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Nature meets the Metropolis

This session will address the importance of inserting green space-of both the prodigious and deciduous variety-into the urban context. Fritz Haeg and Andy Lipkis will speak about their respective initiatives to bring sensible, ecologically responsible practices to the greater community and discuss the ways in which small-scale interventions can yield manifold results.

SPEAKER BIO

Andy Lipkis began planting trees to rehabilitate smog and fire damaged areas when he was 15 years old. He founded TreePeople in 1973 at age 18 and continues to serve as its president. Now one of California’s largest independent environmental organizations, TreePeople is dedicated to helping nature heal our cities.

Among Andy’s accomplishments are inspiring the planting of one million trees in Los Angeles before the 1984 Summer Olympics, and with his wife Kate, writing The Simple Act of Planting a Tree, which has become a touchstone for the international Citizen Forestry movement, a term he coined.

Andy is a creative problem solver who addresses pressing public health, economic, and environmental issues by forging partnerships between diverse and conflicting parties. Over the past 15 years, Andy has spearheaded ‘integrated watershed management,’ an approach that uses trees and forest-inspired technologies to create a sustainable water supply as well as flood and pollution prevention. This approach is being used in a long term retrofit of the Sun Valley area of Los Angeles (pop. 80,000) creating a new paradigm for increasing environmental health and sustainability in cities.

Andy’s honors include being named to the U.N. Environment Programme’s Global 500 Roll of Honour, and American Forests’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

TreePeople has involved more than two million volunteers in planting more than two million trees. Its environmental education programs reach over 200,000 students each year. Opening soon at its 45-acre Coldwater Canyon Park headquarters, the Center for Community Forestry will be a new sustainability resource for the LA region.