Auckland. He is the founding director of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental Law at the Faculty of law. Before coming to New Zealand in 1989, he was a legal practitioner and law professor in Berlin. He was a co-founder of Germany’s first Institute for Environmental Law in Bremen and a co-founder of the Greens in Germany (1980) and New Zealand (1990). Klaus has been a visiting professor at leading universities in the USA, Australia, Brazil, Italy, Sweden and Germany and was a consultant to various governments, NGO’s and international organizations including UNEP, the OECD and the European Union. He has been involved with the Earth Charter since its first conception at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, is a member of the IUCN (The World Conservation Union) Commission on Environmental Law and is co-chair of its Ethics Specialist Group.
Klaus has authored, edited or co-edited 18 books on political ecology, environmental law and sustainability governance including Im Namen der Natur (In the Name of Nature) (1992), When Two Worlds Collide: Society and Ecology (1995), Ökologische Grundrechte (Ecological Fundamental Rights) (1998), Environmental Justice and Market Mechanisms (1999), Umwelt und Gerechtigkeit (Environment and Justice) (2001), Environmental Law for a Sustainable Society (2002), Climate Change in New Zealand (2003), Repositioning Europe (2004), Global Environment: Problems and Policies (2007), Reconciling Human Existence and Ecological Integrity (forthcoming 2008) and The Principle of Sustainability: Transforming Law and Governance (forthcoming 2008). CONTACT INFORMATION:Klaus Bosselmann, PhD Professor of Law Faculty of Law University of Auckland Private Bag 92019 Auckland 1142 NEW ZEALAND Phone: 62-9-3737599 ext.87827 Fax: 62-9-3737659 Email: k.bosselmann@auckland.ac.nz Web: http://nzcel.auckland.ac.nz |