By Amanda Stone
Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (and Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group member) Dr. Cary Fowler is a recipient of one of this year’s Heinz Awards. Fowler received this prestigious recognition as a result of his vital role in creating the Svalbard Global Seed Vault which is helping to protect the world’s plants from climate change and natural disasters and preserve genetic diversity for the security of our future food supply.
The Seed Vault now holds one-third of the world’s seed varieties and Fowler’s active advocacy for the importance of crop diversity has been crucial in planning, building and operating the bank.
The Heinz Awards are given in memoriam to Senator John Heinz for the areas of greatest importance to him. This year the prize honored ten individuals for their work in the environment and global change. Other recipients this year include: Gretchen Daily, co-founder of the Natural Capital Project; Elizabeth Kolbert, environmental Journalist for The New Yorker; and Lynn Goldman, dean of the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University, who has been instrumental in reforming the Food Quality Protection Act to address children’s sensitivity to pesticides in food.
To read more about Dr. Fowler see: Meet the Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group: Cary Fowler and The Birds, the Bees….and Plants
Amanda Stone is the Communications Assistant for Nourishing the Planet.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
