Bruce Glavovic

(LOICZ SSC Member from the beginning of 1st January 2010)

School of People, Environment and Planning

Phone: +64 6 3569099

Fax: +64 6 3505689

e-mail contact

Based at Massey University in New Zealand, Bruce is the Earthquake Commission (EQC) Fellow in Natural Hazards Planning and Associate Director of the Massey-GNS Science Joint Centre for Disaster Research. He has 25 years of experience in academia, private consulting and Government. He has worked mainly in South Africa, the United States of America, and New Zealand. Bruce was the Project Manager of the team that designed and facilitated South Africa's coastal policy formulation process that culminated in the Government’s White Paper for Sustainable Coastal Development. An independent reviewer described it as “…the world’s first consensus based national policy for the sustainable development of a nation’s coastal regions and natural resources.” It is the foundation for the Integrated Coastal Management Act that came into force in South Africa in December 2009.

Bruce has a multi-disciplinary education, with a Bachelor’s degree in economics and agricultural economics (University of Natal, South Africa), a Master of Science in environmental science (University of Cape Town), a Master of Urban and Environmental Planning and a PhD in Environmental Science (University Virginia, USA). His research focuses on the role of land-use planning in building sustainable, hazard-resilient communities. It is clustered around several themes: natural hazards planning; adapting to climate change; environmental governance; negotiation, collaborative planning and consensus building; and understanding poverty-environment linkages and driving forces. Bruce’s particular interest is learning lessons from comparative international experience in coastal sustainability, disaster risk reduction, post-disaster recovery, and adapting to climate change. He has undertaken extensive fieldwork on these issues in South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand, the Gulf Coast of the USA in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and in Indonesia and the Maldives after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Bruce co-edited two recent books: Integrated Coastal Zone Management: The Global Challenge, published by Research Publishing Services (2008) and The Ecological Economics of Oceans and Coasts, published by Edward Elgar (2008).