Professor David Norse - Biography
David Norse was formerly UCL’s Pro-Provost for China, and now is an independent consultant. He continues to be an active researcher on policy solutions to food security and agro-environmental problems in China and globally. He was the lead consultant for the design and operation of the China-UK Sustainable Agriculture Research Network (SAIN) launched in November 2008 and is now a member of its Governing Board.
He initially trained as an agricultural scientist and then worked on agricultural development problems in Africa and the Caribbean for many years before holding appointments with the UK Department of the Environment, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome where he was Senior Policy and Planning Coordinator. He contributed to the drafting of Agenda 21, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s first report (the section on food security), and to the Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change (background paper on GHG emissions from agriculture). Between 1993 and 2005 he was a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), a high level international policy consultative body that provides the Chinese leadership and policy makers in different levels of government with policy recommendations on key environment and development issues. He chaired the UN Scientific and Technical Planning Committee for the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS) that was established in 1996 and helped set up the GTOS/GCOS Terrestrial Observation Panel for Climate.
He is a member of the UK Prime Minister’s China Task Force that provides advice on UK-China relations. He is an honorary professor of the Institute of Geographical Science and Natural Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing and emeritus professor at the UCL Environment Institute. He was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in January 2009 for services to international sustainable development and UK-China relations.
He has published over 200 papers, chapters, books or reports covering both the natural and social sciences.
His main publications relating to sustainable development in China include “Policy for Reducing Non-point Pollution from Crop Production in China.”, Zhao-Liang Zhu, David Norse & Bo Sun (Eds.), China Environmental Science Pres, Beijing, 2006; Norse, D. 2005. Non-point pollution from crop production: Global, regional and national issues. Pedosphere. 15(4): 499-508; Norse, D. 2005. The nitrogen cycle, scientific uncertainty and policy relevant science. Science in China Ser.C Life Sciences 48 (Special Issue) 807-817; Sonntag, B.H., and Norse, D. 2005. “Impediments to Sustainable Agriculture in China”, in China’s agricultural and rural development in the early 21st Century, Sonntag, B.H., Jikun Huang, Rozelle, S. and Skerrit, J.H. (Eds.), ACIAR Monograph No.116, Canberra, p.497-510. Norse, D. 2002, Sustainable Agricultural Development in the South East Coastal region. In Sonntag, B. and Sun Honglie (Eds.) Agricultural Development and Environment in Critical Areas of China, Science Press, Beijing. Between 1980 and 2003 he contributed to many of FAO’s publications on the long-term prospects for world agriculture and food security including chapters on “Agriculture and the environment: changing pressures, solutions and trade-offs” and on “Climate change and agriculture: physical and human dimensions” in Bruinsma, J (Ed.) World agriculture: toward 2015/30 – An FAO Perspective, FAO Rome and Earthscan, London, 2003.