25Th Annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference • Seating at All Other Keynotes Will Be Allocated on a First-Come, First-Served Basis
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Cultivating Corridors for the People Thursday, March 1 – Sunday, March 4, 2007 Welcome to the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference (PIELC), the premier annual gathering for environmentalists in the world! Now in its 25th year, the conference unites activists, attorneys, students, scientists, and community members to share their expertise and insights. With keynote addresses, workshops, films, celebra- tions, and over 100 panels, PIELC is world-renowned for its energy, innovation, and inspiration. Please note: • Registration will be held in the lobby of the University of Oregon School of Law, located on the corner of 15th Avenue and Agate Street. • Keynote addresses will be held in the Erb Memorial Union (EMU) Ballroom on campus, with the exception of the closing addresses, which will be held in room 175 at the law school. • Opening keynote update: If you registered for PIELC prior to February 15th, you may pick up a ticket for the opening keynote at the registration table between 2:00 and 6:00 P.M on Thursday. Any remaining, unclaimed tickets will be disbursed on a first-come, first-served basis at the EMU Ballroom at 6:15 P.M. Once these tickets are gone, overflow seating will be available in additional rooms where both speeches may be viewed in real time. 25th Annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference • Seating at all other keynotes will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. • Space for meals and the Ethics Workshop is limited. Please pre-purchase tickets for meals and the workshop at the registration table in the law school lobby. Keynote Biographies Dinah Bear is General Counsel of the the public about climate change. Mr. successfully negotiating treaties protecting Council on Environmental Quality Dupre has traveled over 13,500 miles traditional homelands. The New York (CEQ) in the Executive Office of the throughout the high Arctic regions of City watershed agreement, which he President. Ms. Bear joined CEQ as northeastern Russia, Lapland, Alaska, negotiated on behalf of environmentalists Deputy General Counsel in 1981 and Canada, and Greenland. In 1992, he and New York City watershed consumers, was appointed General Counsel in led a 3,059-mile, 185-day trek across the is regarded as an international model in 1983. She is an expert on the National Canadian Arctic, the first west-to-east stakeholder consensus negotiations and Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and has crossing of the Northwest Passage via sustainable development. Mr. Kennedy chaired both the Standing Committee on dog sled and ski. Mr. Larsen has traveled was named one of Time magazine’s Environmental Law of the American Bar extensively throughout Alaska and the “Heroes for the Planet” for his success Association and the Steering Committee Canadian Arctic. In 2002, he completed helping Riverkeeper lead the fight to of the Environment, Energy, and Natural a 700-mile dog sled expedition in the restore the Hudson River. The group’s Resources Division of the District of Canadian Subarctic that focused on the achievement helped spawn more than Columbia Bar. She has received the culture and land of the Oji-Cree Peoples 150 Waterkeeper organizations across Distinguished Service Award from the of northern Ontario. the globe. Sierra Club and the Chairman’s Award from the Natural Resources Council of Anne Kajir is Chief Executive Officer of Winona LaDuke lives and works on America. the Environmental Law Centre in Port the White Earth reservation in northern Moresby, Papua New Guinea and is lead Minnesota and is a parent to five children. Reverend Marta Benavides was born attorney in a Supreme Court case aimed at She is a two-time United States Vice and raised in El Salvador and has devoted stopping foreign timber companies’ illegal Presidential Candidate and the author her entire life to inspiring a culture of deforestation of the largest remaining of five books. She currently serves as peace in her country and the world. She intact block of tropical forest in the Asian Program Director of Honor the Earth, actively participated in peace processes Pacific region. She has found evidence a Native American foundation working to stop armed conflict in El Salvador in of widespread government corruption primarily on environmental and energy the 1980s even as a series of threats to her allowing these companies to act as a policy issues. Through this work, she is life forced her to leave the country. She law unto themselves, ignoring the terms involved in national renewable energy returned in 1992 and has since created of government-issued timber permits strategies for the new millennium. Ms. the “Ecological House,” a demonstration and terrorizing local communities–at LaDuke also serves as the Founding project featuring a water purification gunpoint in some cases–into signing over Director of White Earth Land Recovery system using sunlight and recycled their land rights. In 1997, her first year of Project, the largest reservation-based bottles, a medicinal herb garden, and a practice, Ms. Kajir successfully defended a nonprofit organization in the state of low-maintenance butterfly garden. In precedent-setting appeal in the Supreme Minnesota. She has received numerous addition to her work at home, Reverend Court of Papua New Guinea, which forced honors including the Thomas Merton Benavides is the International Vice the logging industry to pay damages to Award, the Ann Bancroft Award, and the President of the Women’s International indigenous land owners. In 2006, she Global Green Award. League for Peace and Freedom and follows received the Goldman Environmental UN and UNESCO processes as part of the Prize for her outstanding work. Zygmunt Plater is a professor of law Women’s Caucus, Sustainability Caucus, at Boston College. He brought the Peace Caucus, and Values Caucus. In Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. serves as Senior snail darter, a fish threatened by dam 2005, she was nominated as one of 1000 Attorney for the Natural Resources construction in Tennessee, to the nation’s Peace Women for the Nobel Peace Prize. Defense Council, Chief Prosecuting attention. He was instrumental in Attorney for Hudson Riverkeeper, and spearheading the ESA litigation that Lonnie Dupre and Eric Larsen made President of Waterkeeper Alliance. He is closed the Tellico Dam and established the history on July 1, 2006 by becoming also a Clinical Professor and Supervising ESA as an important tool for protecting the first people in the world to travel to Attorney at Pace University School of biological diversity. Professor Plater the North Pole in the summer. One of Law’s Environmental Litigation Clinic and worked as chair of the State of Alaska’s Oil the primary objectives of their historical is co-host of Ring of Fire on Air America Spill Commission legal research task force journey was to create awareness of global Radio. Mr. Kennedy has worked on responding to the Exxon-Valdez disaster, warming. Since returning from their environmental issues across the Americas has been a legal consultant in many voyage, the two explorers have given talks and has assisted several indigenous environmental law cases, has authored around the world to continue to educate tribes in Latin America and Canada in many law review articles, and is lead author PAGE 2 Keynote Biographies of the widely-adopted environmental law to independent research into today’s Craig E. Williams is a decorated Vietnam coursebook, Environmental Law and most significant ecological and social War veteran who successfully convinced Policy: Nature, Law, and Society. He was issues; Navdanya, a national movement the Pentagon to stop plans to incinerate awarded the 2005 David Brower Lifetime to protect the diversity and integrity of stockpiles of chemical weapons stored Achievement Award at the 23rd annual living resources, especially native seed, the in multiple locations around the United PIELC. promotion of organic farming, and fair States. He started his campaign in 1985 trade; and Diverse Women for Diversity, after learning that one of nine weapons Jerome Ringo is President of the Apollo an international movement of women stockpiles to be burned was at an Army Alliance and Chairman of the Board of working on food, agriculture, patents, and depot in his community. Worried that the National Wildlife Federation. After biotechnology. Among Dr. Shiva’s many incineration would put local citizens volunteering to assist evacuees from awards are the Alternative Nobel Prize and their environment at risk, he built New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane (Right Livelihood Award, 1993), Order a nationwide grassroots coalition, the Katrina, he became an evacuee himself of the Golden Ark, Global 500 Award Chemical Weapons Working Group when Hurricane Rita struck Lake Charles, of UN, and Earth Day International (CWWG), to demand safe disposal LA. These experiences thrust Mr. Ringo Award. solutions and openness within the forward as a national conservation Pentagon’s program. Today, Mr. Williams spokesman on an array of issues including Sheila Watt-Cloutier is the former continues working with CWWG highlighting global warming’s influence Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council member groups and citizens in Oregon, on hurricanes, reforming national water (ICC), the Inuit organization that Utah, Alabama, and Arkansas, where policies to put the public interest first, represents internationally the 155,000 incinerators currently are destroying and restoring degraded wetlands of Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, chemical weapons. He was awarded the coastal Louisiana and other habitats vital and Chukotka in the Far East of the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2006 to wildlife. Much of his work focuses Federation of Russia. Defending the for his efforts. on building coalitions among farmers, rights of Inuit has been at the forefront business, labor, faith, and conservation of Ms. Watt-Cloutier’s mandate since Mary C. Wood is the Philip H. Knight groups in an effort to forge a new her election as President of ICC Canada Professor of Law and Morse Center for energy future that will both create jobs in 1995 and reelection in 1998.