A leading businessman from Brazil and a prominent legal scholar from Singapore will become visiting faculty at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 2003-04.
“Having visiting faculty from abroad is now a tradition at the school,” said Dean James Gustave Speth. “These additions are part of our effort to become a truly global school of the environment. Our two visitors are extraordinary and will enrich our year.”
John Michael Forgach, a Brazilian who launched the first for-profit biodiversity investment fund in Latin America, will teach this fall as the Dorothy S. McCluskey Visiting Fellow.
A former international banker with Chase Manhattan Bank, Forgach holds awards for his innovative approach to environmental banking, including the 2001 Rainforest Alliance Green Globe Award and the 2000 BRAVO Business Award as Latin American environmentalist of the year. He is founder of the Brazilian Institute for Education in Sustainable Business and helped establish Swiss and Brazilian organizations of independent citizen organizations for the preservation of endangered South American wildlife.
“At Yale I intend to transmit to the students some of the lessons learned in my real-life efforts to create investment models that preserve the environment and promote social responsibility,” Forgach said. “I also want to work with the students and faculty on new solutions to multilateral funding.”
Lye Lin Heng, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Center for Environmental Law and associate professor of law at the National University of Singapore (NUS) will teach in the new field of comparative environmental law in Spring 2004. She is leading the development of a masters-level environmental management program and is the deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Center for Environmental Law at NUS. She has served as vice-dean and director of graduate programs, and as a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Commission on Environmental Law. She was chair and editor of the Malaya Law Review (now the Singapore Journal of Legal Studies) and has authored several papers and publications on environmental law in Singapore.
Dean Speth and Dean Cheong Hin Fatt of the National University of Singapore’s School of Design and Environment established an international partnership and cooperation between the two institutions in teaching and research in the area of environmental management.
