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Briefly on authors
- MIKULÁŠ HUBA (1954), regional geographer, environmentalist, pedagogist, NGO leader. Graduated from Comenius University (1978). Huba was a member of the Slovak Parliament and served as a chairman of its Environmental Committee (1990-1992). He is a scientific team leader at the Institute of Geography, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Dr. Huba has been a co-ordinator of several projects concerning sustainability issues. He is among the leading activists of the non-profit sector in Slovakia: president of the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Protectors (1989-1993), founder and president of the Society for Sustainable Living in SR (since 1993), co-founder of the Slovak Association of Club of Rome, Transparency International Slovakia, Third Sector Gremium and others organisations. Member and activist of several international NGOs and co-founder of the Global Security Fellows Initiative, University of Cambridge (1993) as well as of Values for a Sustainable Future European Ecoforum Issue Group (1998).
Author, co-author or editor of 15 books, including the well-known Bratislava/loudly.
- Erazim Kohák, author of almost 20 books and numerous articles. Since 1995 he has been an emeritus professor of philosophy at Boston University, where he taught for 35 years, and since 1991, a professor of ethics and ontology at Charles University in Prague. Personalist and phenomenologist, but first of all socially and ecologically engaged philosopher, continuously evolving the search for unity of theory with actions based on it, following his great countrymen, Jan Amos Comenius, the "Teacher of Nations", Thomas G. Masaryk, philosopher and the first Czechoslovak president, and Jan Patočka.
Kohák lived between Bohemia, his native country (and, since 1995, once more his homeland) and the USA, his adoptive country for almost half a century. He worked systematically toward political change in Czechoslovakia. Since 1989, he has been very active in mass-media, as well as promoter and activist of the environmental movement in Czechoslovakia.
- Juraj MesÍk (1962), M.D. From 1989 to 1990, Dr. Mesík served as a Member of Parliament in the Czechoslovak Federal Assembly. From 1990 to 1991, he served as Chairman of the Green Party in Slovakia. From 1993 to the present, Mesík has been Director of Nadácia Ekopolis - Environmental Partnership for Central Europe - Slovakia (EPCE). In 1998, Dr. Mesík was elected to the Banská Bystrica City Council. Throughout his career, Dr. Mesík has been extensively involved in the third sector in Slovakia. From 1982 to 1992, he served as chairman of the local branch, Ekotrend, and in the Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Protectors (vice-president 1990 - 1992). From 1994 to 1995, he served as a trustee for the Institute for East West Studies in Prague and New York. In 1994, Dr. Mesík became a trustee for the Banská Bystrica Healthy City Community Foundation.
- TEODOR MUNZ (1924) Graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy, Comenius University, Bratislava.
He is a former researcher from the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences. His prior field of study was the history of European and Slovak philosophy. He is the author of 5 monographies and numerous studies and articles. Dr. Münz has translated 14 books of German philosophers from German to Slovak. During the last ten years, his priority has been ecophilosophy. His original way of thinking is reflected by his essays on philosophical anthropology.
- JOSEF SVOBODA (1929). Born in Prague. As a student of Masaryk University in Brno he was arrested in 1949 for political reasons and spent a total of 9 years in 17 communist prisons and concentration camps. After that, he served in different professions. He studied biology at Charles University (1966-1968). After the Soviet army invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he left to Canada. His bachelors studies were completed at University of Ontario in 1970, and PhD studies at University of Alberta, Edmonton. Since 1973, he has been a professor of plant ecology at the University of Toronto. Since 1970, Prof. Svoboda took part in or organised 26 expeditions, mainly to the Arctic, where he dealt with primary production issues.
He works on homosphere, noosphere as well as on the interpretation of evolution, have a philosophical background.
After the Velvet Revolution, he was invited by several universities in Czechoslovakia to give lectures on arctic ecology. In 1995, he was awarded by the Doctor Honoris Causa at the Masaryk University.
- Klaudius Viceník (1940 - 1999) biocybernetist, scientist, philosopher, photographer, founder of the Centre for Human Development, co-founder of the Society for Sustainable Living in the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Association of the Club of Rome. A great propagator of Eastern philosophy and a practical promoter of yoga.
Viceník was an internationally recognised, creative and innovative research worker of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He was active in mass-media and public discussions. He was also involved in several structures and activities promoting democracy, tolerance, sustainable way of living, and the continuation of the common Czechoslovakia.
He was an excellent representant of mental features like sensitivity, empathy, and solidarity.
- JOSEF VAVROUŠEK (1944-1995), system analyst, social scientist, environmentalist, politician, pedagogist, NGO leader, alpinist. Prof. Vavroušek was the first and last minister of the Environment in the Czechoslovak Republic (1990-1992), one of the leaders of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution in 1989, the founder and President of the Society for Sustainable Living (1992-1995), a member of the Czech and Slovak Association of Club of Rome, as well as the youngest member of the student expedition Lambarene which brought medication to Albert Schweizer’s hospital in Africa. He was the head of the Czechoslovak delegation to the Summit in Rio de Janiero (1992).
Josef Vavroušek started to be internationally recognised mainly as an organiser of the first European environmental ministers conference at Dobříš Castle near Prague (1991). Due to this fact, Josef Vavroušek used to be called the father of the ”Environment for Europe” process. Human values and environmental ethics were of particular importance to him. The Dobříš Conference underlined the importance of these ideals in the search for ways of sustainable living.
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