Robert Gibson
Dr. Gibson's focus has been on environmental and sustainability policy issues. His research and writing have centred on decision-making successes and failures in environmental planning, assessment and regulation in various Canadian jurisdictions and on the emerging design and practice of sustainability assessment. He teaches courses on sustainability, environmental assessment law and process, the development of environmental thought and, occasionally, environmental journalism. Since 1984, he has been editor of the Canadian environmental journal, Alternatives.
Before coming to Waterloo in the early 1980s, Bob worked for a variety of government agencies and native and environmental groups. Since then he has done studies for the Canadian Institute of Environmental Law and Policy on the application of Ontario environmental laws, helped the Government of the Yukon draft its Environment Act, served on the Ontario environment minister's Environmental Assessment Advisory Committee, worked with the environmental assessment caucus of the Canadian Environmental Network and advised the Canadian International Development Agency on how to transform environmental assessments to serve sustainability purposes.
Recently he has examined the integration of broad sustainability considerations in land use decision making in urban growth management (see the Ontario and British Columbia case studies published on the Assessment and Planning Project website), in corporate greening initiatives (see his book Voluntary Initiatives: the new politics of corporate greening ), and in environmental assessments at the project and strategic levels. His new book on Sustainability Assessment has just been published by Earthscan.
Along with several colleagues, including George Francis and Susan Wismer of ERS, Bob is now working on a research project examining citizen engagement in governance for socio-ecological sustainability in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (see the Biosphere project website http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/research/biosphere/).
See Bob's c.v. here.
