Each year the Center for Sustainable Systems based at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, invites an internationally recognized expert to deliver the Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability at the University of Michigan. This annual Lecture Series focuses on critical issues of sustainability and honors Peter M. Wege for his many outstanding contributions to the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems and to the environmental field. This Lecture Series addresses important sustainability challenges facing society in the 21st century including: energy security and declining fossil resources, global climate change, freshwater scarcity, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss; and sustainable development strategies for mobility, buildings, and other complex systems for meeting human needs in both developed and developing countries.
THE IMPERATIVE OF CHANGE: Environmentalism in the 21st Century
Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor
Achim Steiner, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
About Achim Steiner
Since 2006, Mr. Steiner has served as the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The six priority areas of UNEP are:
Climate change
Resource efficiency
Disasters and conflicts
Environmental governance
Harmful substances and hazardous waste
Ecosystem management
Before joining UNEP, Mr. Steiner served as Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) from 2001 to 2006, and prior to that as Secretary General of the World Commission on Dams. His professional career has included assignments with governmental, non-governmental and international organizations in different parts of the world including India, Pakistan, Germany, Zimbabwe, United States, Vietnam, South Africa, Switzerland and Kenya. He worked both at the grassroots level as well as at the highest levels of international policy-making to address the interface between environmental sustainability, social equity and economic development.
Mr. Steiner, a German and Brazilian national, was born in Brazil in 1961. His educational background includes a BA from the University of Oxford and an MA from the University of London with specialization in development economics, regional planning, and international development and environmental policy. He also studied at the German Development Institute in Berlin as well as the Harvard Business School. He serves on a number of international advisory boards, including the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
About the Wege Lecture
Rooted in a tradition of critiquing past development choices, environmentalism has increasingly emerged as a science and empirically-based provider of analysis and risk assessment as to the environmental change phenomena occurring in our atmosphere and biosphere. The need for moving beyond questioning to providing answers and alternatives has meant that the ‘environmentalism of the 21st century’ must itself confront significant drivers of change. By drawing on ‘lessons learnt’ and exploring the implications of some of the most recent concepts shaping the environmental discourse of today – such as planetary boundaries, decoupling, the green economy, natural capital, tipping points and irreversible change, inter-generational equity and environmental rights – the lecture will reflect on some of the key reference points which will define the strategic directions for an evolving ‘environmentalism in the 21st century'. Change has become an imperative - the question is whether this environmentalism can move beyond the planetary perspective to incorporate the social and economic realities that motivate the choices people make about the future.
The Center for Sustainable Systems and School of Natural Resources and Environment present the Wege Lecture in collaboration with the following co-sponsors: College of Engineering, Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute, Institute for Social Research, Michigan Energy Institute, Office of the Provost, Office of the Vice President for Research, and School of Public Health.
Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor
Dr. Marie Lynn Miranda
Dr. Marie Lynn Miranda, Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment and Director of the Children's Environmental Health Lab, delivers the 11th Annual Peter M. Wege Lecture on
Sustainability. The lecture begins at 5:00 p.m. in the Rackham Auditorium, and
is followed by a public reception.
Marie Lynn Miranda became dean of the School of Natural Resources
and Environment, on January 1, 2012. Miranda was previously a
faculty member in the Nicholas School of the Environment, the
Integrated Toxicology and Environmental Health Program and the Global
Health Institute at Duke University. She also was a faculty member in
the Department of Pediatrics within Duke Medicine.
The Detroit
native has devoted much of her professional career to research directed
at improving the health status of disadvantaged populations,
particularly children. She is the founding director of the Children’s
Environmental Health Initiative, a research, education and outreach
program that fosters environments where all children can prosper. She
has held the director post since 1999. CEHI’s peer-reviewed work is
cited widely, including in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
current integrated science assessment on revisions to the national
ambient air quality standard for lead. CEHI also works closely with a
wide range of organizations and non-profits in addressing children’s
environmental health issues in the community. In 2008, CEHI won the
EPA’s Environmental Justice Achievement Award.
This event was sponsored by the Center for Sustainable Systems, School of Natural Resources and Environment, Office of the Provost, Office of the Vice President for Research, School of Public Health, Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, School of Social Work, and Michigan Radio - Environment Report.
Rackham Auditorium, 915 E. Washington St., Ann Arbor
Larry Brilliant, MPH, MD
Dr. Larry Brilliant, University of Michigan alumnus and president of the
Skoll Global Threats Fund, delivers the 10th Annual Peter M. Wege Lecture on
Sustainability. The lecture begins at 3:30 p.m. in the Rackham Auditorium, and
is followed by a public reception.
Dr. Brilliant joined Skoll Global Threats Fund after serving three years as a
Google VP and the first executive director of Google.org, the company’s
philanthropic arm. He is a medical doctor and MPH, board-certified in preventive
medicine. He lived and worked in India for 10 years and was one of a four-person
United Nations' team that led the successful World Health Organization smallpox
eradication program in India and South Asia. He later founded the Seva
Foundation, whose projects have given back sight to nearly 3 million people
worldwide through their work to eliminate preventable and curable blindness.
In 1985, he co-founded The Well, a pioneering digital community and he holds
a telecom systems patent. He was a professor of international policy and
epidemiology at the University of Michigan and has authored two books and dozens
of scientific articles on infectious diseases, blindness and international
health policy. He volunteered as a physician during several disasters, including
the Asian Tsunami in Sri Lanka and Indonesia and the Bihar Floods. After the
anthrax attacks in the United States in 2001, he volunteered as a first
responder for the Centers for Disease Control's bio-terrorism effort.
Dr. Brilliant chairs the National Bio-Surveillance Advisory Subcommittee,
created by Presidential directive, and is a member of the World Economic Forum
Global Advisory Council on Catastrophic Risks. He was elected to the Council on
Foreign Relations in 2008. He sits on the boards of the Skoll Foundation and
several other nonprofits.
Recent awards include Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People and top 20
Scientists and Thinkers (2008); UN Global Leadership Award (2008); TED Prize
(2006); Peacemaker Award (2005); International Public Health Hero (2004); and
two honorary doctorates. In 2009, The Final Inch, the documentary about polio
eradication which Dr. Brilliant inspired and was funded by Google.org, was
nominated for an Oscar.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Sustainable
Systems, the School of Natural Resources and Environment, Office of Vice President for Research, and the School of Public Health.
poster 10th Wege Lecture
This Lecture and the Q&A session may be viewed at:
Dr. John P. Holdren is Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Prior to joining the Obama administration, Dr. Holdren was Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as professor in Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Director of the independent, nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center. From 1973 to 1996, he was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded and co-led the interdisciplinary graduate-degree program in energy and resources.
Dr. Holdren holds advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics from MIT and Stanford and is highly regarded for his work on energy technology and policy, global climate change and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as foreign member of the Royal Society of London. A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, his awards include a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, the John Heinz Prize in Public Policy, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and the Volvo Environment Prize. He served from 1991 until 2005 as a member of the MacArthur Foundation’s board of trustees.
During the Clinton administration, Dr. Holdren served as a member of PCAST through both terms and in that capacity chaired studies requested by President Clinton on preventing theft of nuclear materials, disposition of surplus weapon plutonium, the prospects of fusion energy, U.S. energy R&D strategy and international cooperation on energy technology innovation. In December 1995, he gave the acceptance lecture for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists and public figures in which he held leadership positions from 1982 to 1997.
President Obama nominated Dr. Holdren in December 2008; the U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed the nomination March 19, 2009.
Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, thrice-former Prime Minister of Norway; recent Director-General of World Health Organization; Chair of UN World Commission on Environment and Development
Dr. Peter Newman, former Professor of City Policy and Director of Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia; now Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University
Dr. Rosina M. Bierbaum, Dean of School of Natural Resources & Environment
Panel response:
Carl P. Simon, Director, Center for Study of Complex Systems Stephen W. Director, Dean, College of Engineering Douglas S. Kelbaugh, Dean, A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning
Center for Sustainable Systems School of Natural Resources and Environment University of Michigan 3012 Dana Building 440 Church Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041 Phone: (734) 764-1412 css.info@umich.edu
