Tradition and Modernity: Mongolia's Changing Landscape
Rick Taupier has long been involved with a wide range of environmental planning and policy issues. He has taught in the regional planning program at UMass Amherst for 12 years and is a faculty associate with CPPA. From 1984-1994, Dr. Taupier held the position of Assistant Secretary of Environmental Affairs for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and from 1994-2006 he was the Associate Director of the UMass Environmental Institute. He is currently the Associate Director for International Research with the UMass Office of Research Development. His recent research concerns issues of cultural and environmental sustainability with a specific focus on how people rely on traditional relationships with the natural world in order to maintain their livelihoods. This current focus led him to engage in a research effort this past year on the sustainability of Mongolian herding households.