External links
- The Martian's Daughter: A Memoir by Marina von Neumann Whitman
- All About the Story: News, Power, Politics, and the Washington Post by Leonard Downie Jr.
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David Leonard Downie (born 1961) is an American scholar focusing on international environmental politics and policy. He is currently Vice-Provost at Fairfield University.
Downie's research focuses on factors that can promote or impede the creation, implementation and effectiveness of international environmental policy. [1] This includes frameworks of scientific knowledge, patterns of economic interests, extant institutions and regime development as well as obstacles that stem from: the structures and interaction of the international political, legal, ecological and economic systems; common procedures employed in environmental policy making; characteristics of international environmental issues themselves; and the need to implement and fund internationally developed rules, norms and policies on the national and local level.
His research also examines global efforts to prevent stratospheric ozone depletion, address global climate change, and restrict anthropogenic emissions of mercury and of toxic chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). He has attended dozens of global negotiations on these topics. At many of the meetings associated with the ozone layer, mercury and POPs, he worked with the Secretariat as part of the team that drafted the official negotiation reports. [1] For his informal work with the Ozone Secretariat at negotiations, particularly in the mid-to-late 1990s, and his scholarly writing on global ozone policy, he was nominated and awarded inclusion in the Montreal Protocol Who’s Who [2] , a collection created by the United Nations Environment Programme’s OzonAction unit [3]
Downie's recent research also studies gender patterns amongst those elevated to senior leadership positions in global environmental politics and inter-governmental organizations. He has also been a long-time advocate of examining opportunities to replace local, state, and national taxes paid by the lower and middle classes with taxes on pollution. The author of numerous publications on a variety of topics, his co-authored book, Global Environmental Politics, [4] written with Professor Pamela Chasek (a co-creator of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin), is in its 9th edition.
Downie joined the Environmental Studies Program and the Politics Department at Fairfield University in 2008. Prior to moving to Fairfield University, Downie taught courses in international environmental politics at Columbia University from 1994-2008. While at Columbia, he held several research, administrative and academic appointments in the Earth Institute, School of International and Public Affairs, and Department of Political Science, including: Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Climate and Society (2004-2008), Director of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change (2004–2008), and Director of Environmental Policy Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs (1994–1999). [1] In 2000 he moved from a primary appointment at the School of International and Public Affairs to one at the Earth Institute (in order to focus on applied policy research and creating and expanding new interdisciplinary educational programs.
The Global Roundtable on Climate Change brought together representatives from corporations, research institutions, and government organizations to discuss the scientific consensus, economics, technology, and public policy issues associated with climate change. Following preliminary research and discussions, the group first met in 2005 and held a series of public and private meetings over the next five years. As part of this work, Downie organized two side-event panels during sessions of the global climate negotiations that featured presentations by Roundtable Participants, including himself, and also discussed the climate policy, the Roundtable, and related issues at other events during the climate negotiations and in other forums. [5] [6]
Fairfield's environmental studies program now includes faculty and classes from many different departments and schools, including Anthropology, Applied Ethics, Biology, Business, Chemistry, Economics, English, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Philosophy, Politics, and Physics. Fairfield University has received recognition for its sustainability efforts, including the Sierra Club naming it as one of the nation's "Cool Schools" and the Princeton Review including Fairfield in its 2010 "Guide to 286 Green Colleges." The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) honored the university with a 2010 Energy Star CHP Award for its energy smart CHP. [7] In 2011, Downie accepted a Green Coast Award given to Fairfield University on behalf of its sustainability efforts. [8]
His education includes a B.A. in Philosophy from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He attended high school at the Blake School in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
David Downie is the son of Leonard Downie, Jr., Executive Editor of the Washington Post from 1991–2008, and Barbara Sims, an environmental attorney. The couple divorced in the early 1970s and Ms. Sims married Carl Sims, a newspaper editor (Mr. Sims died in 2020). [9] . In 1992, Downie married Dr. Laura Whitman. [10] Downie and Whitman are the parents of two children, William Whitman Downie and Lindsey Whitman Downie. Dr. Whitman, who died in January 2023 after a long illness, was highly regarded clinician, mentor, and leader at Yale School of Medicine, and a noted specialist in out-patient medical education at Yale University. [11] In November 2023, the Generalist Firm at Yale New Haven Hospital was renamed the Laura Whitman Firm in honor and memory of Dr. Whitman. [12]
Laura Whitman was the daughter of Marina von Neumann Whitman, a noted economist and business executive, and Robert Freeman Whitman, professor emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh, and the granddaughter of mathematician and polymath John von Neumann. [13] Laura Whitman's brother is Malcolm Whitman, Professor of Developmental Biology at Harvard University. [14] [15] [16] David Downie has a brother, Scott Downie; a half-brother, Joshua Downie; and a half-sister, Sarah Downie. A step-brother, Carl Sims, Jr., died in 2024.
Books
Selected Scholarly articles and book chapters
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