Emlyn Koster

Background

About Emlyn Koster

Born in the Suez Canal Zone with UK, Canadian and US citizenships, Emlyn’s unconventional career and transdisciplinary outlook are rooted in diverse cultures and landscapes, including three World Heritage Sites. As a synthesist, his focus is on the Earth System with its intertwined air, water, ice, land, and nonhuman/human life subsystems in the Anthropocene, the geological term for humanity's exponential rise as a disruptive environmental force. Research insights and community initiatives have been integrated with innovative leadership of four nature and science museums in Canada and the United States―most profoundly in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks―as well as chairing boards, including the Geological Association of Canada on its 50th anniversary, and assisting other nonprofits such as the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Learning from this journey with almost continuous academic appointments has been communicated via 100+ publications and 50+ keynote addresses. Achievements have been recognized by peer awards including at the White House and University of Ottawa, news profiles including by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and in several invited diplomatic missions. Mindful of Indigenous practices that strive to integrate nature and culture and driven by a sense of accountability towards the greater good, his recent activities are in these linked areas: • Advocacy to the geological profession that its traditional focus on Earth history should also illuminate human disruption of environments with an ethical lens. • Advocacy to the museum profession that its traditional focus on objects should illuminate the issues that underpin today's troubled world. • Advocacy to the UN that its ‘Transforming the World’ 2015-30 agenda of 17 siloed sustainable development goals, which has become “a promise in peril”, should morph into a holistic 2030-50 renaissance of transdisciplinary involvements of the sciences and humanities. Recent invitations for his presentations are from the Royal Society of South Africa with the Academy of Science of South Africa and the World Environment Day program in cooperation with the International Association of University Presidents and from the Leadership for Conservation of Africa, all on the Anthropocene as a critical juncture in the continuity of time. The UN also recently invited his participation in its Stakeholder Forum series for Sustainable Development Goals.