MK Dorsey's Profile

MK Dorsey
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General Information

About MK:

ACADEMIC BIOGRAGPHY
for
MICHAEL K. DORSEY
[michael.dorsey@dartmouth.edu]
[mkdorsey@aya.yale.edu]

Dr. Michael Dorsey is a member of Dartmouth College’s Faculty of Science (Hanover, NH, USA). He teaches in the Environmental Studies Program. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment (B.S. and Ph.D.); Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (M.F.S.) and the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University (M.A.). From September 2001 to January 2002 he held the Thurgood Marshall Fellowship in Environmental Studies and Geography at Dartmouth College.

Michael’s work covers a wide variety of international and domestic environmental justice and policy concerns. His current research focuses on the interplay of environmental governance and transnational institutions. He is currently writing a volume on the commercialization of biodiversity in Latin America; and working on a second, edited volume, on carbon markets and trading. Further, with partial support from the Swedish based Dag Hammarskjold Foundation Dorsey has recently begun a project on transnational corporate behavior and sustainability.

At Dartmouth College Michael teaches courses on the aforementioned areas as well as on the topic of environmental justice and ethics. Over the years Michael has also held visiting lecturer post at various institutions around the world, including the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (The Royal University of Groningen, The Netherlands) in 2001; in the Department of Regional Planning at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) in 2002; and at the University of Witswaterstrand (South Africa). Further Michael has an established and growing publication track record with more than a dozen articles and book chapters.

In 1992 Michael served his country as the youngest member on the US State Department Delegation to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED or the Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Following the Earth Summit, in 1993, he was a lecturer in the University of Michigan’s College of Literature Science and the Arts, where he taught the seminar: Environmental Justice: Issues of Race, Poverty and the Environment. Later that year Michael was a visiting scholar at the World Resources Institute (WRI). After a short stint with WRI he continued to Africa, per the direct request of Calestous Juma (former Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity), were he served as a Research Fellow with the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), in Nairobi, Kenya. At ACTS Michael conducted research on the environmental consequences of World Bank sponsored economic policy reforms. Ten years following UNCED Michael co-led a delegation from the US based Sierra Club to the follow-up conference: the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Fluent in Spanish, from 1999 to 2001, Michael lived in Ecuador and was a co-principal investigator at the non-governmental organization Acción Ecológica. While there he worked on a variety of concerns, from environmental policy to extractive industries (i.e., oil, mining, and bioprospecting) and human rights issues. He also helped create and fund a project to monitor the commercialization of biodiversity in Ecuador as well as the other four countries in the Andean Pact.

For more than a decade Michael has played a major role in co-founding and leading various organizations. Internationally, between 1991-92 he worked with an international steering committee to start Action for Solidarity Environment and Development (A SEED-- www.antenna.nl/aseed/) now based in the Netherlands. He is a founding member of the San Francisco based Center for Environmental Health (www.cehca.org/). He also worked to develop, fund and staff the Environmental Leadership Program (www.elpnet.org/office). A member of the Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org) since the mid-1980s, Michael served six years (from 1997-2003) on the Club’s national board.

Michael has constantly sought to merge critical thinking and research on environment and development issues with pragmatic action to foment and secure visionary, progressive, and just outcomes. After serving as a delegate to the US First National Environmental Justice Leadership Summit in 1991 he worked to build and maintain the Northeast Network for Environmental and Economic Justice. As an early member of the US based Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) Michael inspired and worked on a wide-range of environmental campaigns--from recycling drives to building solar cars to raising awareness about the adverse environmental impacts of the multilateral aid agencies--on many campuses across the US, some of which include: the University of Michigan, Yale University, the University of Colorado, Wesleyan, the University of Dayton, Brandeis and Bunker Hill Community College. He is still actively sought to lecture on a variety of matters, especially in the realm of international environment and development, as well as social justice concerns.

His knowledge of the nexus of international institutions, development and multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private companies and campaigns to foment change within these entities is well recognized. During the Clinton Administration Michael was asked to serve as a Task Force member on President’s Council on Sustainable Development. Michael also served as Special Senior Advisor on International Affairs and Policy at the Center for Genetics and Society, representing and lobbying for the interests of a consortium of NGOs seeking a global ban on human cloning.

Michael’s opinions and ideas have been covered in a wide range of media outlets. The National Journal has interviewed him on population and the environment issues. Newsweek and the Detroit Free Press interviewed him on UNCED. More than 30 national outlets, including the New York Times and USA Today reported his thoughts and letters on the Gore-Bush-Nader US presidential campaign. Ottawa, Canada Spanish radio interviewed him on free trade and the FTAA negotiations. Further, he has established and well cultivated, personal media contacts with BBC, CBS-60 Minutes, Time, NPR, the AP Wire, the National Newspaper Publisher Association, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Detroit News & Free Press, the Dow Jones, The Asian Wall Street Journal and The Wall Street Journal Europe, Institutional Investor Magazine, US News and World Reports, Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), Malaysiakini.com and many others.

In 1992 Michael's efforts to promote and foster widespread social, economic and environmental change were captured in the television documentary: Green for Life. In addition to Michael the documentary profiled the work and lives of some of his close colleagues: Joliet Majot, a policy analyst from the International Rivers Network in California and the late David Brower, a former Sierra Club Board Member and Founder of Friends of the Earth. In 1997, in Glasgow, Scotland, Michael was the recipient of Rotary International’s highest honor, the Paul Harris Medal, for Distinguished Service to Humanity. In 2000 he was nominated for the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award.

In his spare time Michael enjoys high altitude mountaineering, long distance running, and sitting quietly, while doing next to nothing in beautiful places.

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