Register now for Foard Lecture on “Water and Human Well-being"

March 15, 2007

Photograph of Dr. John Briscoe

John Briscoe, PhD, Country Director for Brazil for the World Bank, is the 2007 Foard Lecturer for the UNC School of Public Health.

The Foard Lecture is scheduled for Friday, April 20, 2007 at Loudermilk Hall in the Rizzo Conference Center in Chapel Hill. There will be a school-wide reception beginning 5:30 p.m. The Lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Water management is one of the great challenges facing developing countries. On the one hand, growing economies need more water services – hydropower, irrigation, and water for industry and people. On the other hand, surface and groundwater systems are already under great stress and environmental quality is deteriorating. And climate change makes the challenge of water management even more daunting. In the Foard Lecture, Briscoe will describe the progress that has been made, and the daunting intellectual, policy and implementation challenges to be faced.

Briscoe, a former professor of water resources at UNC’s School of Public Health, is the World Bank Country Director for Brazil, one of the largest clients of the World Bank, with a portfolio of over $10 billion in investments. Previously Briscoe was the Senior Water Adviser for the World Bank, with oversight responsibility for the Bank’s $40 billion portfolio of programs in water resources, irrigation, hydropower, and water and sanitation. Dr. Briscoe was the principal author of the Bank’s 2003 Water Strategy and, recently, Oxford University Press books on the water economies of India and Pakistan

Prior to working at the World Bank, Dr. Briscoe worked in the Water Ministries for the Governments of South Africa and Mozambique and for the International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research in Bangladesh. In addition to the United States, Dr. Briscoe has lived in his native South Africa, Bangladesh, Mozambique, India and Brazil. He speaks English, Afrikaans, Bengali, Portuguese and Spanish.

Dr. Briscoe received a BSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Cape Town, and his PhD in Environmental Engineering from Harvard University.

The Fred T. Foard Jr. Memorial Lecture was established in 1969 by Dr. Foard’s widow, Elsie D. Foard, to honor him as a public health practitioner whose career spanned more than a half-century, much of it with the U.S. Public Health Service.

For more information about attending the lecture, contact Janice Periquet at (919) 966-0218 or janice_periquet@unc.edu.

For interviews or media information, contact Ramona DuBose, director of communications for the UNC School of Public Health, by telephone at 919-966-7468 or by email at ramona_dubose@unc.edu.