Vice-Chancellor's Open Lecture: "Mass Extinction of Species: Why We Should Care and What We Can Do About It" by Sir Norman Myers

Dr Max Price, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at UCT, invite you to attend the

VICE-CHANCELLOR’S OPEN LECTURE:

"Mass Extinction of Species: Why We Should Care and What We Can Do About It"

Presented by Sir Norman Myers
Fellow of the 21st Century School, Green College & the Said Business School, Oxford University

Date: Wednesday 10 February 2011
Time: 18:00 (Guests to be seated by 17:45)
Venue: Kramer Lecture Theatre 1 Wilfred and Jules Kramer Law Building Cross Campus Road Middle Campus Rondebosch

Sir Norman Myers is a Professor and Fellow of the 21st Century School, Green College and the Said Business School, Oxford University. He is an Adjunct Professor at Duke University and a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Vermont and Cape Town. He has undertaken research projects and policy appraisals for the World Bank, United Nations agencies, the White House, numerous foundations, the European Commission and OECD. He has advised leaders of the Brundtland Commission, the Rio Earth Summit, the International Conference on Population and Development, the World Food Summit, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development. In the late 1980s he originated the biodiversity hotspots thesis, which has since mobilised over $850 million for conservation. In 1998 he received a Queen’s Honour for ‘services to the global environment.’ In 2007, he was identified by Time Magazine as a Global Hero of the Environment, alongside Al Gore and David Attenborough. He has received the Volvo Environment Prize, the UNEP Sasakawa Environment Prize, and the prestigious Blue Planet Prize. These awards have recognized him as being the first to warn of mass extinction of species, the ecological fallout from tropical deforestation, environmental threats to security, ‘perverse’ subsidies, environmental refugees and the degradation of future evolution. He has published several hundred scientific papers and popular articles, plus 20 books including (2001) Perverse Subsidies: How Tax Dollars Undercut the Environment and the Economy; (2004) New Consumers: The Influence of Affluence on the Environment; (2005) The New Gaia Atlas of Planet Management; and (2008) The Citizen is Willing but Society Won’t Deliver: The Problem of Institutional Roadblocks.

Limited Seating: Kindly RSVP to Zukiswa Dlelembe via email: zukiswa.dlelembe@uct.ac.za, or tel:021 650 3759; by Wednesday, 3 February 2010.