One Earth
Our Team
The five One Earth Directors and our Associates have long-standing and varied experience in sustainability issues, from local to global levels and across research, policy and practice. Our backgrounds are described below. We have all been deeply involved in sustainable consumption and production issues, including the urban dimension, as set out here.
Emmanuel Prinet
Emmanuel Prinet is Principal of EcoSteppingStones Consulting and Executive
Director of the One Earth Initiative. Being both a Canadian and French
citizen, and having grown up in Vancouver, Emmanuel decided to reconnect
with family roots and pursue a dream of working in Europe by moving
to France shortly after completion of his Master's degree. He joined
Association
4D "Debates on the Do's and Don'ts of Sustainable Development";
a Paris-based NGO, as the coordinator of the national Jo'burg 2002 Coalition,
a French NGO platform that was created to work towards the UN World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002. The coalition
brought together more than 120 NGOs working on sustainability issues,
and Emmanuel was responsible for the group's political representation
with the French Government as well as European and International NGO
networks, of facilitating group work and of organizing the logistics
for participation in the Summit itself. He attended all the Johannesburg
World Summit’s regional and international preparatory conferences
(PrepComs) on behalf of the coalition. After the WSSD, Emmanuel
was asked to take on and develop 4D's European and international work
on sustainability, and his activities included representing 4D as a
member organization in the European Environmental Bureau (EEB),
in the corporate social responsibility network OECD Watch and in the
Northern Alliance for Sustainability (ANPED).
He has developed working relationships with various international
organizations such as UNEP, the OECD, and the European Commission. Emmanuel
also has tremendous experience working with the United Nations, and
has attended the UN's Commission on Sustainable Development every year
since 2000. There, he participated actively in the NGO's Sustainable
Development Issues Network, and published a number of articles in
the daily NGO newsletter Taking Issue. He has also been actively
involved in the UN's 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable
Consumption and Production Patterns ("Marrakech Process").
He has attended the regional sustainable consumption and production
meeting in Ostend, Belgium (November 2004), and has taken an active
part in drafting the NGO statement. Since 2004, he has co-produced
a number of short documentaries as part of a video
series called "Sustainability Productions";, which highlight
the good social and ecological practices of various cities and their
efforts to work towards sustainability. Emmanuel holds a BA (Hon.)
in French literature and a Master of Science (Planning) from the University
of British Columbia. His area of expertise is on understanding the concept
of sustainability, ecological economics, sustainable production and
consumption patterns, and the Ecological Footprint. Emmanuel is an avid
outdoor enthusiast who enjoys rock-climbing and telemark skiing. He
is perfectly bilingual in French and English, and can also speak Swedish,
Spanish and Russian.
Contact info:
+1 604 669 5143
William Rees
William (Bill) Rees is Director of the One Earth Initiative and Professor
in the School of
Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia
(UBC). He is also Director
of UBC's Centre for
Human Settlements. He is a leading thinker on sustainable consumption
and production (SCP) and is best known in this field for his invention
of 'Ecological Footprint analysis',
a quantitative tool that estimates humanity's ecological impact
on the ecosphere in terms of appropriated ecosystem (land and water)
area. This research reveals the fundamental incompatibility between
continued material economic growth and ecological security, and
has helped to reopen debate on human carrying capacity as a consideration
in sustainable development. The book Our Ecological Footprint
was published in 1996 and has been translated into eight languages.
He has taught at UBC since 1969 and was awarded the Trudeau
Foundation Fellows Prizes in May 2007 in recognition of outstanding
achievement and innovative approaches that advance "knowledge of
crucial societal issues across borders and disciplines." He was
elected as a Fellow to the Royal Society of Canada in 2006. His teaching,
research and public engagement emphasize the policy and planning
implications of global environmental trends and the necessary ecological
conditions for sustainable socioeconomic development. Much of his work
is in the realm of ecological economics and human ecology. He is
a founding member and a recent past President of the Canadian
Society for Ecological Economics. In 1997, UBC awarded William Rees
a Senior Killam Research Prize in acknowledgement of his research achievements.
Bill Rees is currently a co-investigator in the 'Global Integrity Project',
oriented toward determining the necessary ecological conditions for
biodiversity preservation. Another of his current research project examines
high-income urbanized countries' consumption of imported commodities
and the ecological and social impacts of their resultant "ecological
footprints" on distant export regions. He has been invited
to lecture on his work across Canada and around the world. He has extensive
local and international experience on these issues and is widely published.
In 2000, the Vancouver Sun newspaper recognized him as one of British
Columbia's top "public intellectuals." A video about Bill
Rees describing the Ecological Footprint approach and what it means
in terms of societal choices ahead is available from One Earth / Sustainability
Productions (more information about the video
here).
Contact info:
Tobi Reyes
Tobi Reyes' interest in the environment and love for nature began early
during his childhood in the Philippines, influenced by the family business
which involved fruit and fish farming. This interest has only
increased with conservation and sustaianbility; having now become life
goals as part of the founding of the One Earth Initiative. Concurrently,
Tobi is the Chair of Port Capital Group, a private equity investment
firm primarily investing in commercial real estate located in the
Greater Vancouver Regional District. Prior to Tobi's involvement in
real estate and the sustainability movement, he had been working in
the information technology sector since graduating from Queen';s University
in Kingston, Ontario (B.A. Psychology/History). Between 1998 and
2000, Tobi co-founded two Philippine-based, technology firms which Merrill
Lynch mentioned as among the top private companies in their space. He
was a B.C. Young Artist recipient in 1990 and is a Director of Venterra
Equity Partners (a real estate services company), PEX
Inc. (a social networking web site), and the Lifeline
Society (a charitable organization working with the B.C. Cancer
Foundation and benefiting persons afflicted with Leukemia). He
currently resides full-time in Vancouver, Canada. Tobi is an avid tourist,
speaks fluent English and Tagalog, is proficient in French, and has
studied Mandarin, German and Italian.
Contact info:
+1 604 805 0282
Dagm
ar Timmer
Dagmar Timmer is an Associate with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) and Principal of Resourceful Solutions Consulting, based in Vancouver. She is a co-founder and Managing Director of the One Earth Initiative. Dagmar holds an MA in Political Science from Simon Fraser University and a BA (Honours) from Queen's University. Dagmar sits on the Advisory Committee for the Regional Vancouver Urban Observatory (RVU). In 2007, she and her sister Vanessa became the co-hosts of The Sustainable Region, an award-winning television show in Canada. From 2003-2005, Dagmar was Program Associate and Political Scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF, www.asb.cgiar.org) in Nairobi, Kenya. Her program facilitated a network of rainforest-agriculture margin research sites in the Amazon of Brazil and Perú, the Congo Basin forest of Cameroon, the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, the northern mountains of Thailand, and the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Dagmar is a co-author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), contributing to the tropical forest margins assessment. Prior to joining ICRAF, Dagmar worked from 1999-2003 as a member of the Forest Conservation Programme team at IUCN - The World Conservation Union in Switzerland. Dagmar's work on sustainability issues has spanned from local to national to international levels - from grassroots awareness-raising campaigns in her home city of Vancouver to advocacy in international policy fora such as the UN Forum on Forests and the Convention on Biological Diversity. In 1996, Dagmar was International Coordinator for Youth for Habitat 2, spearheading preparatory work and also participating in the main conference in Istanbul. She also organized the inaugural dialogue amongst NGOs and the World Trade Organization staff on sustainable development concerns in 1998. She helped co-found three environmental organizations, all of which are still active today including the Environmental Youth Alliance. She has worked, lived and traveled in over 30 countries. She speaks fluent English, French and Dutch and is proficient in Spanish.
Contact info:
+1 778 869 8648
Vanessa Timmer
Vanessa Timmer is co-founder and Director of the One Earth Initiative. With her sister Dagmar, she co-hosts the Canadian television show, The Sustainable Region. Vanessa sits on the Board of Judith Marcuse Projects, a not-for-profit that promotes art practice as a transformative tool, creating positive social change. From 2006-2008, Vanessa was Project Manager (External Relations) at Metro Vancouver (formerly Greater Vancouver Regional District – GVRD) as part of the Sustainable Region Initiative which brings together private sector, municipal governments, civil society and other partners to stimulate ideas and action around sustainability. Vanessa holds a Ph.D. in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the University of British Columbia. Her dissertation focused on organizational structure and strategy of Friends of the Earth International and Greenpeace, and on their ability to adapt to change. This interdisciplinary research draws on literature from social movement theory, international relations, political science, systems theory, organizational behavior and sustainability science. From 2002 until 2003, Vanessa was a Fulbright Research Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as part of the Initiative on Science and Technology for Sustainability. As part of her PhD research and Fulbright fellowship, she participated in international academic and practitioner conferences including the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002. Vanessa has co-authored academic articles on local initiatives combining poverty reduction with biodiversity conservation, and on the role of international civil society actors in global governance processes. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology from Queen's University and a M.Sc. in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford. In 2004, Vanessa worked for the International Centre for Sustainable Cities (ICSC) and co-authored "The Livable City"; as part of a series of Vancouver Working Group Discussion Papers for the 2006 United Nations World Urban Forum. From 1997-98, Vanessa worked as a researcher for the exhibition team of a £100 million UK Millennium Flagship project, the Earth Centre. She developed the content for the exhibitions of this visitor attraction for a sustainable future. With her sister Dagmar, she helped co-found three environmental organizations, all of which are still active today including the Environmental Youth Alliance. Vanessa has continued to pursue her passion for theatre, improvisational acting, and film and these pursuits greatly influence her approach to communicating sustainability issues. She is fluent in English and Dutch, and proficient in French.
Contact info:
+1 604 813 3361
One Earth Associates
Nicole-Anne Boyer
Nicole is an Associate with One Earth and Managing Director of Adaptive Edge, a firm specializing in futures thinking, strategy and innovation. As a futurist and facilitator, she is passionate about helping leaders create “better futures.” Her focus is on catalyzing positive "disruptive innovations"— i.e. fundamentally new models, mindsets and metrics for what's possible and needed in the world. Recent projects include everything from the future of healthcare and biosciences, to manufacturing and consumption patterns, to climate change and water, to India and Dubai's long-term resiliency. With over 15 years of experience, Nicole learned her unique tradecraft at Global Business Network (GBN) in San Francisco, a pioneering think-tank in the field. She is also a steward with The World Café, a powerful and popular dialogue process that taps into the collective intelligence of groups. An early blogger and social entrepreneur, Nicole is a contributor to Worldchanging, an award-winning blog and book devoted to creating a more sustainable future. Previous careers include: political speechwriter, pollster and market researcher, high-tech venture capitalist in Singapore in the mid 1990s. Nicole earned two degrees at the University of British Columbia; her graduate work focused on technology policy. After six years living in Paris, France, Nicole moved back to San Francisco, CA in 2008. Canadian by ctizenship, she is from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Contact info: nicole@boyer.net
Jorge Amigo
Jorge is an Associate with One Earth and pursuing his Masters at the University of British Columbia. He is Mexican by citizenship, and living in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Contact info: jorge@oneearthweb.org