Geoff Garver is pursuing jointly a PhD in geography and an LLM at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He is engaged in a cross-disciplinary study on new policy and regulatory strategies for maintaining the human enterprise within the Earth’s ecological limits.
His research objective is to propose “novel and adaptive forms of governance” (Rockström et al. 2009) based on scientifically and ethically derived ecological boundaries within which the human enterprise must operate to avoid irreversible systemic breakdown. This research will build on recent work to establish a comprehensive set of such boundaries at the global level, most prominently the proposal by Rockström and colleagues (2009) of “planetary boundaries” of “safe operating space” for humanity.
In 2010, President Obama appointed him to the Joint Public Advisory Committee of North America’s Commission for Environmental Cooperation. From 2000-2007, he was Director of Submissions on Enforcement Matters at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, managing complaints of ineffective environmental enforcement by NAFTA countries. From 1989-1993 and 1995-2000, Mr. Garver was an attorney in the U.S. Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. From 1993-1995, he was Senior Policy Counsel in the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance at the U.S. EPA. From 1987-1989, he clerked for Judge Conrad Cyr in the U.S. District Court in Maine. Mr. Garver received his B.S. (chemical engineering) from Cornell University (1982) and a J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School (1987).
Selected publications:
Brown, P.G. and G. Garver. 2009. Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Garver, G. and A. Podhora. 2008. Transboundary Environmental Impact Assessment as Part of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal 26(4): 253-263
Garver, G. 2008. Tooth Decay: Examining NAFTA’s “Environmental Teeth.” The Environmental Forum 25(3): 34-39
Garver, G. 2005. Measuring Performance Through Independent Review: Challenges and Opportunities for Independent Reviewers, the Public and the Governments and Other Institutions Subject to Review, in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Environmental Compliance and Enforcement. INECE [online] http://www.inece.org/conference/7/vol1/20_Garver.pdf
