IUCN Academy of Environmental Law

IN MEMORIAM

Svitlana Kravchenko (1949-2012)

With profound sadness, the IUCN Academy regrets to announce the untimely great loss of Professor Svitlana Kravchenko, Director of the LL.M. Program in Environmental and Natural Resources Law at the University of Oregon, U.S.A. Svitlana suffered a heart attack and passed away on Friday, February 10, in Eugene, Oregon. She is survived by her loving husband, Professor John Bonine, also a law professor at the University of Oregon; her dear daughter, Maria Kostytska (a lawyer in Paris, France) and her dear niece, Lena Kravchenko (Executive Director of Environment-People-Law in Lviv, Ukraine).

Svitlana was born in Potsdam, Germany and grew up in both the Russian Far East and Western Ukraine. Her father was a distinguished Soviet General in Ukraine, who became a well-known military judge. Her mother was a distinguished criminal judge who became a Justice of the Supreme Criminal Court of Ukraine during the time of the Soviet Union. Svitlana graduated from the Law Faculty of Lviv State University in 1972 and began her teaching career at her alma mater. She defended her first PhD dissertation at the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in 1977 which focused on the problem of civil liability for environmental transgressions; and defended her 2nd and higher-level dissertation in 1991 on the problems associated with environmental law enforcement in Kharkiv. Prior to teaching at the University of Oregon Law School, Svitlana taught environmental law at Lviv National University in Ukraine for 25 years.