Stanford Law School has launched a major new award to recognize global efforts at environmental preservation and sustainability. The Bright Award for Environmental Sustainability will be given to an individual from a different region of the world each year. The 
inaugural winner is Tasso Azevedo, a forestry and climate change consultant and social entrepreneur from Brazil who has been a major force in the successful effort to halt deforestation in his country. He will be honored at a ceremony at Stanford Law School on December 10, 2013, when he will deliver a public lecture and receive the award, including $100,000.

“The goal of the Bright Award is to find and recognize those people who may be hidden gems—doing often unsung environmental work and really transforming the 
areas in which they are working—and to provide them with the greater visibility and funding needed to expand their work,” says Barton H. “Buzz” Thompson Jr., JD/MBA ’76 (BA ’72), Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law and Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Azevedo has dedicated his career to sustainability issues, particularly 
deforestation. He was one of the key people involved in the design and implementation of Brazil’s National Plan to Combat Deforestation in the Amazon, resulting in a more than 75 percent decline in deforestation in the region and the identification of Brazil’s targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As part of that effort, he conceived of and helped to establish the Amazon Fund, which provides millions of dollars in incentives to encourage a reduction in deforestation rates. He was the founder and director of the Brazilian NGO Imaflora (Institute of Forest and Agriculture Management and Certification), director of the National Forest Program at the Ministry of Environment in Brazil, the secretary general of the National Forest Commission, and the first chief and director general of the Brazilian Forest Service.

The late Raymond E. Bright Jr., JD ’59, established the award through a gift to Stanford Law School, which will administer the award. A committee of faculty and students from Stanford Law School will select the winner of the Bright Award each year, with regional consultants advising and providing guidance. To learn more about Tasso Azevedo, the Bright Award, and the December award 
ceremony, go to http://www.law.stanford.edu/organizations/programs-and-centers/environmental-and-natural-resources-law-policy-program-enrlp/the-bright-award. SL