Advisory Committee

The project Advisory Committee includes humanitarian and development experts, environmental and natural resources experts, and peace and security experts.

Mishkat Al Moumin

Clarissa Augustinus

Ken Conca

Geoff Dabelko

Patricia Kameri-Mbote

Matti Lehtonen

Marc Levy

Claude Voillat

Mishkat Al Moumin is the Former Minister of the Environment in the Interim Iraqi Government and Environmental Law Institute. Dr. Al Moumin is a well-known Iraqi lawyer, and an assistant professor of human rights in University of Baghdad - School of Law. Since Iraq did not previously have a ministry of the environment, Dr. Al Moumin designed its entire structure. In this post, she also developed new environmental law, led campaigns to support Iraqi people living in environmentally dangerous areas, and initiated awareness and cleaning projects. In all these campaigns, Dr. Al Moumin engaged community based NGOs and community leaders. Most notably the Ministry - during her time- has issued the first report in the modern Iraqi history about the environmental status in Iraq.

Clarissa Augustinus is the Chief of the Land, Tenure and Property Administration section, Global Division, UN-HABITAT. The key driver of the Global land tool network is to document, develop and disseminate pro poor gender large scale land tools. The network has over 26 international and regional partners including multi-laterals, bilaterals, training and research institutions, civil society and professional organizations. Ms. Augustinus is the co-author with Disaster Management Programme of draft Guidelines for UN system on dealing with land from emergency to reconstruction. She is the main author of the Handbook on Best Practices, Security of Tenure and Access to Land published by UN-HABITAT in 2003 reviewing the innovative land administration approaches developed globally since the Habitat Agenda. For 7 years, Ms. Augustinus was the Senior Lecturer, School of Civil Engineering, Surveying and Construction, University of Natal, South Africa responsible for teaching and oversight of the Msc programme for Land Management. She was appointed by the South African government to the statutory council of surveyors, as well as the national education committee to alter the post apartheid surveying curriculum of the country at all levels for mining, property, marine and mapping industry. She also worked as an international consultant on land management and administration from an institutional perspective (South Africa, Indonesia, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana) for a wide range of donor agencies and UN organizations. Ms. Augustinus worked with a team to develop innovative land tools — Development Facilitation Act (South Africa); Flexible Land Tenure bill (Namibia), Systematic demarcation — not titling — for the creation of spatial information and the delivery of economic and social services, Land Sector Strategic Plan (Uganda); selective titling accompanied by thorough adjudication of occupancy rights for Land Law of 1997 (Mozambique). She is the author of 3 chapters in books, and 44 papers (most of which were published in peer reviewed journals under the name Clarissa Fourie). Ms. Augustinus holds a Ph.D in Social Anthropology. Her thesis was a study both of an African land tenure system, as well as the genesis of informal settlements under these conditions. She was also an Adviser to the Federation of International Surveyors, Commission 7, Land Management and Cadastre, Working groups on Creating land administration in formal and informal environments; and Instruments for Land Distribution.

Ken Conca is a professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland and Director of the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda. His research and teaching focus on global environmental politics, environmental policy, social movements in world politics, and peace and conflict studies. He is the author/editor of seven books, including The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance (Routledge, 2008); Governing Water (MIT Press, 2006); Green Planet Blues (Westview Press, 2004); Environmental Peacemaking (Johns Hopkins/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002); and Confronting Consumption (MIT Press, 2002). He is a recipient of the International Studies Association’s Chadwick Alger Prize for best book on international organization (for Governing Water) and a two-time recipient of ISA’s Harold & Margaret Sprout Award for best book on international environmental affairs (for Governing Water and Confronting Consumption). Dr. Conca is associate editor of the MIT Press journal Global Environmental Politics; a member of the Scientific Steering Committee on Global Environmental Change and Human Security; and a member of the UN Environment Programme’s Expert Advisory Group on Environment, Conflict and Peacebuilding.

Geoffrey D. Dabelko is director of the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP), a fourteen year-old nonpartisan policy forum on environment, population, health, and security issues at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He is also an adjunct professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He has held prior positions with the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy, and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Dr. Dabelko’s current research focuses on environment, conflict, and cooperation with a special emphasis on environmental pathways to peacebuilding. He is principal investigator for ECSP’s Navigating Peace Water Initiative and co-editor with Ken Conca of Green Planet Blues: Environmental Politics from Stockholm to Johannesburg and Environmental Peacemaking. He is a member of advisory or editorial boards for the UN Environment Programme, International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, Global Environmental Change, Wilton Park USA Foundation, Center for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California, Irvine, Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, Screenscope, Inc., and Circle of Blue. Dr. Dabelko received a Ph.D. in government and politics from the University of Maryland and an AB in political science from Duke University.

Patricia Kameri-Mbote is an Associate Professor of Law, an internationally renowned scholar and an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. She studied law in Nairobi, Warwick, Zimbabwe and Stanford and has served as a Policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She teaches at the School of Law, University of Nairobi. She has also taught law at the Universities of Kansas; Stellenbosch; and Zimbabwe. Her areas of specialisation include environment and natural resources law and policy, human rights, women’s rights, land rights, intellectual property rights and biotechnology policy and law. Kameri-Mbote is the Chair to the Kenya Seeds and Plant Varieties Tribunal; a member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental Law and the Kenya National Academy of Sciences. She is a board member of the Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE-Uganda); Pell Centre for International Relations, Salve Regina University, Rhode Island; a trustee of the Kenya Land Conservation Trust, a Trust established to acquire and hold land for wildlife conservation through leases, easements and other innovative property mechanisms; a member of the Scientific Steering Committee, Global Environmental Change & Human Security Project, International Human Dimensions Programme; a Member of the Arts & Humanities Research Board (AHRB) Research Centre for Law, Gender & Sexuality, University of Kent and a former board member of the Kenya Copyright Board. She has consulted for many international and national agencies and participated in national policy making and drafting initiatives in Kenya, Uganda and Ghana. She has published a number of books and many articles in international journals.

Matti Lehtonen is a Policy Officer in the UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO). Serving as the environmental focal point in the PBSO, Matti Lehtonen’s special focus is on environmental sources of conflict and environmentally sensitive peacebuilding. His work includes good practices in environmental security and peacebuilding as well as policy advice with a view to mainstreaming environmentally related concerns into peacebuilding strategies and plans. Previously Matti has worked in the Balkans, assessing the political situation and stability in the framework of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy missions. During 2005-2007, he was the Head of EU Monitoring Mission’s Mission Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other assignments have included two years in the European Commission’s Delegation to Venezuela, work in the waste management sector of the Baltic states, and the Council of Europe as well as the Council of Europe's Bank.

Marc Levy is Deputy Director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He also serves as an adjunct professor in Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs. He is a political scientist specializing in the human dimensions of global change. He has published on environment-security connections, environmental sustainability indicators, emerging infectious diseases, the geography of poverty, and the effectiveness of international environmental institutions. The common thread running through his work is a desire to deepen our understanding of the complex interactions between humans and their environment so that they can be better managed. He serves as Lead Project Scientist of the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center; and directs the Earth Institute's Cross-Cutting Initiative on Environment-Security Linkages. He has served on a number of global environmental assessments and frequently advises national governments and international organizations on a number of global change issues. Before coming to CIESIN in 1998, Mr. Levy had teaching appointments at Princeton University and Williams College.

Claude Voillat is an economic advisor at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). He is responsible in particular for developing the ICRC's relations with businesses operating in conflict zones. Prior to this, he spent over 10 years in management positions in various ICRC missions abroad (principally in the Middle East and in Africa). He holds an MA in political sciences from the University of Lausanne and has just completed in 2007 an MBA (specialization 'entrepreneurship') at the University of Geneva.