For­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor An­gela Crop­per has died. The Crop­per Foun­da­tion, of which she was a co-founder and first pres­i­dent, made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day. She died in Lon­don yes­ter­day af­ter a pro­tract­ed ill­ness. She was 66.

The foun­da­tion said Crop­per's pass­ing was a loss to T&T, the Caribbean and the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. It added: "In a ca­reer span­ning over 39 years, she gave un­stint­ing­ly of her­self in pub­lic pol­i­cy po­si­tions and in vol­un­tary ser­vice in ed­u­ca­tion, gov­er­nance and the en­vi­ron­ment.

From 2001-2005 Crop­per was co-chair of the Mil­len­ni­um As­sess­ment Pan­el, a glob­al pro­gramme to un­der­take a holis­tic sci­en­tif­ic as­sess­ment of the state of eco-sys­tems across the world. She was al­so co-or­di­nat­ing lead au­thor of the Caribbean Sea Ecosys­tem As­sess­ment.

Pre­vi­ous­ly Crop­per was se­nior ad­vis­er on en­vi­ron­ment and de­vel­op­ment at the UNDP Bu­reau for De­vel­op­ment Pol­i­cy; ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the UN Con­ven­tion on Bi­o­log­i­cal Di­ver­si­ty and Head of Gov­er­nance at the World Con­ser­va­tion Union.

In the 1980s she served as di­rec­tor of func­tion­al co-op­er­a­tion at the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and ad­vis­er in en­vi­ron­ment and in ed­u­ca­tion to the Cari­com sec­re­tary-gen­er­al. She was al­so Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the In­ter­na­tion­al Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion/West­ern Hemi­sphere Re­gion and project man­ag­er for the East­ern Caribbean in Pop­u­la­tion and De­vel­op­ment.

She be­gan her ca­reer in the 1970s as a re­search of­fi­cer at the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute in Trinidad and was an ac­tive mem­ber of the Tapia House Move­ment. In 2000 Crop­per and her hus­band, John, es­tab­lished the Crop­per Foun­da­tion, a not-for-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion through which they aimed to con­tin­ue their work in sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and bet­ter en­vi­ron­men­tal and re­source man­age­ment.

The board of trustees and the staff of the Crop­per Foun­da­tion ex­tend­ed their con­do­lences to her fam­i­ly. De­tails of a memo­r­i­al ser­vice to com­mem­o­rate the life of Crop­per will be an­nounced. Trib­utes to Crop­per can be left with the Crop­per Foun­da­tion at http://an­gela.crop­per.muchloved.com.