Robert Gough
Robert Gough is an attorney with graduate degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology specializing in cultural ecology. He has worked with American Indian Tribes on cultural and natural resource issues over the past 30 years. He currently serves as Secretary of the Intertribal Council On Utility Policy (Intertribal COUP) created to provide information on rights and resources for utility services on tribal lands with respect to regulatory authority, legislation, policy, and economic opportunity in telecommunications and energy development. In addition he also maintains a private law practice on indigenous rights and conducts outreach activities to the Native Alaskan and American Indian communities on behalf of the federal Wind Powering America program.
Gough co-chaired the USGCRP's "Native Peoples/Native Homelands Climate Change Workshop" held in 1998, and co-directs the NativeWind.org, supporting partnerships between ICLEI-Cities for Climate Protection and COUP tribes to build sustainable reservation economies based upon renewable energy. He sits on the Western Governors' Association's Clean and Diversified Energy Advisory Committee seeking to develop 30,000 MWs of clean energy by 2015 in 18 western states. Gough is a co-producer of "Wind Powering Native America" (2003) and the "Native Wind" PSA (2005) and is one of the architects of the Rosebud/COUP Intertribal Wind Energy Plan, which includes a federal environmental justice demonstration project for intertribal wind development and the SAFE Homes (Sustainable, AFfordable and Efficient) straw bale construction initiative, that recently received the inaugural World Clean Energy Award.