Sandra Postel, authority on international water issues. (Photo courtesy Rozsa Center)Postel has worked on water issues for more than twenty-five years. In her award-winning book, Last Oasis, she issued a clarion call for the emergence of a water ethic. Through the Global Water Policy Project, Postel now works to translate this ethical precept into policy and action.
Alex Mayer, director of the Michigan Tech Center for Water and Society, says of Postel, "I can't think of anyone more appropriate than Sandra Postel for giving our World Water Day keynote lecture. She has selflessly and tirelessly advocated to bring water issues to the political and environmental forefront all over the globe -- from restoring aquatic ecosystems to curbing demand for water. She is fluent at making us recognize the connection between conserving and our human survival."
Postel’s books and numerous scholarly and popular articles on the world’s fresh water provide valuable insights into the nature of global water challenges and constructive solutions to them. In 2002 she was honored by Scientific American for promoting "sweeping changes aimed at preserving the world's dwindling supplies of fresh water." Postel is the founder and director of the independent Global Water Policy Project, as well as the Center for the Environment at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. From 1988 until 1994, she was vice president for research at the Worldwatch Institute, a non-profit research organization. In 2002, Scientific American magazine named Postel one of the "Scientific American 50," an award recognizing contributions to science and technology.
As a prolific author on international water issues, Postel’s work is dedicated to the creation of a more environmentally secure world in which all people and living things may thrive. She is author of Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation Miracle Last? and Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity, which was chosen by Choice magazine as a 1993 Outstanding Academic Book. Last Oasis appears in eight languages and was the basis for a PBS documentary that aired in 1997.
Postel has authored more than 100 articles for popular and scholarly publications and for newspapers in the United States and abroad. She also has served as commentator on CNN's "Futurewatch," addressed the European Parliament on environmental issues and appeared on television and in the Leonardo DiCaprio documentary The 11th Hour, released in 2007.
The lecture is sponsored by the Van Evera Distinguished Lecture Series Endowment, the Center for Water and Society, Student Entertainment Board, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Department of Social Sciences Environmental Policy Program, the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, the Graduate Program in Environmental Policy, and the Visiting Women and Minority Lecturer/Scholar Series.
For more information, call the Rozsa Center at 487-2844 or visit www.rozsa.mtu.edu.
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