David Zilberman is a Professor of Environmental Economics, holds a Robinson Chair in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ARE) and is Co-Director of the Center for Sustainable Resource Development at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been on the faculty at U. C., Berkeley since 1979 and was the Chairman of ARE from 1994 to 1999. He was elected Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association in 1998. Dr. Zilberman's research focuses on the economics of agriculture, natural resources and the environment, and technological change and risk with specialization in water, pest control, and technology adoption and transfer issues. He has more than 100 refereed journal articles in Science, AER, Econometrica, AJAE, and JEEM, among others. Dr. Zilberman has served as a consultant to the EPA, USDA, the World Bank, FAO, and OECD.

JOY HAREWOOD
Program Assistant

As the Beahrs ELP Program Assistant, Joy’s primary duty is to help co-ordinate the ELP Alumni Network.  Joy is currently in her second year of the Optometry program at the UC Berkeley College of Optometry.  She is our resident Canadian and recently moved to California from Toronto, where she completed undergraduate work at the University of Toronto.  Before heading to graduate school, Joy worked for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.  Joy was also employed at the Centre for Urban Health Initiatives at the University of Toronto.  There, she organized the inaugural year of the highly successful “Food for Talk” seminar series.  Her interests include vegan cooking, ocular disease and exercise. 

LESLIE CORRELL
Former Program Representative (retired)

Leslie assisted Robin Marsh for the first seven years of the ELP program and since "retiring" continues in a part time role as consultant. She is a third generation environmentalist and artist and teacher, ran her own socially-responsible corporation, and has consulted in product design, development, and marketing in connection with traditional crafts in several countries, which she hopes to continue. She designs graphics, including brochure covers, fliers, etc. for CSRD/Beahrs ELP. She enjoys gardening and dancing to flamenco and Afro-Cuban and African music.

Richard Beahrs retired after a 35 year career as a media executive with Time Warner at the beginning of 2004. Most recently he served as President of Court TV. Prior positions included the Presidency of The Comedy Channel (now known as Comedy Central) and a Senior Vice Presidency of HBO where he served as the head of New Business Development and managed the launch of Cinemax.

His current focus is on global environmental issues. He serves on the United Nations Hunger Task Force which is charged with developing a plan for halving the instances of extreme malnutrition throughout the world over the next decade. Long interested in environmental and natural resource science, Beahrs and his wife Carolyn, also a Berkeley alumna, established the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program in August 2000 with a gift to UC Berkeley. Its core is an intensive inter-disciplinary summer certificate course in "Sustainable Environmental Management" for scholars and emerging leaders from around the world. It is the leading international program within the Center for Sustainable Resource Development of the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley.

Beahrs also serves as a Trustee of the School of Management at St. Petersburg University ( Russia). He is the Chairman of the Arbor Day Foundation which is the world’s largest non-profit tree planting organization. He has previously served on the Board of Trustees of the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi Kenya and the Near East Foundation in New York.

In 2001, he was the recipient of the inaugural College of Natural Resources Citation at the University of California ( Berkeley). In 2003, he received the Cable television industry’s highest award for Public Affairs for his development of the Choices and Consequences initiative. The program uses live television events, local town meetings, the internet, and classroom materials to enhance the decision-making skills of teens and young adults.

Beahrs and his wife Carolyn reside in Connecticut and Berkeley California and have four grown children.

Louise Fortmann specializes in forestry and agriforestry, land tenure, community natural resource management, and gender issues. Professor Fortmann received her B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell. Her publications include "Whose Trees: Proprietary Dimensions of Forestry" (Westview Press, 1988), "Fruits of their Labours: Gender, Property, and Trees in Mhondoro District," (1992), and "Property and Forestry" (1992).

Professor Fortmann and her students study the outcomes of natural resource use and management for individuals and for communities. Her research is located in California and southern Africa, her students work all over the world. Their combined research addresses four interrelated questions:

1. gender - how do women and men differ in their access to, control of, management of and responsibility for providing natural resources and natural resource products?
2. property - how are property rights and claims to natural resources structured and distributed and how does this affect people/communities dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods?
3. poverty - what is the extent, nature and distribution of poverty among natural resource dependent households and communities and what causes it?
4. community control of natural resources - what factors facilitate or impede community control and management of natural resources? What are the social and ecological outcomes of community control and management of natural resources?

Robin Marsh is the Academic Coordinator of CSRD. She is an agricultural and development economist (Ph.D., Food Research Institute, Stanford University 1991), with 25 years of experience in international development. At UC Berkeley, Dr. Marsh helped to launch and develop the Beahrs ELP into a thriving international training and outreach program. She also co-leads with David Zilberman the Population and Environment Program at CSRD, with support from the Packard and Hewlett Foundations. In addition to population-environment linkages, Marsh works on bridging the environment and agricultural divide through support of ecoagriculture and payment for environmental services initiatives. Before coming to Berkeley in 2000, Dr. Marsh worked with the Rural Development Division, Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, leading a global research program on the interactions between household livelihood strategies, food security and local institutions. Previously, Dr. Marsh was socio-economist with the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (CGIAR associate center) in Taiwan and Costa Rica. She conducted research in Asia and Central America on the economic and food security benefits of home and market gardening, and evaluated urban horticulture projects in Africa. Robin has also worked on several major issues related to California agriculture and natural resources such as water and drought management, alternative pest management strategies, organic horticulture, farm labor and NAFTA.

Dr. Pedro Sanchez as been Director General of the International Center for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF) since October 1991. Dr Sanchez is responsible for the overall scientific leadership and management of the Center and he chairs ICRAF's Management Committee. In addition, he chairs the Global Steering Group of the systemwide Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Programme and the Committee on Sustainability and the Environment of the CGIAR centre directors, and represents the CGIAR on the Soil Fertility Initiative for Africa. He is co-editor-in-chief of Agroforestry Systems. Dr Sanchez is Professor Emeritus of Soil Science and Forestry at North Carolina State University (USA).

A native of Cuba, he received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from Cornell University in the USA. He joined the faculty of North Carolina State University in 1968. His professional career has been dedicated to improving the management of tropical soils for sustained food production and protection of the natural resource base. Dr Sanchez is author of Properties and management of soils of the tropics, editor of 10 other books and author of more than 120 scientific articles in English, Spanish and Portuguese. He is a fellow of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America, adjunct professor of Tropical Conservation at Duke University (USA) and honorary professor of the Universidad Nacional de la AmazonÌa Peruana in Iquitos, Peru. He chairs the Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition Commission of the International Soil Science Society.