Lubchenco

By Donna Mennitto
School of Public Health

For Jane Lubchenco, internationally recognized scientist and marine ecologist, the environment is not a marginal issue; it is the issue of the future and, as she puts it, "the future is here now." On Friday, April 22, in celebration of Earth Day, Lubchenco will deliver the sixth annual Edward and Nancy Dodge Lecture titled "Seas the Day: Ocean Science, Politics and Ethics." The event, which begins at 1:30 p.m. in the Becton Dickenson Lecture Hall of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, is sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. A reception will follow.

"We are very pleased that Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a distinguished member of the National Academy of Sciences, will, as this year's Dodge Lecturer, honor the commitment of Edward Dodge and his late wife, Nancy, to preserve the ecosystem for future generations," said Robert Lawrence, associate dean of SPH and director of the CLF. "Dr. Lubchenco's work on the degradation of the environment by our current practices and [her] alerting policy-makers to these important issues parallels the priorities of the Center for a Livable Future."

Born in Colorado, Lubchenco earned her doctorate and taught at Harvard University and is now the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology at Oregon State University. Her research expertise includes biodiversity, climate change, sustainability science and the state of the oceans. In her 1997 address as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Lubchenco called for a new "social contract" between scientists and society. "The current and growing extent of human dominance of the planet," she said, "will require new kinds of knowledge and applications from science. To ensure that environmental policies have a solid foundation in science, scientists should be leading the dialogue on scientific priorities, new institutional arrangements and improved mechanisms to disseminate and utilize knowledge more quickly."

The CLF studies and communicates the complex interrelationships between diet, food production, environment and human health and promotes policies for the protection of health and the global environment.

For information, go to www.jhsph.edu/environment or call the CLF at 410-502-2317.

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