President, World Resources Institute (WRI)
Mr. Lash, President of the Washington-based World Resources Institute, is a former Peace Corps volunteer. Before joining WRI, a non-partisan, non-profit think-tank, he directed the environmental law and policy program of the Vermont Law School and headed the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. Mr. Lash will discuss the impact of climate change on global ecosystems that support the production of food for a burgeoning world population. He will discuss WRI’s objectives to catalyze action to reverse the accelerating trends of “biotic impoverishment,” climate destabilization, and ecosystem destruction—even as it explores ways to provide opportunity to more people. In his recent testimony before a U. S. Senate hearing on the “Climate Change Strategy and Technological Innovation Act of 2001,” Mr. Lash said, “The conclusion of the world’s scientists is quite unequivocal: climate change is real [and] we are beginning to see its consequences.”