Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, Bruce Babbitt, and Thomas Friedman discuss "When Nature's Forces Meet Degraded Environments" on Tuesday, April 14th at 2:00 PM in IFC auditorium

The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)
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.

Matthew Bishop of the Economist Magazine discusses "Philanthrocapitalism" on April 8th at 3 PM in JB1-080

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MODERATOR
Daniel Runde
Head of Partnership Development, International Finance Corporation,
World Bank Group
Mr. Runde is Head of Partnership Development for the International
Finance Corporation. From 2005 to 2007, Mr. Runde was Director of
the Office of Global Development Alliances (GDA) at the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID). From 2002 to 2005, Mr. Runde
was a Senior Advisor at the GDA Secretariat. Prior to this, Mr.
Runde was an Assistant Vice President for Business Development with
Citigroup in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Previously, he worked for
BankBoston Argentina's corporate foundation. Earlier in his career,
he was an investment banker with Alex Brown & Sons. Before his
government service, he served on various boards, including Baltimore
Reads, The Harvard Cooperative Society, Grupo Innova, and the
American Society of the River Plate. He currently serves in a
personal capacity on the board of the Society for International
Development?s Washington chapter.

AUTHOR
Matthew Bishop
Chief Business Writer/US Business Editor, The Economist
Mr. Bishop is Chief Business Writer/US Business Editor of The
Economist, based in New York. He was previously The Economist's
London-based Business Editor, and has also served as its New York
Bureau Chief. Mr. Bishop is the author of several Economist special
survey supplements, including most recently The Business of Giving,
which looks at the industrial revolution taking place in
philanthropy; Kings of Capitalism, which anticipated and analyzed
the recent boom in private equity; and Capitalism and its Troubles,
an examination of the impact of problems such as the collapse of
Enron. Before joining The Economist, Mr. Bishop was on the faculty
of London Business School, where he co-authored three books for the
Oxford University Press. Mr. Bishop has served as a member of the
Sykes Commission on the investment system in the 21st Century. He
was also on the Advisors Group of the United Nations International
Year of Microcredit 2005. He has been honored as a Young Global
Leader by the World Economic Forum.

DISCUSSANTS
Homi Kharas
Senior Fellow, Wolfensohn Center for Development, Brookings
Institution
Mr. Kharas is a Senior Fellow at the Wolfensohn Center for
Development at Brookings Institution. He is a member of the Working
Group for the Commission on Growth and Development, which is chaired
by Michael Spence. Previously, Mr. Kharas served as Chief Economist
for the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific region, and as Director
for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Finance and Private
Sector Development, responsible for the World Bank's advice on
structural and economic policies, fiscal issues, debt, trade,
governance, and financial markets. In 1990-91, he was a Senior
Partner with Jeff Sachs and Associates, advising governments in
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union on transition. His research
interests are now focused on global trends, East Asian growth and
development, and international aid for the poorest countries.

Carol Adelman
Director, Center for Global Prosperity, Hudson Institute
Ms. Adelman directs Hudson Institute's Center for Global Prosperity,
producing the Index of Global Philanthropy, the sole comprehensive
guide to U.S. and other industrialized countries' private giving -
both philanthropy and remittances - to developing countries. Ms.
Adelman serves as vice chair of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary
Foreign Aid (ACFVA) to the U.S. Agency for International
Development. As assistant administrator of USAID from 1988 to 1993,
she ran aid programs in Asia, the Middle East, and Central and
Eastern Europe. Over the past 30 years, she has served as director,
consultant, and member in numerous non-profit organizations,
including the Atlantic Council, the Council on Foreign Relations,
and the American Red Cross.

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.