Geoffrey Hawtin

Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin, "a British/Canadian citizen, is the Senior Advisor—and until August 2005 was the Executive Secretary—of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international foundation that he helped create, to finance the conservation of the biodiversity of crops worldwide. From 1991 until 2003 he was Director General of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI, now Bioversity International), a research center of the CGIAR headquartered in Rome, Italy. Dr. Hawtin obtained both his first degree and Ph.D. from Cambridge University, U.K., carrying out his doctoral thesis research at Makerere University, Uganda. He worked for the Ford Foundation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) as a plant breeder, based in Lebanon and Egypt, and was the first Leader of the Food Legume Improvement Programme of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria. Dr. Hawtin has also served as Deputy Director General of ICARDA and Director of the Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Sciences Division of IDRC based in Ottawa, Canada. He has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific and technical publications and, until his transfer to Cali, Colombia, home has been Dorset, UK. His other responsibilities include membership of the Board of Directors of the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), in Costa Rica, and he chairs the International Advisory Committee of Gardens for Life, Eden Project, Cornwall."


 * Trustee, CIAT