More speakers to come as they are confirmed

Ms. Eden Brukman

Architect and vice president of Living Building Challenge

Bio and photo to come.

Prof. Yves Cabannes

Urban planner, activist and professor at University College London

Currently Professor and Chair of Development Planning at the DPU, Development Planning Unit, University College London. From 2004 to 2006, lecturer in Urban Planning at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Visiting scholar in European and Latin American universities.

From 1997 to 2003, he was the Regional Coordinator of the UN Habitat/UNDP Urban Management Program for Latin America and the Caribbean. Prior to joining the UMP, worked for ten years in Northeast Brazil, for various NGOs, grassroots and Local Governments on low-income housing, income-generating activities and slum improvement in very poor communities.

Coordinator of numerous Research and Research & Development programs in relation with Asian, Latin American, African and Arab partners institutions on urban and municipal governance related issues: participatory planning and budgeting, municipal poverty reduction and social inclusion innovative practices, revitalization of urban centres, community based micro finance, urban agriculture, low income housing and appropriate technologies for local development.

He is an advocate on development issues and acted as Chair for the UN Advisory Group on Forced Evictions (2004 -2010); senior advisor and member of various development initiatives and networks such as the International Alliance of Inhabitants and the International RUAF Foundation, Resource Centres for Urban Agriculture and Food Security.
Urban Development Planner, graduated from Essec, Enpc and PhD from Sorbonne University.

Professor Carole Després

Professor of Architecture and Co-ordinator of the Interdisciplinary research group on suburbs, Laval University, Québec City, Canada

Carole Després is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at Laval University in Québec City, Canada since 1989. She holds a professional degree in architecture and a Master’s of Science from the same university, as well as a Ph.D. in Environment-Behavior Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the United States. She was the head of graduate programs in architectural sciences from 1996 to 2006, before taking over the direction of Laval University multidisciplinary Planning and Development Research Center (CRAD) until 2010. She is the co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Suburbs (GIRBa) whose mission is to understand, imagine and act on aging suburbs in relationship with limited demographic growth, ongoing urban sprawl, car dependency and the necessity of sustainable development. Her research and teaching deal with residential environments and behaviours, and favours back and forth between fundamental research, action research, and design. Her work includes the development of processes aimed at bridging the gap between knowledge and practice, namely through consensus-building and participatory design.

Ms. Fatimata Dia Touré

Director, Institut de l'énergie et de l'environnement de la francophonie

Senegal native Fatimata Dia Touré is Director of the Institut de l'énergie et de l'environnement de la Francophonie (IEPF), a subsidiary body of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, headquartered in Québec, since September of 2007. Educated in environmental law, she spent 27 years in the service of Senegal’s ministère de l’Environnement et de la Protection de la nature, where she oversaw the portfolios of Nature Protection and Classified Institutions.

She is also on the Board of Directors for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and her country’s representative on the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She has been called upon to act as an expert negotiator for Senegal in the negotiations of several multilateral accords, including those on climate change, chemical products and desertification. Mrs. Dia Touré moreover served as a focal point of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.

Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf

Executive Secretary, UN Convention on Biological Diversity

An Algerian national, Dr. Djoghlaf has pursued a distinguished diplomatic career that has included postings with the government of Algeria and UNEP.

He assumed the position of Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on January 3, 2006. He was named to his previous position as Assistant Executive Director of UNEP in June 2003, following his success as Director and Coordinator of UNEP's Division of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), where he played a key role for some seven years and successfully raised UNEP’S profile.

Throughout his impressive career, Dr. Djoghlaf has increased his extensive knowledge of global environment processes within the UN system and within the CBD process. Notably, he was the General Rapporteur of the Preparatory Committee of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), better known as the “Rio Summit”. He was Vice Chairman of the Eleventh Session of the Intergovernmental Committee on Science and Technology for Development and Vice President of the Negotiating Committee on the Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as Chair of one of the two negotiating committees of the Convention to Combat Desertification.

Ms. Debra Efroymson

Regional director for HealthBridge Canada in Bangladesh and South-to-South Ecocity Alliance

Debra Efroymson is Regional Director for HealthBridge, a Canadian NGO working on health and health equity, including Liveable Cities. Debra has lived and worked in Asia since 1994, and has been working on ecocities since 2004. She has given many talks and written numerous articles and four books on ecocities, liveable cities, public spaces, climate change, economics, urban transport, carfree cities and related subjects. Based in Dhaka, she works in other countries in Asia as well, supporting local NGOs to work for policies and programs to make cities more equitable and liveable.

Debra is also a Core Adviser to the International Ecocity Standards project of Ecocity Builders. She speaks five languages in addition to her native English, and has worked and traveled in Latin America and Africa. Her most recent passion is economics: specifically how to overcome the myths that suggest that we must sacrifice the environment and people’s health and wellbeing in order to achieve economic growth.

On South-to-South Ecocity Alliance: Consisting of partner organizations in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam and Zambia, South-to-South Ecocity Alliance was created to enhance south-to-south sharing and cooperation, in the pursuit of sound urban design for better health, gender equity, poverty reduction, and a cleaner environment.

dr. HOWARD FRUMKIN

Dean of the School of Public Health, University of Washington, USA

Howard Frumkin is Dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health. He is an internist, environmental and occupational medicine specialist, and epidemiologist. From 2005 to 2010 he served leadership roles at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, first as director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and later as Special Assistant to the CDC Director for Climate Change and Health. Previously, he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Emory Medical School.

His research interests include public health aspects of the built environment; air pollution; metal and PCB toxicity; climate change; health benefits of contact with nature; and environmental and occupational health policy, especially regarding minority communities and developing nations. He is the author or co-author of over 180 scientific journal articles and chapters and several books.

Mr. Jan Gehl

Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at the School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark; Partner, Gehl Architects

Mr. Gehl is an Architect MAA & FRIBA, Professor Emeritus of Urban Design at the School of Architecture in Copenhagen. He has been awarded the Sir Patrick Abercrombie prize for exemplary contributions to town planning by the International Union of Architects as well as an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Jan Gehl was awarded an international honorary fellowship to the Royal Institute of British Architects (Int. FRIBA) in 2006 and to the AIA, the American Institute of Architecture and the Canadian Institute of Architecture in 2008.

Jan Gehl is the author of many books including Life between Buildings; Public Spaces, Public Life; and Cities for People.

Professor Jeff Kenworthy

Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute, Australia;
Goethe University Institute for Human Geography, Germany

Jeff Kenworthy has spent 32 years in the transport and urban planning field and currently teaches courses and supervises postgraduate students in the city policy and urban sustainability fields.

He is author and co-author of over 200 other book chapters and journal publications in the area of city policy. He recently co-wrote a book on Ecomobility with his North American colleagues Preston L. Schiller and Eric C. Bruun.: An Introduction to Sustainable Transportation.He has extensive experience in the areas of compact housing developments, public transport systems and sustainable transport policy and has worked as a consultant for local, state and federal governments in Australia, as well as private organisations and the World Bank. He has also acted in an advisory capacity in the Premier's Department in WA. Dr Kenworthy has lectured internationally in 24 countries and over 60 cities to universities, government agencies and community organisations on city policy issues.

DR. CAROLYN J. LUKENSMEYER

AmericaSpeaks - Founder and President

Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks, is an innovator in deliberative democracy, public administration, and organizational development. Using innovative deliberative tools such as the 21st Century Town Meeting®, AmericaSpeaks has engaged more than 160,000 people in governance, in all 50 states and around the world. Prior to founding AmericaSpeaks, Dr. Lukensmeyer served as Consultant to the White House Chief of Staff in the Clinton Administration and as Chief of Staff to Ohio Governor Richard F. Celeste from 1986 to 1991. Dr. Lukensmeyer led her own successful organizational development and management consulting firm for 14 years, working with public and private sector organizations on four continents.

She earned a PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University and completed postgraduate training at the internationally-known Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. In 2009 Dr. Lukensmeyer received the Straus Innovator Award, given annually by the College of the Atlantic to highlight practices that make a positive and tangible contribution to the health of our global civil society.

Mr. Richard Register

Founder and President of Ecocity Builders; Founder of the International Ecocity Conference Series

Richard Register is one of the world’s great theorists and authors in ecological city design and planning. He is also a practitioner with four decades of experience activating local projects, pushing establishment buttons and working with environmentalists and developers to get a better city built and running. Among his many “firsts,” he convened the first of the Ecocity International Conference Series in Berkeley, California.

He was founding president of Urban Ecology (1975) and founder and current president of Ecocity Builders (1992), both nonprofit educational organizations.

Richard Register is the author of a number of books including Ecocity Berkeley and Ecocities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with nature.

DR. Peter A. Victor

Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University

Dr. Peter Victor is an economist who has worked on environmental issues for over 40 years as an academic, consultant and public servant. His most recent book is Managing without Growth. Slower by Design, not Disaster. (Edward Elgar, 2008)

Dr. Victor is a Professor in Environmental Studies at York University and from 1996 to 2001 was Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Studies. This followed several years as Assistant Deputy Minister of the Environmental Sciences and Standards Division in the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. Prior to that Dr. Victor was a principal of VHB Consulting and Victor and Burrell Research and Consulting where he undertook many influential policy-related economic studies in Canada and abroad.

Dr. Victor has served on numerous boards and advisory committees and he has appeared as an expert witness before various Commissions. From 2000 to 2004 he was President of the Royal Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Science, Canada’s oldest science organization, and from 2004-2006 he was Chair of Environment Canada’s Science and Technology Advisory Board. Currently he is a member of the Advisory Committee on the National Accounts for Statistics Canada, the Academic Advisory Panel of TruCost, the Board of the David Suzuki Foundation, and the editorial advisory board of several journals.