Alon Tal, environmental lawyer

Alon Tal, Israel environment

“Israelis are tremendously committed to the environment. We can move mountains if optimism motivates us.”

Alon Tal founded the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (IUED) in 1990 and has been working in public interest advocacy ever since. In 1996, he founded the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, an advanced academic center where Israeli, Jordanian, Palestinian, and international students study together.

Alon was the Chairman of Life and Environment, Israel’s umbrella group for 80 environmental NGOs, between 1998-2004. He has taught environmental law at Tel Aviv University for 15 years and was recently appointed professor of environmental policy at Ben Gurion University in Israel and a visiting professor of Law at Otago University in New Zealand.

He has a small private practice where he offers pro bono representation for environmental NGOs.

If you want to read his book, and can’t find it in the library, or a local store see: Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel

::Alon Tal

5 COMMENTS
  1. The Israeli Committee for Sustainable Economic Growth (website http://www.planetnana.co.il/danielberger4u) would like to invite Alon Tal, and all his extended family of associates to participate in our current project; THE GREEN DEAL; A SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAM OF TRANSFORMATION.
    Please access our website to learn about the GREEN DEAL.
    Please first access the links to the 2007 Earth Day/Holocaust Day Message, and the 14 Points of Greenie Hasaedek; then in the testimonial section, the letters from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli Defense Ministry(David Ivri), Teddy Kollek, Joseph Criden, Ehud Barack, and Amir Peretz.

    I have been a transformation oriented, “bright green” environmentalist for over 30 years.
    Since 1982, I have been a disciple of Amory Lovins, and the Rocky Mountain Institute of Snowmass, Colorado.

    In 1982, I was invited to be a consultant to New Jersey Governor Tom Kean’s Office of Management Improvement Services.
    In 1991, the Israeli Foreign Ministry invited me to be a consultant to their economic development program to Africa and the Far East.
    In 1992, Mr. Avi Bar-On (of blessed memory), and I attempted to start an Israeli chapter of Friends of the Earth. We recruited about 75 members, but were unable to get sanctioned by Friends of the Earth USA.

    Thank you for reviewing this matter.
    We are looking forward to hearing from you.

    Sincerely,

    Daniel Berger

    The Israeli Committee for Sustainable Economic Growth

    “The Israeli Environmental Spin Stops Here!!!”

  2. Tal, A. (2006). Speaking of Earth: Environmental speeches that moved the world (p. 276). New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

    As the title states clearly, this book presents a collection of 20 speeches on environmental topics that have influenced the world. The book caught my attention with the names of people strongly familiar to me: Rachel Carson, Margaret Thatcher, Thor Heyerdahl, the Dalai Llama, and my countryman, David Lange. How could these people co-exist in one book? Who were these other speechmakers from Egypt, Turkey, Kenya, and Nigeria?

    This book has been a great pleasure for me to read each morning at breakfast. Each of the 20 speeches is presented with a succinct biography of the speech-maker, introducing the context and influence of the speech and its speech-maker within the environmental movement.

    The diversity of the speechmakers’ influence is remarkable: from David Lange’s Oxford Debate on the proposition that ‘Nuclear Weapons are morally indefensible’ through Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s proposition that ‘To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin’.

    I recommend the book for students and teachers of eco-sustainability, rhetoric, social marketing, and social activism.

    (A book review I placed on Google Books)

  3. and he’s the author of the highly influential & informative ‘Pollution in a Promised Land – an Environmental History of Israel’
    pub. Univ. Of California Press – well worth borrowing or buying!

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