Bastiaan Zoeteman (1945) is professor at Tilburg University (sustainability policy in international perspective. He chairs the Commission on Genetic Modification, advising the Dutch Minister of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment on licenses to introduce genetically modified organisms in the environment.

Since January 2000 he is Chairman of the Board of the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen, Denmark.

From 1988-2001 he was Deputy Director-General for the Environment at the Ministry for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment in The Hague, The Netherlands. In this period four National Environmental Policy Plans were issued, rooting the 'Green Planning' approach in the Dutch society. He supervised and co-inspired the preparation of these Policy Plans and was intensely involved in the negotiation of new policy approaches such as long term targets, voluntary agreements with industrial stakeholders, fiscal incentives to include environmental damage into product prices and speeding up technological innovation to decouple economic growth and environmental pressure.

He was responsible for the diplomatic preparation of the Dutch Presidencies of the European Union Council of Environment Ministers in 1991 and 1997 and participated in and contributed to a large number of national and international conferences and events in the area of environmental protection and promotion of sustainable development. Included are the International Conventions against the Pollution of the River Rhine with Radio-active Materials, Chemicals and Salts (1976), EU Directives to prevent and abate Pollution of Water, Air and Soil, Protocols to protect the Ozone-layer (1989-1992), the preparation of the RIO conference (1992) and the preparation of the Climate Change Convention and its Protocols.

In the eighties Bastiaan Zoeteman consulted with and chaired meetings of the World Health Organization -such as the revision of the Standards for Drinking Water and for Air and the Assessment of the Nuclear Reactor Incident of Chernobyl-, the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He supervised the preparation of the first integrated environmental outlook for The Netherlands 'Concern for Tomorrow', published by the National Institute for Public Heath and the Environment in 1988, which became a landmark report for the development of policy of The Netherlands in the National Environmental Policy Plans of which the first was published in 1989. He participated in the preparation of the Maastricht Treaty and the Amsterdam Treaty of the EU, in EU-top meetings as well as in the G-8 top of Environment Ministers in Miami, Florida, May 1998 and the G-8 Leader top in Denver, Colorado in June 1998.

Bastiaan Zoeteman is also author of three books on how to cope with the present competition between economic growth and long term harmony between man, technology and nature.