Embassy News 2006
Two U.S. Lecturers Explain U.S. Environmental Policies and Practices to Icelandic Audiences
Two visiting U.S. lecturers spoke to a wide variety of audiences in Iceland about U.S. environmental protection policies and successful approaches to wildlife management.
Professor Patrick Eagan, of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, specializes in environmental engineering, and his wife, Lloyd Eagan, is Director of an 11-county Department of Natural Resources Office for the State of Wisconsin. Their three-day speaking tour in Iceland, from May 3-5, was arranged by the Economic/Commercial and Public Diplomacy sections of the U.S. Embassy.
Professor Eagan spoke to business audiences at the Employers Associations of Reykjavik and of Akureyri, Iceland’s second largest city, and to engineering and business students at Reykjavik University and Bifrost School of Business. His message: not only is it socially responsible for companies to factor “green” considerations into their operations, but that in the long run it is usually cost-effective. Companies across the U.S. and Europe are adopting the tenets of environmental engineering, eliciting praise from customers, regulators, shareholders, and employees, and attracting new business opportunities. The Reykjavik University engineering faculty raised the possibility of future cooperation between their universities, possibly to include faculty exchanges. Dr. Eagan and the Bifrost faculty also discussed possible future academic cooperation.
Mrs. Eagan spoke at the University of Iceland to environmental studies students and professionals in the field. She provided an overview of how U.S. environmental protection policy has matured over the last 30 years, and offered her perspectives on where U.S. environmental priorities and regulation are headed in the next decade. She also addressed Wildlife Agency representatives in Akureyri on Wisconsin’s approach to wildlife management, which developed into an exchange of best practices.