March 5, 2013
2009 Goldman Prize recipient Rizwana Hasan recently visited the Bay Area to attend the Bangladesh Development Initiative (BDI), a three day conference hosted at the University of California Berkeley campus.
Hasan, a leading environmental attorney and recent winner of the Magsaysay Award, was featured as keynote speaker at the conference, discussing her work in environmental justice in Bangladesh. Other distinguished guests at the conference included the US Ambassador to Bangladesh, Dan Mozena, and Professor Lawrence Cohen, Director of the Center for South Asia Studies (CSAS).
The theme of the conference was “Bridging the Policy-Action Divide in Bangladesh: Challenges and Prospects for Bangladesh’s Future,” featuring nearly 20 academic sessions that stirred debate on a broad range of issues facing Bangladesh today, from sustainable development to gender issues.
Hasan was awarded the Goldman Prize in 2009 for spearheading a legal campaign to expose Bangladesh’s exploitative and environmentally-degrading ship breaking industry, eventually securing stricter government rules and regulations.
