John R. Cartwright

Professor Emeritus

Education

BA Queen's, MA, PhD Toronto

Research Interests

Politics of Canadian forestry; protecting natural areas in Third World, with particular attention to rain forests; corporate power and global issues

Activities

Dr. John Cartwright worked as a newspaper reporter in Vancouver and Ottawa before he began his teaching career in 1963 at the University of Sierra Leone then on to the University of Saskatchewan in 1966 and finally to the University of Western Ontario in 1969 where he continued to teach in the Department of Political Science until he retired in 2003.

Dr. Cartwright's research interests include: politics of Canadian forestry; protecting natural areas in Third World, with particular attention to rain forests; corporate power and global issues; impacts of human modifications on ecosystems; impacts of genetic engineering of organisms. He has had field experience in many parts of Africa and the Americas, including Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Zambia, Costa Rica, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia, as well as Europe and Asia.

He has taught courses in a variety of areas, including: environmental politics (covering impacts of energy, agriculture, forestry, water use, and pollution on ecosystems, and the policy choices involved in dealing with these impacts); problems of protecting natural areas, in Canada and in the Third World; and African politics, looking at the relationships between African states and the industrialized world, as well as internal conflicts and the ways in which regimes deal with these. He has also given guest lectures at several universities and to various courses in geography, biology, and environmental studies, as well as numerous talks to naturalist groups, university alumni groups, and others on various aspects of natural history and conservation, as well as Third World development issues.

He has also carried out monitoring studies on breeding birds and frogs, eagle and owl counts, and a number of other field studies in natural history.

Selected Publications

Books

Political Leadership in Africa. London: Croom Helm, 1983.

Articles/Book Chapters

“Environmental Groups, Ontario’s Lands for Life Process, and the Forest Accord”, Environmental Politics, 12, 2 (Summer 2003), 115-32.

“Does our Government Really Want to Protect Endangered Species?”, Policy Options, June 2001, 45-49.

“The Price of Compromise: Why We Should Wind Down Our Forest Industry Now”, Canadian Public Policy, XXV, 2 (June 1999), 233-45.

"Does NAFTA Enhance or Threaten Biodiversity?", Global Biodiversity, 3, 4 (Spring 1994), 19-23.

"Is there hope for conservation in Africa?", Journal of Modern African Studies, 23, 3 (September 1991), 355-71.

 

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