ICEM Experts at Work:

ICEM experts facilitated the SEA national workshop in Cambodia for the MRC SEA of hydropower in the Mekong Mainstream

Expertise in Detail:

Jeremy Carew-Reid

Biodiversity conservation, protected areas, environmental policy and institutional development

Jeremy Carew-Reid is Director of ICEM and Chair of the ICEM Board. He has more than 30 years experience working in 28 countries in five regions of the world in institution building, strategic planning, environmental management, protected areas and biodiversity conservation. He holds a BSc (Honours) and PhD in Environmental Studies. Jeremy was Director of Global Conservation Services for IUCN – The World Conservation Union based in Switzerland, and prior to that, IUCN’s Country Representative in Nepal. He was the first director of SPREP, the South Pacific Regional Environment Program, a partnership of the 22 island countries of Oceania. He was Chief Technical Advisor to the Ministry of Planning and Investment in Vietnam and the National Planning Commission in Nepal in integrating environment with investment planning. Earlier, he was a senior project officer with the Australian Government National Parks and Wildlife Service. In the past five years, Jeremy has been Team Leader in more than 20 projects in Asia and participated as a technical specialist in many others. His work has ranged from site specific assessments and management planning in rural and urban settings, sector studies and institutional analysis and evaluation, through to integrated regional planning and policy development at local, national to international levels.

Jeremy has worked in the following regions and countries: SE Asia: Malaysia; Thailand; Vietnam; China; Cambodia; Lao PDR and regional programs, particularly relating to the Mekong region. South Asia: Nepal; Pakistan; Sri Lanka; Bangladesh; and regional programs. Africa: Kenya; Ethiopia; Zambia; Zimbabwe and regional programs. Latin America: Costa Rica, Argentina and regional programs. Oceania: Australia; Papua New Guinea; Solomon Islands; Vanuatu; New Caledonia; Fiji; Tonga; Western Samoa; Guam; Palua; Northern Marianas and regional programs. Europe: Switzerland; Spain and regional programs.

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Tarek Ketelsen

Environmental system engineering

Tarek Ketelsen is an Environmental Systems Engineer with experience in designing water supply systems as well as undertaking hydrological studies and Environmental Impact Assessments. He has worked on projects in Australia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Mongolia, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Vietnam. Most recently he worked for the Vietnamese Southern Institute for Water Resource Planning, as part of AusAID’s AYAD program, designed to build capacity and technical competency of water resource planning in the Mekong Delta. During this time, he provided advice on the Government of Vietnam’s Master Plan for the Mekong Delta, as well as the Institute’s submission to the second phase of the MRC BDP. He was also involved in a pre-feasibility options study for drinking water treatment in Dong Thap province, and produced templates and checklists for an EIA on a canal extension through Kien Giang and An Giang provinces. Previously, working in the global mining industry, Tarek was involved in flood and hydraulic modelling of catchments and river channels in remote Western Australia and Tanzania as well as the design of earthworks to control surface water and allow continuity and security of mining operations. He also contributed significantly to the design of numerous water supply pipelines in Australia, Indonesia and Mongolia, as well as coordinating community activities to rehabilitate unsealed roads and pipelines in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In Australia, he has helped to design hydrological monitoring plans for wetlands and river systems threatened by urban sprawl, as well as undertaken analysis to assess the fate and transport of contaminants from mining operations in nearby river and groundwater systems.

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Lilani Goonesena

Climate change and communications

Lilani is ICEM's climate change and communications project officer. Her work includes the Mekong Delta Climate Change Forum, the World Bank Development Marketplace project and proposal developments. She also manages all ICEM communications, including the website. Prior to joining ICEM, she worked at the Standing Office of Climate Change Adaptation (OCCA) at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Vietnam. Most notably, she assisted on the first national Action Plan on climate change in the sector, and assisted in capacity building, awareness-raising and project development. She focused on policy and website development but also provided training and education on climate change for local NGOs. She undertook collaborative projects between OCCA and the World Bank, UNDP, ADB, and the donor and NGO community. Lilani's OCCA post was supported through the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development program. Prior to Vietnam, Lilani worked for the Department of the Prime Minister in the Australian Government. She has several years experience in communications and graphic design for publishing houses in Australia, including environmental marketing with government agencies. She holds a degree in Media Communications and Graphic Design, and is currently undertaking a Masters of Climate Change, Systems and Markets through an Australian university.

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Josh Kempinski

Biodiversity impact assessment and protected areas management specialist

Josh Kempinski is an ecologist by training, with expertise in flagship species conservation and protected area management. Josh has an MA in Geography (Honors) and a Masters degree from Imperial College in Ecological Management (Honors, DIC). Josh has worked continually in Vietnam since 2004, primarily as a species conservation expert. Earlier, he worked in several countries as a conservation biologist involving radio-tracking of large carnivores in Eastern Europe for the EU, coral reef surveys in Belize and protected area research projects in Sub-Saharan Africa and North America. In Vietnam, he has spent the last few years coordinating in-situ conservation activities. Initially he was based in Cuc Phuong National Park, followed by a period at BirdLife - Indochina Program and then for the last two years at Fauna and Flora International (FFI) Vietnam Program. His work has included the design and implementation of forest ranger and student training courses, field surveys, ecotourism and awareness programs, protected area gazettement processes and operational management planning and implementation. Josh also assisted the German funded, GTZ – Tam Dao National Park Management project with conservation awareness and institutional strengthening programs. He takes a lead role in Vietnam’s Climate Change Working Group, coordinating with relevant Ministries to prepare mitigation and adaptation regimes, as well as exploring methods to integrate forestry and conservation in climate change projects.

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Nguyen Kim Hai

Finance and Administration

Nguyen Kim Hai is ICEM’s Finance and Administrative Officer. She has over 15 years experience in financial management, office and personnel administration and logistical coordination with leading international organisations in Vietnam. Prior to joining ICEM, Hai spent more than ten years working for CARE International in Vietnam and two and a half years for a regional project of the Asian Development Bank in Greater Mekong Subregion countries. She is familiar with budget preparation, donor financial reporting and accountability procedures and working with multiple international projects.

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John Sawdon

Social and environmental economist

John Sawdon is a social and environmental economist with wide experience of development projects, particularly in Vietnam and SE Asia. John has worked as a rural development specialist and on rural poverty reduction assessments, for example, for the Northern Mountains Poverty Reduction Project funded by the World Bank and MPI Vietnam, as socio economic specialist and team leader on the community development component of the Central Region Livelihoods Improvement Project funded by the ADB and on surveys and evaluations conducted in rural Vietnam for donors such as UNICEF and the Embassy of Finland. In addition, John has worked on infrastructure and development projects involving impact assessment and cost benefit analysis. These include a recent ICEM study of the impacts of climate change and climate change adaptation in HCMC funded by the ADB, the JICA funded integrated urban development project in Danang and surrounding areas, and sustainable urban transport in medium sized Vietnamese cities with a case study in Hai Phong funded by the World Bank. John was also socio economic specialist on the ICEM SEA of hydropower development in the Vu-Gia Thu-Bon river basin and worked as team leader and economist for the World Bank on a research project concerning sustainable development in the urban fringe.

John holds an MSc in Economics with respect to the Asia Pacific region and is currently reading for a PhD in the economics of climate change mitigation policy in rapidly developing countries with a focus on South East Asia at the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, UK. John is an affiliate of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and a member of the International Association of Energy Economists.

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Peter-John Meynell

Natural systems and environment assessment specialist

Peter-John Meynell is a freshwater biologist with more than 30 years of experience in dealing with environmental and development issues in South East Asia, South Asia and Southern and Central Africa. For four years, he was the Team Leader for the Mekong Wetlands Biodiversity Program (MRC, UNDP, IUCN) which involved extensive environmental studies, local development planning, training in SEA/EIA, livelihood supports and close working relations with the four LMB central and local governments. He has worked in the Lower Mekong Basin for more than ten years. He has undertaken many SEAs and EIAs in different parts of the world, including EIAs for hydropower projects in Vietnam and Lao PDR. He is involved in the Cumulative Impact Assessment for hydropower development on the 3S rivers in the LMB with MRC and a Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis and Strategic Action Plan for transboundary IWRM on the Okavango River Basin which has many similarities with the Mekong. He is working on two major ICEM projects concerned with SEA and climate change – one in Ho Chi Minh City on the impact of climate change on the natural systems, urban planning and transport sectors and the other covering the Mekong Delta in which sector development and water/aquatic systems management are the central focus.

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Benoit Laplante

Environmental economics

Benoit Laplante’s main fields of expertise are environmental economics, environmental financing, economic instruments for pollution control, and cost-benefit analysis. Benoit has a Bachelor of Commerce, Master of Science (Economics), and a Ph.D. in Environmental Economics. He has worked on water management projects, testing economic and market-based instruments and changes to pricing and tariff policies. Benoit has developed operational, commercial, financial, and environmental performance indicators for water and wastewater utilities for benchmarking performance. He has designed public disclosure programs for industrial environmental performance and national and local environment and conservation funds, including the preparation of regulations and operational guidelines. He has extensive experience in economic analysis of environmental and social impacts of major projects and programs. Benoit has advised numerous governments on the design of environmental user fees and charges, and public disclosure programs.

He has worked for 15 years as an environmental economist in Armenia; the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, China; Columbia; Ghana; and the Indian Ocean countries of Comorres, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles. In recent years, Benoit has been particularly active in South East Asia, mainly Indonesia; Laos; Malaysia; Philippines; Thailand; and Viet Nam. Benoit serves as a Resource Person for the Economy and Environment Program for South-East Asia (EEPSEA), providing guidance to researchers throughout the region, and has conducted numerous training courses on specific topics in environmental economics and cost-benefit analysis. He regularly works to support the environmental economics activities of bilateral (including CIDA, DANIDA, the European Union, and USAID), and multilateral institutions (including the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank).

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Lothar Linde

Environmental assessment and monitoring, landscape ecology, remote sensing and GIS

Lothar holds a MSc degree in Geography and specialises in landscape ecology, and environmental assessment, analysis and management. Lothar also specializes in Remote Sensing, GIS and Geo-visualization. His technical experience includes studies on soil contamination, monitoring groundwater discharge patterns and assessment of degradation and rehabilitation processes in arid and semi-arid regions. Lothar gained extensive practical experience working at the Blaustein Institute of Desert Research in Israel in degradation prevention and ecosystem engineering. He has advanced skills in assessing vegetation and its degradation using IKONOS and QUICKBIRD imagery, per-pixel and object-oriented classification, and environmental analysis via landscape metrics.

Lothar worked for several years with the UNEP Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. While there he conducted geospatial landscape assessment and analysis for the ADB Greater Mekong Subregion Biodiversity Conservation Corridors Initiative, the UNHCR environmental risk assessments and disaster prevention planning for refugee camps in Thailand; the land cover / land use analysis for the ADB Strategic Environmental Framework hotspots in the GMS and provided technical support to the UNEP Land Cover Monitoring of South-East Asia. Other assignments have included the World Bank / ICEM Country Environmental Analysis in Vietnam and the World Bank / ICEM Strategic Environmental Assessment of the hydropower sector in Vietnam. Currently, Lothar works as Environmental Assessment and GIS specialist for the Environment Operations Center in Bangkok.

Lothar has worked and liaised extensively both with governmental agencies as well as international organizations and NGOs in the Greater Mekong Subregion (Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, PR China, Thailand and Vietnam). Further regions of work experience include The Middle East (Israel, Jordan), Europe (Germany, Denmark) and South America (Argentina, Chile).

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Jiri Dusik

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)

Jiri Dusik has 15 years of experience with environmental impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA). He specializes in integration of SEA into regional development planning, land-use planning and socio-economic planning.

Jiri holds a Degree in Water Resource Engineering from the Czech Technical University. After working as an editor of the Czech National EIA Newsletter, he moved to the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe where he managed the Sofia EIA Initiative - a large regional program launched by the third Ministerial Conference "Environment for Europe" to facilitate SEA reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. Through this program he contributed to the development of 3 national SEA guidelines, implementation of 23 SEAs pilot projects and to 8 capacity development initiatives in 14 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union.

In 2001-2003, Jiri headed the Czech delegation for the negotiations on the UNECE SEA Protocol to the Espoo Convention. He co-authored a Resource Manual for the Practical Application of the SEA Protocol. He is a lead author of a SEA Handbook for European Union’s Cohesion Policy in 2007-2013. He was a core team member for the UNEP Integrated Assessment and Planning for Sustainable Development Initiative (2003-2005).

More recently Jiri has worked in Asia on an international study on SEA (2002) in Japan, and on SEA training programs in Thailand (2003) and China (2004, 2006). At present, he is the EIA/SEA Advisor to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in Vietnam through the SEMLA program on environment and land administration.

Jiri served on the Board of Directors of the International Association of Impact Assessment (2003-2006) and co-chaired the first global IAIA conference on SEA (International experience and perspectives in SEA) in Prague, 2005.

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Nguyen Xuan Nguyen

Economics, development policy and sustainable financing

Nguyen Xuan Nguyen holds a PhD and MA in Development Economics. For 20 years, he was a senior official with the Central Institute for Economic Management in Vietnam, then was nominated to work as deputy director for Economic Secretariat of the Central Executive Committee of Government. From 2002-5 he worked as a consultant on projects concerned with trade liberalization, agricultural planning and management, micro finance, community development, poverty alleviation and environment protection. He has specialized in services for economic development in Vietnam, including renovation planning, land reform and rural financing. In recent years, Nguyen has expanded his field to institutional and policy analysis, capacity building, environment protection, and natural disaster mitigation. He has participated in assessing and preparing projects such as Vietnam Conservation Fund for forest sector (2000), Integrated Coastal Zone Management for Vietnam (2003), Contingency Fund for Natural Disaster Mitigation (2004), Protected Areas Policy Analysis (2005), Country Environment Analysis (2006) and other short term consultation services promoting sustainable use of natural resources and environmental quality. He has extensive experience and networks from working with NGOs, international organizations and government institutions.

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Bruce Dunn

Environmental assessment and biodiversity management

Bruce Dunn is the ICEM Asia Program Coordinator. He is an ecologist and environmental scientist specializing in environmental impact assessment (EIA), strategic environmental assessment (SEA) and biodiversity conservation. Bruce holds a BSc in Environmental Science (First Class Honors). For six years to 2002, Bruce worked on a range of environmental studies with the University of Queensland, Queensland Department of Environment and Heritage, and the Rainforest Cooperative Research Centre in Australia. This included biodiversity inventories in protected areas; mixed species forestry trials; threatened mammal species reintroductions; and water quality and catchment management assessments. As a consultant for a number of Australian based consulting firms he has also conducted flora and fauna surveys, prepared EIAs, developed threatened species and vegetation management plans, and designed forest rehabilitation plans.

Since 2003, Bruce has worked extensively in Vietnam and within the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). This has involved work in protected areas management and support to a range of donor funded capacity building programs on EIA and SEA. Highlights have included: the development of a “Framework for Donor Coordination on SEA in Vietnam” (with the Ministry of Natural Resources & Environment and GTZ); coordination and management of SEAs for socio-economic development plans in Vinh Phuc and Tuyen Quang Provinces (with GTZ); an SEA of the "Quang Nam Hydropower Development Plan" (with ADB); support to the Ministry of Construction to develop “Guidelines for SEA and EIA for Urban Construction Planning in Vietnam” (with DANIDA); and support to the ADB funded GMS Core Environment Program component on “SEA of GMS Economic Corridors and Priority Sectors”. In addition Bruce has contributed to the development of a “National Training Program for SEA in Vietnam” and has facilitated numerous training events on environmental assessment through work with GTZ, ADB, World Bank and DANIDA.

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Mark Halle

International environmental policy, trade and financing

Mark Halle is an ICEM Board Member. He is the director of the International Institute for Sustainable Development's (IISD) office in Europe, and also of its global program on Trade and Investment. A joint citizen of the United States and Italy, he spent the bulk of his career in international environmental affairs. He began as a Program Officer in the Policy Planning Unit of the United Nations Environment Program, moving to the World Wildlife Fund - International, responsible for its program in China. He then helped to establish the Conservation for Development Centre in IUCN - the World Conservation Union, moving on to become, successively, the Director of Field Operations, the Director of Development, and finally the Director for Global Policy and Partnerships in IUCN. He left IUCN in 1997 to set up the IISD Office in Europe. He is also the founder and first Chairman of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, and sits on a wide range of boards and advisory committees for trade-related organizations in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Australia. He frequently lectures and publishes on trade, investment and environmental issues.

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David James

Natural resource economics

David James is an ICEM Board member. He has more than 30 years practical and research experience specialising in environmental and natural resource economics. He has conducted economic assessments and provided policy advice on forestry, fisheries, agriculture, drylands, catchments, riverine systems, coastal zones, energy systems, water and sewerage, solid waste, urban development, air and water pollution, and protected areas. David holds a BA Degree (1st Class Hons Economics), an MA (Economics) and a PhD (Economics). He is a United Nations Global 500 Award for his pioneering work in environmental impact assessment and natural resource management incorporating economic principles and a recipient of an East West Makana Team Award for his work in environmental economics.

Since 1988 David has served as Special Commissioner on the Australian Resource Assessment Commission’s Forest and Timber Inquiry, Member of the NSW Natural Resources Audit Council, Co-Chair of the NSW Economic and Social Technical Committee for the Regional Forestry Agreement Process, Independent Adviser to several Government Commissions of Inquiry, and Member of numerous governmental advisory committees. He is currently providing technical advice to the NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources relating to coastal management and strategic planning for regional development and natural resource management.

David has worked extensively in developing countries, including as ICEM Senior Economist on the Protected Areas and Development Review in the Mekong region. He serves as a Resource Person for the Economy and Environment Program for South-East Asia (EEPSEA), providing guidance and training to researchers throughout the region.

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