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Conference Speakers
Dr. Faisal Moola, David Suzuki Foundation
Director of Science
604-732-4228 x261
Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation. He has completed several degrees in forest ecology and conservation biology, most recently a PhD from Dalhousie University. Faisal maintains an active research program in forest biodiversity with a particular interest in the conservation of understory plants in boreal and boreal mixed wood forests in Canada. Faisal has also published a number of papers on endangered species policy in Canada on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation. He has had a long history of involvement in the environmental movement in Canada. Most recently, Faisal participated on the “blue-ribbon” science panel (the Coast Information Team) that advised land use planning tables on protected areas and ecosystem-based forestry in the Great Bear Rainforest. Faisal lives on the Sunshine Coast, B.C., with his wife, Sara Wilson, and their two young children.
Dr. Jing M. Chen, University of Toronto
Professor, Department of Geography
416.978.7085
Research Interests: Biogeochemical Cycle Modeling, Remote Sensing, Climate Change, Micrometeorology, Hydrology, Geographic Information Systems
Dr. Chen holds a Ph.D., in Meteorology from Reading University, UK. His professional memberships include Fellow of Royal Society of Canada 2006 and Senior Canada Research Chair.
Sean C. Thomas, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto
Canada Research Chair, Forests and Environmental Change
416.978.1044
Sean Thomas (PhD Harvard, 1993) has been preoccupied with the comparative biology of trees and forest responses to the intentional and accidental impacts of humans for some 25 years. Sean is currently appointed as Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Forests and Environmental Change at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Forestry. His research focuses on how trees and forests respond to human impacts - intentional impacts through forest management, and unintentional impacts via local, regional, and global changes in the environment. This research links an understanding of the functional ecology and ecophysiology of trees ("how trees work") to patterns of growth, mortality, recruitment, reproduction, at the population scale, to patterns community composition, and to ecosystem processes, in particular carbon flux ("how forests work"). Current and former project also address forest policy, particularly as pertains to tropical forest conservation and forest carbon sequestration. The Thomas lab is currently involved in projects in temperate and boreal forests in Canada, and tropical forests at a variety of sites (Dominica, Malaysia, and Dem. Rep. Congo). Web: http://larva.forestry.utoronto.ca/thomas/ThomasMain.htm
Peter Lee, Global Forest Watch Canada
780-451-9260
Peter Lee is the Executive Director of Global Forest Watch Canada. In addition to his current position, Peter has conservation and environmental experience in government, academia, private industry and not-for-profit organizations. His career has focused on improving sustainable land management in Alberta and nationally, throughout Canada. Peter completed his MSc. at the University of Alberta with a thesis topic of: Ecology of competition between elk and cattle. Peter’s professional memberships include the roles of Director of Environmental Law Centre of Alberta, Director of Nature Canada, and Director of Castle Crown Wilderness Coalition.
Recent Publications:
Lee P, JD Gysbers and Z Stanojevic 2006. Canada’s Remaining forest Landscape Fragments (A Global Forest Watch Canada Report). Edmonton, Alberta: Global Forest Watch Canada. 75 pp. To be released March 2006. http://www.globalforestwatch.ca
Stanojevic Z, Lee P, and JD Gysbers. 2006. Recent Anthropogenic Changes within the Northern Boreal, Southern Taiga, and Hudson Plains Ecozones of Québec (A Global Forest Watch Canada Report). Edmonton, Alberta: Global Forest Watch Canada. 63 pp. To be released February 2006. http://www.globalforestwatch.ca
Lee, P. 2005. Boreal Canada: State of the Ecosystem, State of Industry,
Emerging Issues and Projections. Report to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
Dr. Mark A. Cochrane, South Dakota State University
Senior Scientist, Professor
605-688-5353
Research Interests: Fire Ecology, Land Cover Change, Land Cover and Land Use Interactions, Dynamic Systems
Dr. Mark Cochrane of SDSU conducts interdisciplinary work that combines remote sensing, ecology and other fields of study to provide a landscape perspective of the dynamic processes involved in land-cover change. He is an expert on wildfire in tropical ecosystems, documenting the characteristics, behavior and severe effects of fire in tropical forests that are inherent to current systems of human land-use. His research focuses on understanding spatial patterns, interactions and synergisms between the multiple physical and biological factors that affect ecosystems. Recently published work emphasizes the human dimensions of land-cover change and the potential for sustainable development, and has been instrumental in the Brazilian government's recent program to expand its national forest system in the Amazon to 50 million hectares. In his ongoing research program, Dr. Cochrane continues to investigate the drivers and effects of disturbance regime changes resulting from various forms of forest degradation, including fire, fragmentation and logging. He currently has funded projects in Brazil through NASA and USAID, the United States (Joint Fire Sciences) and in China (NASA). He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from Pennsylvania State University and a S.B. in Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stewart Elgie, University of Ottawa
Associate Director, Institute of the Environment
57 Louis Pasteur, room 122
Ottawa, ON, Canada K1N 6N5
,
613.562.5800 x2525
Mary Granskou, Canadian Boreal Initiative
Senior Advisor
613.230.4739 x225
Mary has 20 years experience in the ion field in senior roles with NGOs and the federal government. For most of the 90s, Mary was national Executive Director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. In 2000, she joined the federal government where she worked with the Deputy Minister responsible for Parks Canada and then as an advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office. She now works as a consultant to advance government relations for the Canadian Boreal Initiative and other clients.
Dr. Stephen Schwartzman, Environmental Defense
Co-Director, International Program
202-746-9201
Anthropologist Stephan Schwartzman lived with the Panará tribe in Mato Grosso, Brazil for a year and a half in the early 1980s and learned their unwritten language. He subsequently defended his PhD thesis on the group at the University of Chicago. Schwartzman worked closely with the emerging Amazon rubber tappers’ movement in the western Amazon starting in 1985, conducting research on the rubber tappers' alternative conservation and development proposal, the “extractive reserves” (protected areas inhabited and managed by traditional populations such as rubber tappers and Brazil nut gatherers). Since 1991, Schwartzman has worked with the Panará people, and partners Instituto Socioambiental and Rainforest Foundation US, to help the Panará in their successful initiative to recover their traditional territory and ensure its demarcation.
Since 2002, Schwartzman has worked with grassroots groups and NGOs toward the creation of a reserve mosaic in the Terra do Meio region of the Amazon state of Pará. Between November 2004 and July 2006 the Brazilian government, in response to NGO and social movement advocacy, created ~8 million ha. of new parks and extractive reserves in the lawless frontier region. This established a continuous corridor of indigenous lands and conservation units of 26 million ha. in the Xingu river basin, the largest in the world.
Schwartzman also leads Environmental Defense’s initiative to create large-scale incentives for tropical countries to reduce their deforestation through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with Brazilian and other international partners.
Geoffrey McCarney, University of Alberta
Research Associate, Department of Rural Economy
780-492-2540
Geoff McCarney specializes in the fields of natural resource and environmental economics. Geoff is currently employed as a research associate in the Department of Rural Economy at the University of Alberta. He has recently received his M.Sc. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Alberta, and also holds a B.A. (History and Economics) from the University of Ottawa.
Currently, Geoff’s research interests include the implications of carbon market incentives for forest carbon management, the economic potential for afforestation of marginal agricultural lands in Alberta and the measurement and implementation of natural capital and ecosystem service values in sustainable forest management. Geoff also teaches natural resource economics at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Ron Dembo, Zerofootprint
416.365.7557
Dr. Ron Dembo is the Founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit that combines the best financial engineering, environmental engineering, and business intelligence to create products and services that help organizations and individuals significantly reduce their environmental footprint.
Prior to founding Zerofootprint, Dr. Dembo was the Founder, CEO, and President of Algorithmics Incorporated, growing it from a start-up to the largest enterprise risk-management software company in the world, with offices in fifteen countries and over 70% of the world's top 100 banks as clients. Algorithmics was consistently voted as one of the top 50 best-managed companies in Canada.
Dr. Dembo has also had a distinguished ten-year academic career at Yale University, where he was cross-appointed between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Management. Dr. Dembo has published over sixty technical papers on finance and mathematical optimization, and holds a number of patents in computational finance.
Dr. Dembo is the author of three books: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk, co-authored with Andrew Freedman, published in April 1998; Upside Downside: Simple Rules of Risk Management for the Smart Investor, co-authored with Daniel Stoffman, published in March 2006; and Everything You Wanted to Know About Offsetting But Were Afraid to Ask, co-authored with Clive Davidson, and released in May 2007.
In May 2007, Dr. Dembo was made a lifetime Fields Institute Fellow. This fellowship is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community.
Valérie Courtois, Innu Nation Environmental Office
Forestry Planner
709.497.8155
Valérie is a member of the Innu community of Mashteuiatsh. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Forestry Sciences from the Université de Moncton, which she completed in 2002. Upon her graduation, Valérie worked as the forestry advisor for the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Sustainable Development Institute where she gained valuable insight into policies relating to First Nations and the environment. Longing to do more community-based work, Valérie began working as the forestry planner for the Innu Nation in 2003. She now has the privilege of working with a highly skilled environment office, including the Environmental Guardians Program, where community members with a strong Innu-skills base are trained in both Western and Innu sciences. Valerie is also keenly interested in Women’s issues, and is a board member of the Mokami Status of Women Council.
Larry Innes, Canadian Boreal Initiative
Executive Director
613.230.4739
Larry has extensive history in working with Aboriginal communities on land and resource issues. He has served as senior advisor to the Innu Nation in Labrador for over a decade. He provides legal, technical and strategic assistance to the Innu and to other Aboriginal communities dealing with governments and industries on forestry, mining, hydroelectricity and other resource developments. He has extensive experience as a negotiator on behalf of First Nations in advancing land claims and co-management agreements with government and impact-benefits agreements with industry. He has been involved in several major projects, including the Voisey’s Bay mining development and the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project.
Larry holds a degree in law from the University of Victoria and master’s degree in Environmental Studies from York University. He is called to the bar in the Provinces of Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador, and practices as an associate with Olthuis, Kleer, Townshend, a Toronto firm specializing in Aboriginal and environmental law. He lives in Goose Bay, Labrador with his wife, two children and a retired sled dog.
Dr. Barb Zimmerman, Conservation International
Director, Kayapó Project
416.487.0879
Barbara Zimmerman graduated with a MSc from University of Guelph in 1982 and a PhD in ecology from Florida State University in 1991. The topic of both graduate theses was species composition and ecology of a community snakes and frogs in the central Amazon. In 1992, Zimmerman founded the Kayapo project in the southeastern Amazon of Brazil with support from Conservation International and the then incipient David Suzuki Foundation. Since then, Zimmerman has been director of CI's Kayapo project that has developed from a small initiative in a single community to a major six figure per annum project endeavouring to support conservation and development in all 15 communities of the Kayapo. Zimmerman also taught part time in the Masters of Forest conservation program, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto from 1997 until 2003.
Director of Science604-732-4228 x261
Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation. He has completed several degrees in forest ecology and conservation biology, most recently a PhD from Dalhousie University. Faisal maintains an active research program in forest biodiversity with a particular interest in the conservation of understory plants in boreal and boreal mixed wood forests in Canada. Faisal has also published a number of papers on endangered species policy in Canada on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation. He has had a long history of involvement in the environmental movement in Canada. Most recently, Faisal participated on the “blue-ribbon” science panel (the Coast Information Team) that advised land use planning tables on protected areas and ecosystem-based forestry in the Great Bear Rainforest. Faisal lives on the Sunshine Coast, B.C., with his wife, Sara Wilson, and their two young children.
Dr. Jing M. Chen, University of Toronto
Professor, Department of Geography 416.978.7085
Research Interests: Biogeochemical Cycle Modeling, Remote Sensing, Climate Change, Micrometeorology, Hydrology, Geographic Information Systems
Dr. Chen holds a Ph.D., in Meteorology from Reading University, UK. His professional memberships include Fellow of Royal Society of Canada 2006 and Senior Canada Research Chair.
Sean C. Thomas, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto
Canada Research Chair, Forests and Environmental Change416.978.1044
Sean Thomas (PhD Harvard, 1993) has been preoccupied with the comparative biology of trees and forest responses to the intentional and accidental impacts of humans for some 25 years. Sean is currently appointed as Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Forests and Environmental Change at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Forestry. His research focuses on how trees and forests respond to human impacts - intentional impacts through forest management, and unintentional impacts via local, regional, and global changes in the environment. This research links an understanding of the functional ecology and ecophysiology of trees ("how trees work") to patterns of growth, mortality, recruitment, reproduction, at the population scale, to patterns community composition, and to ecosystem processes, in particular carbon flux ("how forests work"). Current and former project also address forest policy, particularly as pertains to tropical forest conservation and forest carbon sequestration. The Thomas lab is currently involved in projects in temperate and boreal forests in Canada, and tropical forests at a variety of sites (Dominica, Malaysia, and Dem. Rep. Congo). Web: http://larva.forestry.utoronto.ca/thomas/ThomasMain.htm
Peter Lee, Global Forest Watch Canada
780-451-9260
Peter Lee is the Executive Director of Global Forest Watch Canada. In addition to his current position, Peter has conservation and environmental experience in government, academia, private industry and not-for-profit organizations. His career has focused on improving sustainable land management in Alberta and nationally, throughout Canada. Peter completed his MSc. at the University of Alberta with a thesis topic of: Ecology of competition between elk and cattle. Peter’s professional memberships include the roles of Director of Environmental Law Centre of Alberta, Director of Nature Canada, and Director of Castle Crown Wilderness Coalition.
Recent Publications:
Lee P, JD Gysbers and Z Stanojevic 2006. Canada’s Remaining forest Landscape Fragments (A Global Forest Watch Canada Report). Edmonton, Alberta: Global Forest Watch Canada. 75 pp. To be released March 2006. http://www.globalforestwatch.ca
Stanojevic Z, Lee P, and JD Gysbers. 2006. Recent Anthropogenic Changes within the Northern Boreal, Southern Taiga, and Hudson Plains Ecozones of Québec (A Global Forest Watch Canada Report). Edmonton, Alberta: Global Forest Watch Canada. 63 pp. To be released February 2006. http://www.globalforestwatch.ca
Lee, P. 2005. Boreal Canada: State of the Ecosystem, State of Industry,
Emerging Issues and Projections. Report to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.
Dr. Mark A. Cochrane, South Dakota State University Senior Scientist, Professor
605-688-5353
Research Interests: Fire Ecology, Land Cover Change, Land Cover and Land Use Interactions, Dynamic Systems
Dr. Mark Cochrane of SDSU conducts interdisciplinary work that combines remote sensing, ecology and other fields of study to provide a landscape perspective of the dynamic processes involved in land-cover change. He is an expert on wildfire in tropical ecosystems, documenting the characteristics, behavior and severe effects of fire in tropical forests that are inherent to current systems of human land-use. His research focuses on understanding spatial patterns, interactions and synergisms between the multiple physical and biological factors that affect ecosystems. Recently published work emphasizes the human dimensions of land-cover change and the potential for sustainable development, and has been instrumental in the Brazilian government's recent program to expand its national forest system in the Amazon to 50 million hectares. In his ongoing research program, Dr. Cochrane continues to investigate the drivers and effects of disturbance regime changes resulting from various forms of forest degradation, including fire, fragmentation and logging. He currently has funded projects in Brazil through NASA and USAID, the United States (Joint Fire Sciences) and in China (NASA). He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from Pennsylvania State University and a S.B. in Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stewart Elgie, University of Ottawa
Associate Director, Institute of the Environment
57 Louis Pasteur, room 122
Ottawa, ON, Canada K1N 6N5
,
613.562.5800 x2525
Mary Granskou, Canadian Boreal Initiative
Senior Advisor613.230.4739 x225
Mary has 20 years experience in the ion field in senior roles with NGOs and the federal government. For most of the 90s, Mary was national Executive Director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. In 2000, she joined the federal government where she worked with the Deputy Minister responsible for Parks Canada and then as an advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office. She now works as a consultant to advance government relations for the Canadian Boreal Initiative and other clients.
Dr. Stephen Schwartzman, Environmental Defense
Co-Director, International Program202-746-9201
Anthropologist Stephan Schwartzman lived with the Panará tribe in Mato Grosso, Brazil for a year and a half in the early 1980s and learned their unwritten language. He subsequently defended his PhD thesis on the group at the University of Chicago. Schwartzman worked closely with the emerging Amazon rubber tappers’ movement in the western Amazon starting in 1985, conducting research on the rubber tappers' alternative conservation and development proposal, the “extractive reserves” (protected areas inhabited and managed by traditional populations such as rubber tappers and Brazil nut gatherers). Since 1991, Schwartzman has worked with the Panará people, and partners Instituto Socioambiental and Rainforest Foundation US, to help the Panará in their successful initiative to recover their traditional territory and ensure its demarcation.
Since 2002, Schwartzman has worked with grassroots groups and NGOs toward the creation of a reserve mosaic in the Terra do Meio region of the Amazon state of Pará. Between November 2004 and July 2006 the Brazilian government, in response to NGO and social movement advocacy, created ~8 million ha. of new parks and extractive reserves in the lawless frontier region. This established a continuous corridor of indigenous lands and conservation units of 26 million ha. in the Xingu river basin, the largest in the world.
Schwartzman also leads Environmental Defense’s initiative to create large-scale incentives for tropical countries to reduce their deforestation through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with Brazilian and other international partners.
Geoffrey McCarney, University of Alberta
Research Associate, Department of Rural Economy780-492-2540
Geoff McCarney specializes in the fields of natural resource and environmental economics. Geoff is currently employed as a research associate in the Department of Rural Economy at the University of Alberta. He has recently received his M.Sc. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Alberta, and also holds a B.A. (History and Economics) from the University of Ottawa.
Currently, Geoff’s research interests include the implications of carbon market incentives for forest carbon management, the economic potential for afforestation of marginal agricultural lands in Alberta and the measurement and implementation of natural capital and ecosystem service values in sustainable forest management. Geoff also teaches natural resource economics at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Ron Dembo, Zerofootprint
416.365.7557
Dr. Ron Dembo is the Founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit that combines the best financial engineering, environmental engineering, and business intelligence to create products and services that help organizations and individuals significantly reduce their environmental footprint.
Prior to founding Zerofootprint, Dr. Dembo was the Founder, CEO, and President of Algorithmics Incorporated, growing it from a start-up to the largest enterprise risk-management software company in the world, with offices in fifteen countries and over 70% of the world's top 100 banks as clients. Algorithmics was consistently voted as one of the top 50 best-managed companies in Canada.
Dr. Dembo has also had a distinguished ten-year academic career at Yale University, where he was cross-appointed between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Management. Dr. Dembo has published over sixty technical papers on finance and mathematical optimization, and holds a number of patents in computational finance.
Dr. Dembo is the author of three books: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk, co-authored with Andrew Freedman, published in April 1998; Upside Downside: Simple Rules of Risk Management for the Smart Investor, co-authored with Daniel Stoffman, published in March 2006; and Everything You Wanted to Know About Offsetting But Were Afraid to Ask, co-authored with Clive Davidson, and released in May 2007.
In May 2007, Dr. Dembo was made a lifetime Fields Institute Fellow. This fellowship is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community.
Valérie Courtois, Innu Nation Environmental Office
Forestry Planner709.497.8155
Valérie is a member of the Innu community of Mashteuiatsh. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Forestry Sciences from the Université de Moncton, which she completed in 2002. Upon her graduation, Valérie worked as the forestry advisor for the First Nations of Quebec and Labrador Sustainable Development Institute where she gained valuable insight into policies relating to First Nations and the environment. Longing to do more community-based work, Valérie began working as the forestry planner for the Innu Nation in 2003. She now has the privilege of working with a highly skilled environment office, including the Environmental Guardians Program, where community members with a strong Innu-skills base are trained in both Western and Innu sciences. Valerie is also keenly interested in Women’s issues, and is a board member of the Mokami Status of Women Council.
Larry Innes, Canadian Boreal Initiative
Executive Director613.230.4739
Larry has extensive history in working with Aboriginal communities on land and resource issues. He has served as senior advisor to the Innu Nation in Labrador for over a decade. He provides legal, technical and strategic assistance to the Innu and to other Aboriginal communities dealing with governments and industries on forestry, mining, hydroelectricity and other resource developments. He has extensive experience as a negotiator on behalf of First Nations in advancing land claims and co-management agreements with government and impact-benefits agreements with industry. He has been involved in several major projects, including the Voisey’s Bay mining development and the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project.
Larry holds a degree in law from the University of Victoria and master’s degree in Environmental Studies from York University. He is called to the bar in the Provinces of Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador, and practices as an associate with Olthuis, Kleer, Townshend, a Toronto firm specializing in Aboriginal and environmental law. He lives in Goose Bay, Labrador with his wife, two children and a retired sled dog.
Dr. Barb Zimmerman, Conservation International
Director, Kayapó Project
416.487.0879
Barbara Zimmerman graduated with a MSc from University of Guelph in 1982 and a PhD in ecology from Florida State University in 1991. The topic of both graduate theses was species composition and ecology of a community snakes and frogs in the central Amazon. In 1992, Zimmerman founded the Kayapo project in the southeastern Amazon of Brazil with support from Conservation International and the then incipient David Suzuki Foundation. Since then, Zimmerman has been director of CI's Kayapo project that has developed from a small initiative in a single community to a major six figure per annum project endeavouring to support conservation and development in all 15 communities of the Kayapo. Zimmerman also taught part time in the Masters of Forest conservation program, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto from 1997 until 2003.