Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) is an intergovernmental scientific program, launched in 1971 by UNESCO, that aims to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between people and their environments.
Diversitas was an international research programme aiming at integrating biodiversity science for human well-being. In December 2014 its work was transferred to the programme called Future Earth, which was sponsored by the Science and Technology Alliance for Global Sustainability, comprising the International Council for Science (ICSU), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), the Belmont Forum of funding agencies, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations University (UNU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Leland Harrison (Lee) Hartwell is former president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Paul Nurse and Tim Hunt, for their discoveries of protein molecules that control the division (duplication) of cells.
Sir Partha Sarathi Dasgupta is an Indian-British economist who is Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
Calestous Juma was a Kenyan scientist and academic, specializing in sustainable development. He was named one of the most influential 100 Africans in 2012, 2013 and 2014 by the New African magazine. He was Professor of the Practice of International Development and Faculty Chair of the Innovation for Economic Development Executive Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Juma was Director of the School's Science, Technology and Globalization Project at Harvard Kennedy School as well as the Agricultural Innovation in Africa Project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. His last book, Innovation and Its Enemies: Why People Resist New Technologies, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016.
Peter James Goldmark was the 15th Commissioner of Public Lands of Washington, head of the Washington Department of Natural Resources from 2009 to 2017. He is a Democrat from a rural part of Okanogan County, Washington, outside of the town of Okanogan.
Gene Elden Likens is an American limnologist and ecologist. He co-founded the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in 1963, and founded the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York in 1983.
Madhav Dhananjaya Gadgil is an Indian ecologist, academic, writer, columnist and the founder of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, a research forum under the aegis of the Indian Institute of Science. He is a former member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and the Head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of 2010, popularly known as the Gadgil Commission.
Ismail Serageldin, Founding Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA), the new Library of Alexandria, inaugurated in 2002, is currently, Emeritus Librarian, and member of the Board of Trustees of the Library of Alexandria. He serves as Chair or Member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific and international institutions and civil society efforts, and serves on the Advisory Committee of the World Social Science Report for 2013 and 2016, as well as the UNESCO-supported World Water Scenarios (2013) and the executive council of the Encyclopedia of Life (2010) and Chairs the Executive Council of the World Digital Library (2010). He also co-chaired the African Union's high level panel for Biotechnology (2006) and again for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) in 2012–2013, and was a member of the ICANN Panel for the review of the internet future (2013).
Julia Marton-Lefèvre is a French - US environmentalist and academic. She studied history, ecology and environmental planning in the US and in France, and was born in Hungary.
Tan Sri Zakri bin Abdul Hamid has had a distinguished career in science as a researcher, educator, administrator and diplomat.
James O. Adegoke is a Nigerian-American climate scientist and professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) where he served as Chair of the Department of Geosciences (2008-2010). He also served as an appointee of the Mayor of Kansas City Missouri on the city's Environmental Management Commission (EMC) and has testified before the South Africa Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Science and Technology and the Climate Change Committee of the Nigerian House of Representatives. In the United States, he has testified at the United States House of Representatives for the United States House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
Richard B. Norgaard is a professor emeritus of ecological economics in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, the first chair and a continuing member of the independent science board of CALFED, and a founding member and former president of the International Society for Ecological Economics. He received the Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award in 2006 for recognition of advancements in research combining social theory and the natural sciences. He is considered one of the founders of and a continuing leader in the field of ecological economics.
Biosphere reserves are areas comprising terrestrial, marine and coastal ecosystems. The biosphere reserve title is handed over by UNESCO. Each reserve promotes solutions reconciling the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use. Biosphere reserves are 'Science for Sustainability support sites' – special places for testing interdisciplinary approaches to understanding and managing changes and interactions between social and ecological systems, including conflict prevention and management of biodiversity. Biosphere reserves are nominated by national governments and remain under the sovereign jurisdiction of the states where they are located. Their status is internationally recognized.
Diana Harrison Wall is the Founding Director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, a Distinguished Biology Professor, and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. She is an environmental scientist and a soil ecologist and her research has focussed on the Antarctic McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall investigates ecosystem processes, soil biodiversity and ecosystem services and she is interested in how these are impacted by global change. The Wall Valley was named after her in recognition of her research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall is a globally recognised leader and speaker on life in Antarctica and climate change.
Bettine van Vuuren is the Senior Director: Strategic Initiatives and Administration at the University of Johannesburg. She is also a Professor of Zoology and Director of the Centre for Ecological Genomics and Wildlife Conservation at the University of Johannesburg.
Bradley Cardinale is an American ecologist, conservation biologist, academic and researcher. He is Head of the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management and Penn State University.
Henri Décamps, born on 18 December 1935 in Paris, is a French biologist specialising in the ecology of rivers and river landscapes. He has been a member of the French Academy of sciences since 2008, of the Académie d'agriculture de France since 2004 and a member of Academia Europaea since 2009.
Shahid Naeem is an ecologist and conservation biologist and is a Lenfest Distinguished professor and chair in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. Naeem is the author of Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning, and Human Well-Being, and has published over 100 scientific articles.
Adolé Isabelle Glitho-Akueson is a Togolese entomologist who is Professor of Animal Biology at the University of Lomé. She is the chair of UNESCO's "Women, Science and Sustainable Water Management in West Africa and Central Africa" committee and a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences.
