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Brice Lalonde

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Brice Lalonde
Minister of the Environment
In office
16 May 1991 – 2 April 1992
Prime MinisterÉdith Cresson
Preceded byHimself
Succeeded bySegolene Royal
Minister of the Environment to the Prime Minister (France)
In office
2 October 1990 – 16 May 1991
Prime MinisterMichel Rocard
Preceded byHimself
Succeeded byHimself
Minister of the Environment to the Prime Minister (France)
In office
29 March 1989 – 2 October 1990
Prime MinisterMichel Rocard
Preceded byHimself
Succeeded byHimself
Minister of the Environment to the Prime Minister (France)
In office
12 May 1988 – 29 March 1989
Prime MinisterMichel Rocard
Preceded byAlain Carignon
Succeeded byHimself
Personal details
Born (1946-02-10) 10 February 1946 (age 78)
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
RelationsRosemary Isabel Forbes (aunt)
John Forbes Kerry (cousin)
Cameron Forbes Kerry (cousin)
Parent(s)Alain Lalonde
Fiona Forbes

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.

Life and career

Lalonde was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, to Alain Lalonde and Fiona Forbes. His maternal grandparents were Americans James Grant Forbes II of the Forbes family and Margaret Tyndal Winthrop of the Dudley–Winthrop family. Through Fiona's sister Rosemary, he is a first cousin of politicians John Kerry and Cameron Kerry. Lalonde's paternal grandfather changed his surname from Lévy to Lalonde, and converted from Judaism to Catholicism.[1] James Grant Forbes II 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.[2]

He was candidate for President of France in 1981, spokesman of The Amis de la Terre in 1982[3] 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 the President of the French Republic Ambassador on Climate change 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 Ban Ki-Moon, at the level of Assistant Secretary-General, Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), which was 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 elections, being unable to obtain the necessary 500 signatures of French mayors or MPs. In 2002, he decided to leave the leadership of his own party and politics. He becomes then a consultant and work on development projects in Africa.

Brice lives at the Forbes family estate in Saint-Briac. See Forbes family of China and Boston.

Timeline

  • 1968 - President of the National Student Union (at the Sorbonne) and leader in the May 1968 student uprisings
  • 1971 - Joined and led the recently created French branch of the environmental organization, "Les 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
  • 1995-2008 - Mayor of Saint-Briac-sur-Mer.
  • 1990-2002 - Leader of the Génération Ecologie party.
  • 2007-2010 - French Ambassador on climate change negotiations.
  • 2010-2012 - United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, Executive Coordinator of United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

Selected publications

  • “Ecoliberalism Lives”. Telos 61 (Fall 1984). New York: Telos Press.

References

  1. ^ http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109113596846278138,00.html
  2. ^ 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
  3. ^ Le Quotidien de Paris, Jean-Pierre Thiollet, 20 October 1982 http://discours.vie-publique.fr/notices/823156100.html
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