Natural Resources and Economic Development in Africa: Liberian Experience featuring Alfred Brownell

Natural Resources and Economic Development in Africa: Liberian Experience featuring Alfred Brownell

Co-Sponsored by the Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies, the Northeastern School of Law, the Northeastern African Student Organization, and the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute.

Alfred Brownell Biography
Distinguished Scholar in Residence

Alfred Brownell, came to the School of Law from Liberia in December 2016. He has been re-appointed as a Distinguished Scholar in Residence for a second year, through December 2018. His faculty sponsor is Lucy Williams. One of Africa’s leading environmental and human rights defenders, Brownell works in the area of indigenous land rights.

As a founder, CEO, and Lead Campaigner at Green Advocates, Liberia’s first public-interest environmental law and human rights organization, Brownell has worked for almost twenty years as researcher, legal counsel and advocate for impoverished rural communities to ensure them a voice in decisions affecting their natural resources. In his field research, Brownell has established the serious human rights impacts of large agribusiness activities, including the destruction of sacred sites, burial grounds, farmlands, forests and wetlands that serve as a primary source of food for local communities. He has also documented the deleterious impact on food security and on traditional subsistence farming practices prompted by the introduction of monocrop agriculture.

Brownell co-authored Liberia’s first comprehensive framework environmental legislation and legislation related to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Liberia’s progressive land rights policy, which establishes customary land as a category of land ownership with the same status as private property rights. He is also widely recognized for his leadership in the field of natural resource rights. Brownell is a 1994 graduate of the University of Liberia, College of Agriculture and Forestry (Bachelor of Science in General Agriculture). He is a 1999 graduate of the Louis Arthur Grimes School of Law, University of Liberia (JD/LLB) and a 2002 graduate of Tulane University Law School, New Orleans, LA (LLM in Environment and Energy Law).