Peter Bunyard

Peter Bunyard is recognised internationally as an expert on climate change and a world expert on the Amazon and rainforests. A founding editor of The Ecologist magazine and a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Peter studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and Harvard, and is adjunct faculty on the University of Boston Study Abroad Program. He regularly lectures in South America on the climatic importance of the Amazonian rainforest and has travelled through the Amazon

basin in Colombia. And he doesn't cease from letting others know about the risks to global climate as a consequence of devastating the Amazon forests. Peter helped launch the Industry and Environment Review of the United Nations Environment Programme in Paris. He is the author of The Breakdown of Climate: Human Choices or Global Disaster, co-author of Imperiled Planet: The Politics of Self-Sufficiency, editor and author of The Green Alternative Guide to Good Living and Health Guide for the Nuclear Age, and editor of Gaia in Action: A Science of the Living Earth. At the request of the Indigenous Affairs Department of Colombia, he also carried out research into the impact of the 1991 Constitution on the affairs and responsibilities of indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. Peter is currently lecturing in Colombia on the relationship between the Amazon and climate. His latest book, Extreme Weather, was published in the UK in October, 2006 (Floris Books) and is to be published in 2008 (available through Barnes & Noble).

Ranil Senanayake

Dr. F. Ranil Senanayake comes from an old, respected family in Sri Lanka. His grandfather F.R.Senanayake was the freedom fighter accredited with securing the independence of Sri Lanka and initiator of the Temperance Movement, his granduncle D.S.Senanayake the first Prime Minister and his father C.U.Senanayake was instrumental in developing the Sarvodaya movement and the National Heritage movements of Sri Lanka.

Dr. Senanayake, is a systems Ecologist trained at the University of California at Davis and has held many international positions such as being the Executive Director of the Environmental Liaison Centre International (ELCI) in Kenya, the Senior Scientist of Counterpart International in Washington D.C. and senior lecturer at Melbourne and Monash universities in Australia.

In addition to numerous research articles and books Dr.Senanayake is the creator of the Environmental restoration system known as 'Analog Forestry' He has served on UNEP's committee for the production of the 'Global Biodiversity Assessment' and served as a consultant to the World Bank and UNDP.

Dr. Senanayake has functioned as inspector for Organic Production and has developed standards for the certification of Responsibly Mined Gold in Colombia as well as for Forest Garden Products (FGP) for the International Network for Analog Forestry (IAFN). He is a diver with interests in marine archaeology, an Ichthyologist and a Herpetologist.

Romulus Whitaker
Herpetologist and Wildlife Conservationist

Rom Whitaker caught his first snake when he was just four, in New York State. At the age of seven, his family moved to Bombay, where he kept a secret 12-foot python under his boarding school bed. He started India's first Madras Snake Park before extending his interest to other reptiles, founding the Madras Crocodile Bank, a gene pool for all the world's crocodilians and India's premier research centre for herpetology.

He was contacted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to help set up a network of tribal crocodile rearing stations across Papua New Guinea.

Subsequent years saw him travel to Bangladesh, Mozambique, Borneo - canoeing up remote streams, jumping out of helicopters onto croc nests, trekking over mountain ranges in search of elusive reptiles. Straddling conservation, scientific study and the captive breeding of rare species, he became Asia's 'reptile man.' Then came the movies; he made a series of films on snakes and a children's feature in Tamil called 'Boy and the Crocodile' - India's most popular children's film to date. He also made the Emmy award winning 'King Cobra.'

Romulus Whitaker is popularly referred to as India's crocodile man. He has been working on reptilian and amphibian species for over 40 years and leads the Gharial Conservation Alliance (GCA). Gharials - often confused with crocodiles - are one of the most threatened crocodile species and are classified as critically endangered by the World Conservation Union. The Gharial Conservation Alliance (GCA) is an international organization of individuals in a variety of disciplines, who are dedicated to saving gharials from extinction and ensuring the establishment of sustainable wild populations.

Anantanand Rambachan

Anantanand Rambachan is a Professor and Chair of the of Religion, Department at Saint Olaf College, where he has been teaching since 1985. Prof. Rambachan is the author of several books. Among these are, Accomplishing the Accomplished, The Limits of Scripture, and, most recently, The Advaita (Nondual World View: God, World and Humanity. The British Broadcasting Corporation transmitted a series of 25 lectures by Prof. Rambachan around the world.

Prof. Rambachan has a deep interest in interreligous relations and, in particular, the dialogue between Hinduism and Christianity. He has been very active in the dialogue programs of the World Council of Churches, and was Hindu guest and participant in the last four General Assemblies of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver, Canada, and Canberra, Australia and Harare, Zimbabwe and Porto Alegre, Brazil. He has also been involved in the dialogue programs of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican.

Prof. Rambachan serves as a member of the International Advisory Council for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.