Joe B. Browder

Board member

Friends of the Big Cypress

As leaders who in the 1960s and 1970s helped shape the modern environmental movement, in government service, and as advisors to industry, governments and the public interest, Joe Browder and his partner Louise Dunlap have contributed to strategies that influence the relationship of business, technology and markets to environmental protection and social responsibility. Louise Dunlap, the first woman CEO of a major national U.S. environmental organization and a key strategist in behalf of energy efficiency, joined the firm in 1986. Joe Browder is active in the network of environmental thinkers and scientists working for more accurate and transparent analysis of the environmental and greenhouse gas consequences of technologies proposed as solutions to the global climate crisis. He is an authority on electric power planning and development, working to assure renewable energy development that does not also expand greenhouse gas emissions from coal. In 2007, U.S. and global food manufacturing companies asked Joe to help organize and participate in the industry’s review of how food production is affected by the economic, natural resource and environmental impacts of current-generation biofuels. Joe’s early national environmental leadership is the topic of a social studies textbook edited by the late historian Alex Haley and distributed to middle schools throughout the U.S. (Save the Everglades, Stamper, Steck Vaughn, 1993). His historic work for the Everglades is described in detail in the biography of his friend and colleague Marjory Stoneman Douglas (An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the Environmental Century, Davis, University of Georgia Press, 2009), and in Michael Grunwald’s 2006 book The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise. Since 1997 Joe Browder and Louise Dunlap have advised Honda regarding alternative fuels and technologies, global climate change, fuel economy, and other environmental and energy policy issues. Since 2007 Joe has advised Exxon Mobil about climate change. In the 1960s Joe Browder was a television news producer in Miami, Florida, before joining the National Audubon Society staff and becoming the Everglades Coalition’s founding Coordinator in 1968, then moving to Washington, DC in 1970 to be the first Conservation Director of Friends of the Earth. Joe was the first Treasurer of the League of Conservation Voters, the national environmental political campaign committee. In 1972, he, Louise Dunlap and other Friends of the Earth environmental lobbyists left FOE to found the Environmental Policy Center, and Joe directed EPC’s work until he joined the Carter-Mondale presidential campaign in 1976. During his years with national environmental organizations, Joe was principal strategist for efforts to protect Everglades National Park, leading campaigns to secure a permanent water supply for the Park, prevent development of a destructive commercial airport in the Everglades, and add almost 900,000 acres of Everglades and Biscayne Bay lands and waters to the National Parks system. Joe continues to participate in national citizen efforts to protect the Everglades. After helping to develop the Everglades restoration program adopted by the Everglades Coalition in 1991. He served as National Chair of the Everglades Coalition in 1994 and 1995, and now advises the Conservancy of Southwest Florida about strategies for protecting the Florida panther. When President Jimmy Carter became the Democratic Party nominee in 1976, he appointed Joe Browder to coordinate Carter Mondale Presidential Campaign energy and environmental transition planning. From 1977 until 1981, Joe served the Secretary of Interior as an advisor on energy, resources and environmental matters. Joe Browder played a major role in the Carter Administration's programs for managing federal coal resources and electricity policy, coordinating with state governments in planning the use of federal lands as sites for transmission lines and power plants to serve California and other western states, and coordinating federal land and resource management policies with national energy policy. Joe was a key figure in Carter Administration decisions to relocate proposed energy facilities and mineral development that would have degraded Native American lands and western National Parks. In the early 1980s, Joe Browder advised both the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Railroads and the Governors of the western states about environmental and social consequences of increasing western coal production. For Public Service Company of New Mexico, Bechtel, General Electric, Combustion Engineering and the Navajo Nation, he helped plan the first proposed merchant powerplant to serve California markets. In the late ‘80s, Joe worked for European fuel suppliers and with US automotive interests to help Brazil deal with ethanol shortages. For European and Canadian fuel and chemical companies, in the 1990s Joe served on the policy and technical committees of the Oxygenated Fuels Association. For twenty years, until its merger with a British firm, Joe advised one of the larger global mining companies, BHP, about mining projects from Papua New Guinea to the Caribbean, and about global environmental issues. In 1993, Joe Browder Co-Chaired, with Brazil's Mato Grosso do Sul Environment Secretary, the Natural Resources section of the first InterAmerican Dialogue on Water Management. Joe was a founding member of the Advisory Council of the InterAmerican Water Resources Network (a project of the Organization of American States). Joe was a Host Committee member for the Third Inter American Dialogue on Water Resources (Panama 1999),and chaired the Water and Indigenous Peoples section of the World Water Council's Water Vision for the Western Hemisphere program (Panama 1999). For the U.S. State Department, Joe has been asked to help conduct energy and natural resources seminars for State Department personnel posted to Asia, Latin America and Africa, and in 2007 The U.S. State Department selected Joe Browder as the wetlands expert to discuss the economic and environmental values of wetlands with Turkish officials. Joe is a member of the Circle of Advisors to the Hopi people’s organization Black Mesa Trust. For many years he helped the Native American Rights Fund and Klamath Tribes develop strategies and negotiate with the George W. Bush Administration about tribal lands, fisheries and waters. Joe Browder is a Board member of Friends of the Big Cypress, and has served on the Boards of the René Dubos Center for Human Environments, Florida Audubon Society, Tropical Audubon Society, Friends of the Everglades, Environmental Policy Center, Environmental Policy Institute and Friends of Jug Bay. Joe and his wife and partner Louise Dunlap live in Fairhaven, Maryland.