Day 1 Keynote:
Maude Barlow
Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, and the co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, working internationally for the right to water. She serves on the boards of the International Forum on Globalization and Food and Water Watch, as well as being a Coucillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of six honorary doctorates, the 2005/2006 Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, and the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”) for her global water justice work. She is also the best-selling author or co-author of sixteen books, including Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop Corporate Theft of the World’s Water and the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.
Andy Lipkis
Andy Lipkis is a practical visionary leader who began planting trees to rehabilitate smog and fire damaged land around Los Angeles when he was 15 years old. He founded TreePeople in 1973 at age 18, and continues to serve as its President. TreePeople’s work in LA inspires people to take personal responsibility for the urban forest – educating, training, and supporting them as they plant and care for trees and improve the neighborhoods in which they live, learn, work and play. In 2003, the United Nations World Forestry Organization recognized TreePeople as a global model for other large cities.
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Andrew Parker
Andrew Parker is a Royal Society Research Fellow at Oxford University's Department of Zoology. He has been named by the London Times as one of the three most important young scientists in the world for his work in investigating and answering the great riddle of the Cambrian explosion.
Parker is a leading proponent of biomimetics—applying designs from nature to solve problems in engineering, materials science, medicine, and other fields, including water conservation. (Biomimicry is another related term.)
He was highlighted in the feature article in April 2008 National Geographic – “Biomimetics – Design By Nature” – an article describing water gathering and water conservation techniques discovered in a Nambian beetle and a reptile that can drink with its leg.
Andrew Parker was one of the eight “Scientists for the New Century” selected by The Royal Institution (London) and The Times/Novartis in 2000.
He is also the Science Advisor to the Prince of Wales. |
Day 2 Keynote:
Wes Jackson
Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute (founded in 1976), was born in 1936 on a farm near Topeka, Kansas. One of the Institute’s major projects is research to develop perennial grains. The Land Institute has worked for over 20 years on the problem of agriculture with a primary purpose of developing an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops.
Dr. Jackson’s writings include both papers and books. His most recent work, The Virtues of Ignorance: Complexity, Sustainability, and the Limits of Knowledge, co-edited with William Vitek, was released by University of Kentucky Press in 2008 and will be available at the Conference. > Continue bio here
Deborah Madison
Deborah Madison, founding chef of San Francisco’s Greens restaurant, has long been committed to finding local and sustainable ways of feeding ourselves, and has, through cooking, writing, and teaching helped chefs, home cooks, and young people make that connection for themselves. Greens, which opened in l979, was one of the first restaurants to make cooking from farm and garden the driving force behind its menu. In collaboration with Green Gulch Farm, Deborah was able to introduce foods that were then new to the dining public, such as arugula, fingerling potatoes, the many colorful varieties of lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes, and other edibles that are now a familiar part of the culinary landscape. Since that time she has continued working to introduce and teach about cherished plant foods through cooking classes, writing books and articles on food and farming, through her participation in her local farmers market.
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Paul Stamets has written six mushroom-related books. Several are used as textbooks around the world by the gourmet and medicinal mushroom industries. He is the author of many scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals (The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms; Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM, Oxford University Press); Herbalgram, and others).
He has written more than a twenty patents. He started a mushroom wholesale and retail sales business, Fungi Perfecti, LLC, in 1980. (See www.fungi.com.) The business has four laboratories, 10,000 sq. ft. of clean rooms, and is equipped with 20+ laminar flow benches for doing in vitro propagation work. Paul has received several environmental awards. He is an advisor to the Program of Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Medical School, Tucson; on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, and was appointed to the G.A.P./G.M.P. Board of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia. Dr. Andrew recommends his products. Stamets is the supplier and co-investigator of the first two NIH funded clinical studies using medicinal mushrooms in the United States. His strain collection is extensive and unique, with many of the strains coming from old growth forests. He is involved in several other research trials ongoing and pending. > Continue bio here
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