Robert Goodland

I'm sorry to learn -- belatedly; he passed on late last year -- that Robert Goodland has left us behind.

Goodland was the World Bank's environmental conscience, serving as a consultant to the Bank back in the '70s and then as its full-time environmental expert.  He was instrumental in establishing policies and procedures that tipped the Bank toward supporting projects that were environmentally sensible and sensitive to social and cultural costs.  In recent years the Bank seems to be backsliding, and the world is likely to be the worse for its lack of a Goodland as the environment's advocate.