Downie's research focuses on factors that can promote or impede the creation, implementation and effectiveness of international environmental policy.
At many of the meetings associated with the ozone layer, mercury and POPs, he worked with the Secretariat as part of the team that drafted the official negotiation reports.
[1] For his informal work with the Ozone Secretariat at negotiations in the mid-to-late 1990s and his scholarly writing on global ozone policy from 1993-2014, he was nominated and awarded inclusion in the Montreal Protocol Who’s Who, a collection maintained by the United Nations Environment Programme’s OzonAction unit, “intended to honor the visionaries, innovators, and implementers who are making the Montreal Protocol a global environmental success story.”[2] Downie has also been a long-time advocate of examining opportunities to reduce state, national and international taxes and fees focused on income, especially those paid by the lower and middle classes, and replacing them with taxes on pollution.
The author of numerous publications on a variety of topics, his co-authored book, Global Environmental Politics,[3] written with Professor Pamela Chasek (a co-creator of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin), is in its 8th edition.
[1] In 2000 he moved from a primary appointment at the School of International and Public Affairs to one at the Earth Institute in order to focus on applied policy research and creating and expanding new interdisciplinary educational programs.
Dr. Whitman, who died in January 2023 after a long illness, was a noted specialist in internal medicine and out-patient medical education at Yale University.