Leading Environmental Professionals To Teach at Yale

Four national and international leaders on environmental management will join the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies next year.

Yolanda Kakabadse, the president of the World Conservation Union (IUCN); James Lyons, U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment; Robert Repetto, the Tim Wirth Senior Fellow at the University of Colorado; and Xuemei Bai, a research fellow at the Institute for Global Strategies in Japan, will join the school’s faculty in the 2000-2001 academic year.

“Each of these extraordinary people will contribute to the life of the school,” said Dean James Gustave Speth. “They will have teaching responsibilities and carry out research. With their rich and successful experiences in finding solutions to environmental problems, they will bring new breadth and diversity to faculty and student interactions.”

The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary this year, has invited the four environmental professionals as a reflection of the school’s belief that environmental challenges are increasingly international. As it enters its second century, the dean and the faculty have laid out ambitious plans to become a global school of the environment.

Kakabadse, an expert on biodiversity and sustainable development, most recently was Minister of the Environment in Ecuador. She is a member of the board of directors of the Ford Foundation and the World Resources Institute. She will be at the school through 2001.

Lyons, who received a Master of Forestry degree from the school in 1979, will join the faculty in January 2001. Since his appointment as USDA Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment in 1993, Lyons has played a major role in reshaping the nation’s forestry and conservation policies. In addition to directing development of President Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan, Lyons guided initiatives to create the Giant Sequoia National Monument and reform management of the Tongass National Forest.

Repetto is one of the most respected and widely published authorities on the economics of sustainable development. He has served as associate professor of economics at Harvard and has a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. From 1983 to 1997, he was senior economist and vice president of the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. He will join the school for fall semesters, starting next year.

Bai is one of the world’s leading authorities on the environment in Asian cities. Bai did her undergraduate work in her native China at Peking University and earned a doctoral degree from the University of Tokyo in Engineering. She will be at the school during the 2000-2001 academic year.