Peter
J. Balint
Short bio
I am associate
professor in the
Department of Public and
International Affairs at
George Mason University
(with a joint appointment in the
Department of Environmental Science
and Policy). I teach courses on
environmental
policy and on research methods
and data analysis.
For the past decade,
my primary research focus has been on community-based natural resource
management—a policy approach designed to integrate conservation and
community development in rural areas of poor countries. I have conducted
research on this topic in Central America, Central Asia, and Eastern and
Southern Africa. In a second research focus, I have explored so-called
wicked problems—large-scale, long-term policy dilemmas in which multiple
and compounding risks and uncertainties combine with sharply divergent
public values to generate contentious political stalemates. In
particular, several colleagues and I studied the US Forest Service’s
ongoing struggle to develop a broadly acceptable management plan for
Sierra Nevada region of California. Finally, in the past year I have
begun two new lines of inquiry: Asian and comparative environmental
policy, and the bureaucratic lifecycles of US environmental agencies.
I have a PhD in
environmental policy (University
of Maryland, 2000); an MS in conservation biology (University
of Maryland, 1998); an MA in education (State
University of New York at Albany, 1972); and a BA in
English (Haverford
College, 1971). Before entering the University of Maryland in 1996
to study environmental issues, I taught English for more than 20 years
in the
inner-city
alternative public high schools of Albany, NY.
