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Energy and Environment Program
Environmental Policy Forum
Conserving Biodiversity is the report of a Biodiversity Policy Forum held in Aspen in April, 2004. It includes Gardening the Earth, a summary of the groups conclusions by Forum Co-chairs Bruce Babbitt, former U.S. Secretary of Interior, and Jos Sarukhn, Professor of Ecology and former President of the National University of Mexico (UNAM). They stress the importance of protecting biodiversity in human-dominated environments in addition to setting aside protected areas. The report also includes nine discussion papers commissioned for the Forum.
The Institute's second Environmental Policy Forum, held in Aspen in January, 2002, focused on what the U.S. should do about climate change. It was chaired by Frank Loy, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs under President Clinton, and Bruce Smart, Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade under President Reagan. Thirty scientific, business, environmental, and government leaders concluded that 1) the science of climate change is clear enough to justify action, 2) R&D and voluntary efforts, while important, are not enough; 3) businesses need a signal now - a credible commitment from government - that greenhouse gas emissions in the future will have a cost; and 4) a mandatory cap on emissions with a system of trading emissions permits is the best politically achievable approach for the U.S. U.S. Policy on Climate Change: What Next?, the publication that resulted from the meeting, contains the chairman's overview of the Forum and the discussion papers prepared for it.
The first Environmental Policy Forum met in Aspen in July, 2000, co-chaired by former Stanford University President Donald Kennedy and AES Corporation Chairman Roger Sant. Acting as a hypothetical advisory committee to the U.S. President taking office in 2001, a diverse group of leaders discussed 14 "memos to the President" prepared by experts in such fields as climate change, biodiversity, water, oceans, population, health, food and agriculture, and international governance. These memos and a summary by the Co-chairs are included in U.S. Policy and the Global Environment: Memos to the President.
The reports of these Forums are available for purchase and in PDF, with papers individually downloadable.