EEM Professor Richard Cothern participated in a symposium entitled "The Next Big North American Climate Issue?: Sustainability Impacts of The Canadian Tar Sands Development," sponsored by the GW Institute for Sustainability Research, Education, and Policy on April 13, 2010. The symposium was focused
on the Alberta Oil Sands development in the far north of Canada, which has generated global debate and action. The
Alberta Oil Sands development is the second largest source of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia. Experts from the United States and Canada discussed the environmental and social costs of development, and possible next steps.
The GW Institute for Sustainability Research, Education, & Policy is a newly-chartered university-wide organization with the mission of advancing the scholarship of sustainability in the four main areas of Global Climate Change, Sustainable Organizations, Sustainable Communities and Infrastructure, and Urban Sustainability.
Speakers at the event included Dr. Mark Starik, Director of the GW Institute of Sustainability and Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy at the GW School of Business; James Hoggan, President of Hoggan & Associates; Jessica Shipley, Fellow, Pew Center on Global Climate Change; Jack Woodward, Aboriginal Law Expert; Chief Al Lameman, Chief of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation; Garth Lenz, Fellow, International League of Conservation Photographers; Marc Lepage, Senior Advisor, Climate Policy for the Embassy of Canada; and Margery Moore, President, Institute for Sustainability Education and Action, British Columbia.
