Dr. Michael K. Dorsey is assistant professor in Dartmouth College’s Environmental Studies Program. Professor Dorsey is presently actively engaged in scholarly research and strategic policy advocacy on the subject of climate justice. Some of his thoughts on this matter are reflected in the recent publication: “Climate Knowledge and Power: Tales of Skeptic Tanks, Weather Gods and Sagas for Climate (in)Justice” in CNS- A Taylor & Francis Journal (June 2007). Dr. Dorsey is also a co-contributor to the recently released volume, Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society (Rozenberg Press, The Netherlands & University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, South Africa, 2007). Dr. Dorsey provides advice to governments, foundations, and others on a variety of climate change matters. In 1992, he was a member of the U.S. State Department Delegation to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, “The Earth Summit.” He is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment, Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and The Johns Hopkins University, Department of Anthropology. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Michigan. Before joining Dartmouth’s faculty, he held the college’s Thurgood Marshall Fellowship in Environmental Studies and Geography.

Over the years Dr. Dorsey has also held visiting lecturer posts at various institutions around the world, including the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (The Royal University of Groningen, The Netherlands) in 2001; in the Department of Regional Planning at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) in 2002; and at the University of Witswaterstrand (South Africa) also in 2002.

For more than a decade Dr. Dorsey has played a major role in co-founding and leading various organizations. Internationally, between 1991-92 he worked with an international steering committee to start Action for Solidarity Environment and Development (A SEED) now based in the Netherlands. He is a founding member of the San Francisco based Center for Environmental Health and served on its board for eleven years. He also co-created and worked to develop, fund and staff the Environmental Leadership Program. A member of the Sierra Club since the mid-1980s, Michael served six years (from 1997-2003) as a Director on the Club’s national board, where he co-shared legal responsibility for oversight of the budget totaling more than $80 million upon his departure. Fluent in Spanish, from 1999 to 2001, Michael lived in Ecuador and was a co-principal investigator based jointly with the Instituto de Estudios Ecologistas del Tercer Mundo and Acción Ecológica.

Dr. Dorsey has constantly sought to merge critical thinking and research on environment and development issues with pragmatic action to foment and secure visionary, progressive, and just outcomes. His knowledge of the nexus of international institutions, development and multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private companies and campaigns to foment change within these entities is well recognized. Dr. Dorsey’s opinions and ideas have been covered in a wide range of media outlets from CNN-International to Newsweek, to the New York Times to The Financial Times and many others.