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2002-2003 Season Lecture Series News Release For Immediate Release

February 4, 2003
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu

The Challenge of Sustainable Development—the Second Annual UCSB/Worldwatch Institute Symposium—brings lectures, panels and a film to UCSB

Summary Facts:

The UCSB / Worldwatch Institute Symposium The Challenge of Sustainable Development will be held on Friday & Saturday, March 7 & 8 at the UCSB MultiCultural Center Theater. The Symposium will examine the environmental challenges and possible solutions for the 21st century, discussing planning that is ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just and humane, and feature lectures and panels by Worldwatch Institute scientists and researchers. Award-wining public service announcements produced by Earth Communications Office (ECO) will also be screened at breaks during the Symposium.

The Worldwatch Institute is a non-profit public policy research organization dedicated to informing policymakers and the public about emerging global problems and trends and the complex links between the world economy and its environmental support systems. Worldwatch focuses on the underlying causes of and practical solutions to the world’s problems, in order to inspire people to demand new policies, investment patterns and lifestyle choices. It is well known for its annual publication The State of the World, which examines crucial global issues. More information about the institute can be found at www.worldwatch.org.

A schedule and description of events for the symposium follows:

Friday, March 7

1:00–1:30 pm
Welcome and Introductory Comments
Robert Wilkinson, Lecturer, Environmental Studies Program, UCSB
1:30–3:30 pm
“Oil, War and Carbon: Why a Hydrogen Economy is Necessary (and Possible)”
Christopher Flavin, President, Worldwatch Institute

The fossil fuels that powered the 20th century are making the 21st century unstable and dangerous, with military and ecological cataclysms growing ever more likely. The answer to this dilemma is as abundant as the vast quantities of solar energy that fall on the planet, and the abundant hydrogen that lies in its oceans. What is needed to build a solar-hydrogen economy is a global commitment that is as deep and well-funded as the war on terrorism.

Respondents:
Alan C. Lloyd, Chairman, California Air Resources Board
Edward A. Smeloff, Asst. General Manager, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission

Saturday, March 8

10:00 am–12:00 pm
“From Monterrey to Johannesburg to Cancun: Reshaping Global Governance for Sustainable Development”
Hilary French, Director, Global Governance Project, Worldwatch Institute

Several major international negotiations of the past few years have contributed to the development of an ambitious new agenda for international diplomacy and governance that has important implications for efforts to forge an environmentally and socially sustainable development path. This talk will describe what is at stake in these negotiations, including the World Trade Organization’s next ministerial meeting to be held in Cancun in September 2003, and discuss how we can reshape today’s evolving structures of global governance so that they support rather than undermine sustainable development.

Respondents:
Felicia Marcus, Executive Vice-President, Trust for Public Land, and formerly Regional Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency
Dennis Aigner, Dean, Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB
1:30–3:30 pm
“Putting the Brakes on Urban Sprawl”
Molly O’Meara Sheehan, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

Cars and highways have stretched cities to new limits, as cars require more space than other forms of urban transportation. As urbanists, environmentalists and economists have documented the various costs of sprawl—segregated communities, depressing landscapes, illness from polluted air and water, climate change, and economic slippage—they have also helped citizens create a vision of an urban form that would allow people greater access to jobs, schools and stores at less cost to the environment.

Respondents:
William R. Freudenburg, Dehlsen Professor of Environmental Studies, Environmental Studies Program, UCSB
Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Professor of Sociology, and Chair of the Women, Culture, and Development Program, UCSB
4:00 pm
“Sustainable Development: Oxymoron or Realistic Challenge?”
Panel:
Robert Wilkinson, Lecturer, Environmental Studies Program, UCSB
Christopher Flavin, President, Worldwatch Institute
Hilary French, Director, Global Governance Project, Worldwatch Institute
Molly O’Meara Sheehan, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

The evening before the Symposium begins, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and UCSB Arts & Lectures, in association with Worldwatch, will present a screening of the powerful documentary film DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy. Director Aradhana Seth will introduce the screening and hold a question and answer session after the film. DAM/AGE traces celebrated Indian writer Arundhati Roy’s bold and controversial campaign against the Narmada dam project in India that will displace hundreds of thousands of people. The film shows how Roy, author of The God of Small Things, chose to use her fame to stand up to powerful interests backed by both multinational corporate capital and the state. Roy believes the fight in the Narmada Valley is not just the story of modern India, but a global struggle about “who counts, who doesn’t, what matters, what doesn’t, what counts as a cost, what doesn’t, what counts as collateral damage, what doesn’t.” This presentation of DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy is on Thursday, March 6 at 7:30 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Tickets are $6 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students and are on sale now.

In an event related to the Symposium, the UCSB Women’s Center will present ecologist, activist and author Vandana Shiva delivering the free lecture Resource Monopolies vs. Earth Democracy on Tuesday, March 4 at 7 pm in UCSB Engineering 1104. Shiva is the director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in New Delhi and a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize. Shiva’s lecture will explore how the conflict over vital resources produced by globalization is a gender conflict, a class conflict and a north-south conflict. The concept of earth democracy provides an ecological and feminist framework for transcending these conflicts and creating a democracy and freedom for all life.

The Symposium is presented by the Worldwatch Institute, UCSB Arts & Lectures, the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, the Environmental Studies Program, the Office of the Chancellor, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB MultiCultural Center and Santa Barbara City College Adult Education Program.

For more information or for tickets to DAM/AGE: A film with Arundhati Roy call the UCSB Arts & Lectures Ticket Office at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.

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