The Center for Sustainable Economy works with non-profit, business, and government leaders to transform our economic system into one based on renewable energy supplies, protected natural capital, empowered communities, and growth in the quality of our lives rather than the quantity of goods we consume. We accomplish this by:
Exposing the true costs and benefits of public and private sector decisions.
Developing plans and programs based on principles of economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
Providing expert support for public interest litigation.
Educating decision makers, voters, and students about the real state of our economy and society.
Our History
The Center for Sustainable Economy is a merger of two non-profit organizations: Forest Conservation Council and Ecology and Law Institute. Forest Conservation Council was founded in Eugene, Oregon in 1988 to protect and restore the native biological diversity of forests and woodlands throughout the United States. FCC played a leading role in efforts to secure permanent protection for the nation's last stands of ancient forest in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Southwest. FCC's approach to forest conservation emphasized detailed inventory and mapping of remaining hot spots of biological diversity, programmatic and site specific appeals and litigation, and analysis of Congressional legislation. FCC also pioneered programs to document and challenge the federal role in urban sprawl and the proliferation of communication towers harmful to migratory birds in the Gulf Coast and Hawaii.
Ecology and Law Institute began as a project of FCC in 2000. ELI brought together academics, attorneys, and natural resource professionals in the fields of economics, conservation planning, and law to provide technical and legal support to campaigns to protect natural areas and advance economic, social, and environmental sustainability. ELI has assisted its non-profit clients on issues such as living wages, affordable housing, protection of marine ecosystems in arctic Alaska, the economics of national forest logging, and the impacts of open pit mining.
Our Staff and Board
12/19/06
Category: Who
Posted by: admin
Dr. John Talberth, President and Consulting Economist. John holds a Ph.D. in International and Environmental Economics from the University of New Mexico and an M.A. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon. His areas of expertise include non-market valuation, international trade, public policy, benefit-cost analysis, forest management, sustainable development, and land use planning. He has published articles in several peer reviewed journals including Ecological Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, Natural Resources Journal and Environment, Development and Sustainability. John is presently the Director of the Sustainability Indicators Program at Redefining Progress in Oakland, California and coordinates scientific advances as well as policy applications of sustainability metrics such as the Genuine Progress Indicator and Ecological Footprint. John was the co-founder of Forest Conservation Council in the late 1980s, and has led several grassroots campaigns to secure permanent protection for native forests and wildlands in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest, fight urban sprawl, and protect migratory birds. John also co-founded Ecology and Law Institute (ELI) in 2000, and has published dozens of reports and studies quantifying the costs and benefits of public policy decisions for ELI's non-profit and government clients.
Nejem Raheem, Secretary/ Treasurer and Research Economist. Nejem Raheem is a Ph.D. candidate in International and Environmental Economics at the University of New Mexico. He is past Economics Chair of the Social Science Working Group at the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB). Nejem received his M.A. in Economics from UNM in 2003 and his B.A. in theatre from Bennington College, VT, in 1994. He specializes in environmental economics in traditional cultural settings. He has collaborated with the Department of Economics at the Universidade de Brasília in Brasilia, Brazil, and has participated in interdisciplinary research and advocacy with ELI and Forest Guardians since 2000. His work with ELI has included work in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Kivalina, AK. He is currently working with Permacultura America Latina and ELI to produce a conference on "Greening our Economy with the Principles of Permaculture," to take place in São Paulo, Brazil in summer 2007. Recent and upcoming presentations include talks at Auburn University's "Emerging Issues Along the Urban-Rural Interface: Linking Science and Society" conference (March 2005), Brandeis University's Sustainable International Development Program (April 2005), the SCB meeting in Brasilia (July 2005), the Western Regional Science Association's meeting (February 2006), and a short course "Economic Methods for Conservation" with faculty from the Conservation Strategy Fund at SCB 2006. He has lived in Nepal and Bangladesh and worked in Brazil, Sri Lanka, and the Union of Myanmar. He is fluent in Portuguese and proficient in French.
Richard Mietz, Vice President and Consulting Attorney. Richard Mietz has been involved with various environmental and public interest groups as an activist, attorney, and board member since 1985. As a public interest attorney, he has been active in representing various public interest "watchdog" organizations in New Mexico in numerous Freedom of Information Act lawsuits over the past 11 years since he moved to Santa Fe in 1995. His clients include Citizen Action, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, The Los Alamos Study Group, Forest Guardians, Forest Conservation Council, and several other organizations and individuals. He also worked as a staff counsel and policy advisor for the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission from 1997 to 2000. His non-legal background and experience includes media relations, community organizing, and organizing public events, including several years developing and directing the annual public-interest law conference at the University of Oregon.
Suntara Loba, Managing Director. Suntara Loba graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College where her curriculum focused on Spanish and Latin American studies. Her previous non-profit work experience has dealt with the spread of sustainable agriculture throughout Latin America. Her service learning experience includes tutoring bilingual children in the Bronx, teaching English and computer skills to immigrant workers, and training in poor peoples' rights and civil disobedience. Suntara currently works as managing director for the Center for Sustainable Economy.
Dr. Jason Venetoulis, Environmental Policy Fellow. Jason has over a decade of hands on experience researching, writing, advocating, teaching, and fund-raising for sustainability concerns. He has worked in the non-profit, private, and academic sectors, and has expertise in environmental policy, economics, footprint analysis, renewable (solar) energy, and (quantitative and qualitative) research design. Jason studied environmental politics, policy, and economics at Claremont Graduate University, and was a lead researcher for Dr. Lamont Hempel's Sustainable Communities Project -which took him around the country for interviews with leaders working on sustainable city, regional, and state indicator projects and, eventually, to the Whitehouse in 1999 as part of an invited group of sustainable indicator mavens. As a professor at the Claremont Colleges and the University of Redlands, Dr. Venetoulis developed and taught innovative courses on campus and community sustainability, ecological footprint analysis, renewable energy, and environmental politics and policy. Recently, Jason worked for Redefining Progress, where his team's work on the Genuine Progress Indicator and ecological footprint were taken up by the San Francisco Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities, City of Santa Monica, Canadian Businesses for Sustainability, and other non-profit and government bodies. He is a graduate of Pitzer College and earned a Master's in Public Policy and a Ph.D. in Political Science.
Susan Leopold, Education Fellow. After graduating from Friends World College in 1996 Susan helped to start Costa Rican Adventure, an environmentally focused travel company for teenagers. Though she still stays involved in working with the Bribri, who live in the Talamanca mountains, she currently lives in Virginia where she founded the Indian Pipe Outdoor Technical School in 2000. The School is located on 280 acres adjacent to the Appalachian Trail and under conservation easement. The farm is a destination for school children to come and learn about native flora and fauna as well as methods of organic gardening. Susan has written a children's book "The Bulls Run to the Chesapeake", focused on the importance of headwaters, and is currently writing her dissertation at Antioch College on the Ethnobotany of the Bull Run Mountain for a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies.
Dr. Robert Berrens, Economics Fellow. Robert Berrens (Ph.D) is a Professor and Regents' Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of New Mexico. His research and teaching interests include: environmental economics and policy, sustainable development, consumer economics, non-market valuation, biodiversity and endangered species protection, public lands management, and wildfire risk mitigation. His research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals in economics, environmental and public policy, including the American Economic Review, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, Ecological Economics, Economics Letters, Environmental Conservation, Environmental Management, Forest Policy and Economics, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Journal of Developing Areas, Journal of Forest Economics, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Land Economics, Natural Resources Journal, Political Analysis, Resource and Energy Economics, and the Social Science Quarterly. Research funding support has been provided by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service, and a variety of public and private entities.
Dr. Jennifer Thacher, Economics Fellow. Jennifer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of New Mexico. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research and teaching interests include: environmental economics, health economics, non-market valuation, survey design, mathematical tools, and invasive weed management. Her research has been published in a number of peer-reviewed journals in economics and health policy, including Environmental and Resource Economics, Contemporary Economic Policy, and Depression and Anxiety. Research funding support has been provided by the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute.
Steven Sugarman, Environmental Law Fellow. Steve is an environmental attorney who earned his J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley in 1986. Steve also holds a B.A. from Princeton. Steve's practice has been devoted exclusively to public resource and water issues since 1990. In 2000, he formed Belin & Sugarman with his current law partner Letty Belin. Over the course of his practice, and in collaboration with Ms. Belin and others, Steve has litigated various landmark environmental and water cases in federal and state courts on behalf of CSE and many other clients. Steve represents a diverse range of clients, including tribal governments, Native American environmental organizations, acequia associations, traditional Hispanic communities, local governmental bodies, and environmentalists. He has developed an expertise in the litigation of cases under federal environmental laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. He has developed considerable expertise in issues arising under New Mexico water law. Steve has also had extensive involvement in issues pertaining to timber harvesting and livestock grazing on public lands. In this particular context, he has acquired extensive experience in federal laws concerning the protection of wildlife, threatened ecosystems, and the non-market economic values of national forest lands.
