Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy "A Wild Solution for Climate Change"- Wednesday, March 29, 2017, 4-5 pm

Seminar in the UNCG Biology Department     

Sullivan Science Building Room 101
Wednesday, March 29, 2017, 4-5 pm

“A Wild Solution for Climate Change” will present an analysis of climate change through the lens of biology: Human release of CO2, ancient and modern photosynthetic products, impacts on biodiversity at different levels of scale, and how biology might assist in tackling this environmental juggernaut.

Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy, "the Godfather of Biodiversity," is a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and University Professor in the Environmental Science and Policy Department at George Mason University. As a tropical biologist and conservation biologist, he has worked in the Amazon of Brazil since 1965. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in

biology from Yale University. Among his many accomplishments, Dr.Lovejoy is the recipient of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2001), the Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2008) from the BBVA (Banco de Bilbao Viscaya Argentaria) Foundation, and the Blue Planet Prize (2012).

Dr. Lovejoy was the World Bank’s Chief Biodiversity Advisor and the Lead Specialist for Environment for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation. From 2008 to 2013, he served as the first Biodiversity Chair of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. Previously he served as President of the Heinz Center. He currently is Chair of the Scientific Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the multibillion-dollar funding mechanism for developing countries in support of their obligations under international environmental conventions.

Dr. Lovejoy introduced the term biological diversity to the scientific community in 1980. One of his notable accomplishments is development of the debt-for-nature swaps, in which environmental groups purchase shaky foreign debt on the secondary market and then convert this debt at its face value into the local currency to purchase biologically sensitive tracts of land in the debtor nation for purposes of environmental protection and conservation.

“Hundreds of thousands of species will perish, and this reduction of 10 to 20 percent of the earth's biota will occur in about half a human life span.... This reduction of the biological diversity of the planet is the most basic issue of our time.”

— Dr. Lovejoy's Foreword in Conservation Biology by Michael Soulé and Bruce Wilcox (1980).