"When Nature's Forces Meet Degraded Environments": April 14, 2009

"When Nature's Forces Meet Degraded Environments" Panel Discussion: Wangari Maathai, Bruce Babbitt, and Thomas Friedman
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
2:00 PM
IFC Auditorium

PRESENTER
Wangari Maathai
Founder, The Greenbelt Movement & 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Ms. Maathai became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in
2004 for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace. Ms.
Maathai, who was born in Nyeri, Kenya, is the first woman in East and Central
Africa to earn a doctorate degree. She was active in the National Council of
Women of Kenya in 1976-87 and was its chairman in 1981-87. It was while she
served in the National Council of Women that she introduced the idea of planting
trees with the people in 1976 and continued to develop it into a broad-based,
grassroots organization, whose main focus is the planting of trees with women
groups in order to conserve the environment and improve their quality of life.
Through her work with the Green Belt Movement, she has assisted these groups in
planting more than 20 million trees on their farms, schools, and church
compounds. Her new book, The Challenge for Africa, will be released in April
2009.

DISCUSSANTS
Bruce Babbitt
Chairman of the Board, World Wildlife Fund
Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Governor of Arizona
Mr. Babbitt is Chairman of the Board at the World Wildlife Fund. He formerly
served as U.S. Secretary of the Interior from 1993 to 2001, leading the country
in landmark efforts, including the creation of a forest plan for the Pacific
Northwest, restoration of the Florida Everglades, passage of the California
Desert Protection Act, and legislation for the National Wildlife Refuge System.
Before President Clinton appointed him to national service, Mr. Babbitt served
as Governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987 and as Attorney General of the state
from 1975 to 1978. He wrote Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use
in America (2005), where he lays out a new vision of land use in America,
addressing a breadth of issues from protection of the Everglades to restoration
of tall grass prairie in Iowa to water development in Arizona, wolf restoration
in Yellowstone, grazing rights in the Southwest, and dam removal across the
country.

Thomas Friedman
Foreign Affairs Columnist, The New York Times
Mr. Friedman, a world-renowned author and journalist, joined The New York Times
in 1981. He won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, his third Pulitzer for
The New York Times. He has reported on the Middle East conflict, the end of the
cold war, U.S. domestic politics, foreign policy and international economics. He
has authored a number of books, including The Lexus and the Olive Tree:
Understanding Globalization (1999) and The World is Flat: A Brief History of the
Twenty-first Century (2005). His latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We
Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America (2008), brings a fresh
outlook to the crises of destabilizing climate change and rising competition for
energy.

MODERATOR
Apurva Sanghi
Senior Economist, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, World Bank
Mr. Sanghi is leading the ongoing World Bank?UN Assessment on the Economics of
Disaster Risk Reduction. This event is part of a distinguished seminar series
designed to contribute ideas by individuals such as Kenneth Arrow, Freeman
Dyson, Daniel Kahneman, Howard Kunreuther, William Nordhaus, Richard Posner,
Thomas Schelling, Martin Weitzman, and others on selected themes of the World
Bank?UN Assessment. The next speaker is Edward Prescott, the 2004 Economics
Nobel Laureate, on April 24. For more information about the Assessment, please
contact Mr. Sanghi at asanghi@worldbank.org.


About The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)
GFDRR is a partnership of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
(ISDR) system to support the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action
(HFA). The HFA, endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution
60/195, is the primary international agreement for disaster reduction. One
hundred sixty-eight (168) countries and multilateral organizations including the
World Bank and the United Nations (UN) system participated in the UN World
Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Hyogo, Japan in January 2005. The
principal strategic goal of the HFA is to effectively integrate, in a coherent
manner, disaster risk considerations into sustainable development policies,
planning, programming, and financing at all levels of government.
For more information, visit GFDRR.org.

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