Brice Lalonde
| Brice Lalonde | |
|---|---|
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| Minister of the Environment | |
| In office 15 May 1991 – 2 April 1992 |
|
| Prime Minister | Edith Cresson |
| Preceded by | Huguette Bouchardeau |
| Succeeded by | Michel Barnier |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 10, 1946 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France |
| Political party | Génération Ecologie |
Brice Lalonde (born 10 February 1946) is a former green party leader in France, who ran for President of France in the Presidential elections, 1981. In 1988 he was named Minister of the Environment, and in 1990 founded the green party Ecology Generation. He is a cousin of American politician John Kerry.
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[edit] Life and career
Lalonde was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, the son of Fiona (née Forbes) and Alain-Gauthier Lévy Lalonde. His maternal grandparents were Americans Margaret Tyndal (Winthrop) and James Grant Forbes. He is John Kerry's first cousin, sharing the same maternal grandparents. His father changed the family name from Lévy when he was a child. His (and Sen. Kerry's) g. grandfather Forbes was a poppy botanist and opium dealer in the China trade during the Opium War, who wrote a book on Chinese plants.
Lalonde was a student leader during the May 1968 student uprisings in France, when riots and upheaval scared the French population away from Revolution and the old Left, but toward an adaptive and calmer socialism.
In 1968, Lalonde was President of the Union nationale des étudiants de france (UNEF), the French National Students' Union, which brought France to a standstill with protests and riots. Lalonde, with David McTaggart, an activist involved in the Greenpeace protests against French nuclear tests at Mururoa, helped create the confrontational strategies of boarding ships at sea in the 1970s. In July 1973, he was arrested by the French Navy during protests against nuclear tests in Mururoa, along with the General Jacques Pâris de Bollardière, the priest Jean Toulat and the writer Jean-Marie Muller.[1]
In the Summer 1999, Brice Lalonde went to Afghanistan to support the commander Massoud, called by some the Afghan de Gaulle, against the oppression of the Taliban.[citation needed] He was candidate for President of France in 1981 and later Environment Secretary of France (1988–90) and Environment Minister of France (1990–92). From 1995 to 2008, he was the mayor of Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, a small Breton village where the Forbes family keeps an estate.
In 2007 Brice Lalonde was designated by President Sarkozy French Climate Ambassador and has been heavily invested in the multilateral climate change negotiations until the end of 2010, when he was designated by the UN Secretary-General Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), which is to be held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in June 2012.
Lalonde founded in 1990 the party Ecology Generation, which enjoyed a runaway electoral success in 1992 but soon declined in front of the French Green Party's competition. He failed to run for president in the 1995 and 2002 elections, being unable to obtain the necessary 500 signatures of French mayors or MPs and had to leave the leadership of his own party. Close friend of several right-wing figures including Alain Madelin, his current positions are fairly center right-wing, and he has been criticized as being a bit of a turncoat. He had strongly denounced leftist entryism in the French Green party.[citation needed] Brice lives at the Forbes family estate in Saint-Briac. See Forbes family of China and Boston.
[edit] Timeline
- 1968 - President of the National Student Union (at the Sorbonne) and leader in the May 1968 student uprisings
- 1971 - Founded and led environmental organization, "Amis de la Terre" (Friends of the Earth)
- 1974 - Directed presidential campaign of ecological politician René Dumont
- 1975 - Founded a Green radio station
- 1976-1977 - Journalist for Le Sauvage
- 1981 - Ran for President of France on the Green ticket
- 1981 - Member of the national ecological commission of the Territorial Planning and Management Ministry
- 1982-1985 - Administrator for the European Bureau of the Environment
- 1986 - Expert on the pollution of the Rhine by Sandoz
- 1988-1992 - French Minister of environment
- 1990-2002 - Leader of the Génération Ecologie party.
[edit] Selected publications
- “Ecoliberalism Lives”. Telos 61 (Fall 1984). New York: Telos Press.
[edit] References
- ^ Jean Guisnel, Jacques Pâris de Bollardière, portrait d'un général en honnête-homme, pp. 47-49 in Histoire secrète de la Ve République (dir. Roger Faligot and Jean Guisnel), La Découverte, 2006, 2007
