Conference Guest Speaker
Professor Robert Ford
Robert E. (Bob) Ford has over 35 years experience in academia at Utah State University,
Westminster College of Salt Lake City, Brigham Young University and Loma Linda University.
Her has lived extensively in Latin America, Asia and Africa as an academic administrator,
researcher, and development consultant and is fluent in Spanish and French besides English.
His academic research specialty is cultural ecology--the study of nature-society relationships--and their policy implications for sustainable development and the human dimensions of global change in drylands, coastal, and montane regions. He has Master’s degrees in public health and anthropology and a Ph.D in Earth Science/Geography.
In recent years (1999-2003) was a senior policy advisor for the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) where he focused on the application of geospatial technologies on problems
of sustainability, climate change, desertification, agriculture, and resource management, i.e.
such as co-managing the IWG (Inter-Agency Working Group) entitled Geographic Information for
Sustainable Development (GISD) which was launched at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD).
Since returning to academia in 2003 at Loma Linda University, California he has participated
in extensive biodiversity, conservation, coastal zone management, and public policy research
and applied sustainability work in Mesoamerica (Belize, Honduras) with various NGOs, government,
and multilateral partners. Much of this effort has emphasized implementing local-level SDI
(Spatial Data Infrastructure) and capacity-building around protected-areas in the critical
Mesoamerican Barrier Reef Region. In 2008 he worked as a consultant to the Abu Dhabi (UAE)
government helping reorganize their environment agency. In November 2008 he returned to Rwanda
as a Research Professor and Adviser to the CGIS-NUR (Butare). Dr. Ford had been in Rwanda during
1984-1988 as the first Vice-rector forAffairs at AUCA-Mudende (Adventist University of Central
Africa).
