Distinguished Seminar Series
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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.
About The InfoShop
The InfoShop is the public information center of the World Bank and
serves as a forum for substantial debate on international
development. Our extensive events program consists of more than 250
events over the past two years and has hosted many internationally
recognized speakers including Queen Noor, Francis Fukuyama, Jeffrey
Sachs, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Friedman, Senator Hagel,
and Carly Fiorina. The InfoShop functions as the only publicly
accessible space at headquarters and provides internal and external
audiences with over 10,000 titles published by the World Bank,
international organizations, and other publishers on development
issues.
For more information, visit www.worldbank.org/infoshop
For comments about the events program, visit InfoShop.
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