Members and Associates

George Bouma

George has 18 years experience working in the environment and development sector in Australia and internationally. His main areas of technical experience are in environmental impact assessment, pollution control, capacity building, governance and mainstreaming environment into development assistance. His knowledge pursuits are centred on methods of strategic environmental assessment, developing a better understanding of poverty-environment linkages and sustainable development. George possesses solid experience in project design and implementation, monitoring and evaluation, impact assessment, development of policy and law, training and institutional development, governance and community management of natural resources. Significant experience has been gained working in post-crisis contexts aiming at integrating environment and development responses in these contexts.

Martin Bjerregaard

With more than 20 years of working for a range of contractors, consultants and public sector organisations, Martin helps communities and site owners with pragmatic solutions to cleaning up damaged sites making them ready for reconstruction and redevelopment. Since 1995, when Martin started in Bosnia-Herzegovina with demolition and waste management projects, he has helped a range of UN agencies, EU departments, International NGOs, national Donors and the World Bank with post-disaster waste management work. This led to Martin founding Disaster Waste Recovery, an international NGO focussed on providing timely waste management support to disaster affected communities. Although a Dane by blood, Martin has settled in the UK with his growing family, enjoying life in the rain by the beach!

Jon Godson

Jon Godson has over 17 years experience providing environmental solutions for the private and public sectors including four years with the United Nations, assisting developing countries recover from conflicts and natural disasters. He is now concentrating on providing climate change solutions for civil society and the role of environmental management in reducing disaster risks. Jon has field environmental experience in over 20 countries and combines a love of sport and travel with a dislike for bureaucracy and missed opportunities.

Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud

Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud is the Chairman of ProAct Network. He is Director of the Corporate Relations Department at WWF International and has been working with WWF Int for eighteen years. His current responsibilities include: planning, initiating and leading the WWF Network’s engagement with the private sector and developing and tracking innovative business partnerships for sustainable development. Jean-Paul is also a founding director of One Planet Living (OPL), an innovative partnership initiative which aims to build a worldwide network of OPL communities to demonstrate how sustainable living can be easy, attractive and affordable. Prior to joining WWF Jean Paul spent 10 years as a forester, researcher and project manager working in a number of countries in South East Asia and West and Central Africa.

Julian Caldecott

Julian Caldecott has been a wildlife enthusiast since childhood and a conservation professional since the mid-1980s. Apart from wildlife studies, most of his work has been about finding ways to conserve and restore protected areas, ecosystems and biodiversity, and building public understanding of the values of nature. From 2003-2005 he led the division at UNEP-WCMC responsible for global assessment of early warnings, ecosystem status and threats, before joining UNEP’s Tsunami Disaster Task Force to co-ordinate its work in Sri Lanka, and then the Disaster Management Branch, working on environmental restoration and risk reduction in the Indian Ocean region. His most recent overseas mission was to Bangladesh, where he led a team to identify EC projects on disaster risk reduction, while also researching a book on human population issues and climate change.

Charles Kelly

Charles Kelly has over 27 years of field experience in humanitarian assistance programmes and other emergencies in developing countries. Over this career Kelly has performed field and senior management tasks in over 18 disaster response operations. Recent work has included environmental impact assessment training; risk assessments, disaster planning and response capacity development, disaster risk reduction, dam emergency planning, assessing environmental impacts during disasters, disaster management capacity building in government institutions, and post-conflict relief and recovery programmes. Kelly has worked in over 60 countries and published over 45 articles on disaster management. An affiliate of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, University College London, he is a member of the International Research Committee on Disasters, the Society of Risk Analysis and The International Emergency Management Society.

Sam Hettiarachchi

Professor Sam S.L.Hettiarachchi has been with the University of Moratuwa since 1980 and is a specialist in coastal and port engineering, with a doctorate from Imperial College, London. Sam has undertaken extensive research on subjects such as breakwaters and coastal structures, coastal and environmental impact assessments and engineering interventions in coastal zone management. Sam has published more than 60 research papers and several monographs in relation to coastal and port engineering. Research awards include the National Merit Award (on two occasions) presented by the National Science Foundation, Sri Lanka. Following the Indian Ocean tsunami, Sam has served Sri Lanka as a member of the National Early Warning Committee and is a Member of the Technical Advisory Committee on Disaster Management. He currently serves as Chairman of the Working Group 3 on Risk Assessment of the ICG/IOTWS.

Betsy Lippman

Betsy Lippman began her career in humanitarian aid and post-conflict recovery in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1987. She has worked for the U.S. Department of State, the Red Cross Movement, the United Nations, the World Bank and non-governmental organizations on issues related to displacement and reintegration in over 35 countries. For the past several years, she has focused on the nexus between livelihoods, sustainable natural resource management and conflict and community-driven development. Principles to live and work by include listening carefully to those whose voices need to be heard, encouraging innovation, mentoring, challenging ‘we can’t’ with ‘how can we’ and finding humor in the most trying of circumstances. Her best non-work moments are spent with family and friends hiking, swimming, kayaking, biking, snorkeling and eating sushi.

Pasi Rinne

Pasi Rinne has extensive experience in international environmental governance and diplomacy, environmental management tools and policy-making. Within the UN, Pasi has led demanding operations and policy developments on post-conflict and disaster management and successfully managed significant achievements in reducing disaster vulnerability in numerous disaster prone areas through innovative environmental operations and climate adaptation. He has also worked for the Government of Finland as well as for international and national environmental NGOs.

Chris Taylor

Based in Kenya, Chris Taylor has worked in the field of environmental management and conservation for over fifteen years, the last seven of which have been mainly working with the United Nations on refugee-related environmental issues. Much of thsi work has focused on formal and non-formal environmental education in refugee-related situations. Chris is ProAct's Regional Representative for East and the Horn of Africa. Much of his current work focuses on community-based natural resource management in refugee- and IDP- affected areas, on building technical capacity on environmental management within the region and on developing and supporting a network of like-minded partners and community strictures with ProAct. His dream is to establish an organic farming co-operative in Kenya.

John Carstensen

John Carstensen has over 25 years of experience in the field of development assistance, climate change and sustainable development. With a background in international and environmental law John has developed and directed the implementation of several large-scale bilateral and multilateral development assistance programmes with a focus on poverty alleviation and the environment. He also has solid experience in capacity development, training and awareness raising as well as human resource management. John worked for over eight years with UNEP and has several years of experience working at high political levels, including being Personal Assistant to the Danish Energy and Environment Minister Svend Auken, and a negotiator at national and international levels. John received the International Ozone Award for an outstanding contribution to the protection of the ozone layer, September 1997, Montreal, Canada.

David Stone

David Stone is Director of ProAct Network. A zoologist by training, David has worked for over 20 years in the fields of biodiversity conservation and environmental management particularly in humanitarian and disaster relief operations, with emphasis on community engagement and development. David has worked with refugees and other people displaced by conflict or disasters in more than 40 countries. David is also an accomplished author and editor, and is an avid organic gardener!

Juha Vanhanen

Dr Juha Vanhanen has undertaken many energy and climate change related studies, in addition to developing assessment and evaluation methods and working as a management consultant for more than 30 energy companies. He has specialised on clean technology and green business consulting with an emphasis on sustainable energy and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Juha has a broad knowledge on renewable energy sources, energy efficiency technologies, combined heat and power systems and decentralised energy systems. He obtained his doctorate degree from the Helsinki University of Technology in 1996. Juha is Managing Director and Partner of Gaia Group Oy.

Paul Venton

Paul Venton specialises in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. He begun his career with an international NGO and has since gained a diversity of experience with a wide array of relief and development organisations covering projects in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and North America. He has a PhD in disaster risk reduction with a focus on community-based disaster management. Paul's work primarily focuses on the linking of 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' approaches to DRR and climate adaptation, with an emphasis upon linking environmental management, sustainable livelihoods, and disaster / climate risk reduction. Paul and his family divide their time between living in London and Boston: they have something of a trans-Atlantic lifestyle. In fact Paul met his wife when they both sailed the same replica Mediaeval ship across the Atlantic.

Grant Wroe-Street

Grant Wroe-Street comes from a background of environmental law and impact assessment. Prior to joining ProAct Network Grant worked with the United Nations in the areas of environmental assessment and management in post-conflict countries. His current work retains this focus and the environmental challenges faced and posed by people displaced as a result of conflict or disaster. Since moving to Switzerland he has started skiing and has the ambition to fall down with less frequency and more grace.

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