September 15, 2016: IRES Faculty Seminar
Speaker: Daniel Karp (first seminar for Term 1)

September 15, 2016: IRES Faculty Seminar
Speaker: Daniel Karp (first seminar for Term 1)

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

Harmonizing Conservation with Agricultural Production Across Working Landscapes

Abstract: A critical challenge for this century is transitioning towards sustainable food systems that are productive and secure for both nature and people. Yet conservation scientists and practitioners have traditionally fixated on protected areas and overlooked opportunities for pursuing conservation in working landscapes. In Costa Rica, I found that diversified agricultural systems— with multiple crops and patches of native vegetation— sustained remarkable concentrations of biodiversity. Conserving biodiversity also benefited farmers. Maintaining forests and their associated birds near farms halved infestations of coffee’s most damaging insect pest, preventing US$70-US$310/ha in damage. In California, however, wildlife is being systematically eradicated from farms, following a deadly 2006 E. coli outbreak in fresh spinach that was loosely linked to wild pigs. My work has documented how such food-safety scares can reverberate through socio-ecological systems, causing rapid changes in agricultural practices and ecosystem services. For example, I found that the now widespread practice of removing nearby non-crop vegetation (perceived as wildlife habitat) is not effective, and may even be increasing the prevalence of foodborne pathogens (e.g., enterohemorrhagic E. coli and Salmonella enterica) in leafy green vegetables. Moreover, I found that adjacent habitat was associated with high levels of arthropod biodiversity and better control of farmland pests. These results suggest that conserving non-crop vegetation in farmland, or diversifying farms more broadly, can often represent a promising win-win opportunity for biodiversity and farmers.

Grass

Photo credit: Jill Guerra

 

Bio: Daniel Karp is currently a Killam postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, and will be starting an assistant professor position at the University of California, Davis in January 2017. Daniel completed his Ph.D. in 2013 and undergraduate studies in 2009 at Stanford University’s Department of Biology. He has published >20 papers in high-impact journals such as Science, Nature, PNAS, and Ecology Letters. Broadly, Daniel’s interests center on developing innovative methods for harmonizing food production with the conservation of ecosystem services and biodiversity. His research thus focuses on developing innovative solutions for reconciling conservation activities with food production practices. His research program has four thrusts. First, he develops and applies ecological theory to understanding and managing biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. Second, he quantifies the effects of alternative agricultural practices on biodiversity-mediated ecosystem services to people. Third, he investigates how identifying tradeoffs among biodiversity and ecosystem services can inform development of multifunctional landscapes. Finally, Daniel works extensively with interdisciplinary scientists and practitioners to synthesize science and guide policy.

Daniel Karp

 

September 29, 2016: IRES Faculty Seminar
Speaker: Peter Klein

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

Hidden Costs of Global Supply Chains

Abstract:  The world is increasingly interconnected through global supply chains. Trillions of dollars a year of merchandise travel across oceans and continents, linking low cost manufacturers from the global South to large discount-driven consumer markets in the North. While the economic benefits are measured and appreciated, the environmental and social costs are distanced, unaccounted for and growing. At the Global Reporting Centre we have been reporting on various aspects of global supply chains: from the sources of timber, to the environmental effects of shrimp farming, to the path of electronic waste exports to developing countries. We have brought together leading scholars at UBC and around the world, to collaborate with Emmy- and Pulitzer-winning journalists, to embark on an ambitious research project Hidden Costs of Global Supply Chains. Prof. Klein will be presenting some of the findings of this research, and will shows part of the award-winning journalist projects that have come from the project, including a New York Times series, a Toronto Star documentary and a PBS Frontline film that earned an Emmy for Best Investigation.

 

Pen

Photo credit: Pete O’Shea from flickr/Creative Commons

 

Bio:  Peter W. Klein is the founder of the Global Reporting Centre, a non-profit focused on producing and innovating journalism on under-reported issues around the world. He is former director of the University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where he continues to teach the International Reporting course, in which his students spend a year reporting on a global topic and partnering with major media. He was a longtime producer at CBS News 60 Minutes, and is a regular opinion contributor to The Globe & Mail. He is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including several Emmy, Murrow and Sigma Delta Chi awards. He has an MS in Journalism from Columbia, and lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his wife and four children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 22, 2016: IRES Student Seminar
Speakers: Aaron Moguin and Sara Elder

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

Speakers: RES MA student Aaron Moguin and RES PhD Candidate Sara Elder

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The Influence of Financial Factors on Sustainable Design Decisions

Abstract:

As more people become city dwellers than ever before, urban growth and land development impulses often trend toward less socially and environmentally balanced outcomes. While this is part of a much larger tendency that can be seen in the broader development of our species, there are two major reasons this shortcoming exists presently:

  • Most urban development and change currently occurs within a real estate development model that rewards a short-term return on investment for its agents, with little to no incentive to maximize long-term performance or benefits, whether socially, physically or economically.
  • Tools and data that communicate communitarian, regenerative, sustainable goals effectively in the financial language of this agent do not largely exist at present.

Planners, designers, and regulators could all benefit from the availability of more arguments and benchmarks that incorporate financial implications to communicate preferred positive outcomes to these agents. “Green” certifications for buildings and communities attempt to bridge some of this gap by providing its inhabitants a branded, standardized endorsement of long-term quality. However, space often exists between these rating systems’ intentions, and their outcomes.

A better understanding of how the hundreds of individual design decisions that make up sustainable designs are achieved in an environment of financially influenced decisionmaking could help close this gap between the commercial obligations and priorities of the property owners, and outcomes that benefit all. To investigate this, the influences and criteria behind the design choices at several exemplar developments are considered, using the options encouraged within LEED and other certification systems as a basis for investigation.

aaron

Bio:

Aaron Moguin is an urban planner and designer with experience creating and influencing innovative, elegant and collaborative designs and policies on three continents. He is pursuing a Masters degree at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC.

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Assessing the Impacts of Retail Supply Chains on Food Security and Agricultural Sustainability in the Global South: The Case of Walmart in Nicaragua

Abstract: 

Multinational food retailers are expanding in size and reach, gaining buyer-driven power to govern global agrifood production and consumption. There is at the same time a growing belief by governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that corporate social responsibility (CSR) will be effective at achieving rural development goals for smallholder farmers and their families in the global South. This presentation highlights the on-the-ground impacts of rising corporate governance for household food security and agricultural sustainability through the case of Walmart in Nicaragua. It focuses on how and why the particular terms of farmer engagement in retail-led supply chains mediate these impacts. The analysis is based on nine months of original fieldwork in Nicaragua in 2013, including 65 interviews with produce sector stakeholders and a survey of 250 smallholder vegetable farmers. The study results extend understanding of why CSR is not necessarily an effective development strategy. The findings challenge theories of private governance effectiveness, showing that multinational retail CSR programs in some cases fail to increase control over suppliers, and highlighting the agency and dynamism of smallholder farmers and governments in the global South.

Sara

Bio:

Sara Elder is a PhD Candidate in Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC. Her research focuses on issues at the intersection of global economics, community development and the environment. Sara’s current research examines the rise in private governance of agrifood supply chains and the consequences for smallholder farmer food security and environmental sustainability in the global South. Her work has been published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, World Development, and the Journal of Rural Studies. Sara holds an MA in Resource Management and Environmental Studies (2010), where she studied the effects of Fair Trade certification on the livelihoods of Rwandan coffee producers, and a BA in International Relations (2004). Her professional experience includes international development work with communities in Canada, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and Bolivia, and technical and policy work at the International Labour Organization in Geneva.

buildings

Photo credit: ohbernadine from flickr/Creative Commons.

September 9, 2016: Winning Awards — The Inside Scoop with Dr. Kai Chan

Date: Friday, September 9

Time: 2:15pm to 3:15pm

Location: AERL Building Room 107/108, 2202 Main Mall

Want to write a winning masters, doctoral, or postdoctoral award application (NSERC, SSHRC or otherwise)? Nervous about crafting an application that stands out among the rest? Come on out to this awards information session and kick-start the writing process with some great tips and strategies for creating a successful application.

During this session, IRES Professor Dr. Kai Chan will explore the key elements of successful NSERC and SSHRC research proposals, and will take questions from the audience.

Kai’s experience as an adjudicator in national, university, and departmental processes for a variety of awards—and his record mentoring students to success in such competitions—makes this talk extremely worthwhile.

pen

Photo credit: Denise Krebs from flickr/Creative Commons

 

October 6, 2016: IRES Professional Development Seminar
Speakers: Sophia Murphy, Kirsten Dales and Conor Reynolds

IRES Seminar Series

Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)

Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall

 

Harnessing Academic Training to Advance Work in the Public Interest

 

Speaker Bios:

Sophia Murphy

sophia-murphy

Sophia Murphy has twenty-five years of professional experience in international development cooperation. She works on multilateral and regional trade and investment agreements and their relationship to food security and rural development. Her research and advocacy has ranged across diverse dimensions of food systems, including international trade law, domestic support programs in a dozen countries, rural development, food aid, the right to food, international commodity agreements, and concentrated economic power in food and agriculture markets. She has worked for non-governmental organizations and the United Nations, and consulted with government agencies and think tanks. She has given public lectures and taught her own undergraduate level course on food policy. In 2013, Sophia enrolled in a full-time PhD program at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. She is a PhD Candidate and expects to complete her degree in 2017. Sophia is serving her second concurrent term as one of 15 members of the international High Level Panel of Experts to the UN Committee on World Food Security. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of ActionAid USA. She writes for both academic and non-academic audiences, and has given interviews for national television, radio and print media in several countries. She is bilingual (English/French) and a dual national of Canada and the UK.

 

Kirsten Dales

kirsten-dales

Kirsten Dales is the Associate Director of Canadian International Resources and Development Institute (CIRDI), where she leads program delivery of CIRDI’s international portfolio in Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her work involves human-environment interactions in industrial landscapes, with a specialization in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and natural resource conflicts. Kirsten has a strong technical background in environmental sciences, international policy and resource governance. She holds appointments as a Doctoral Fellow in Forest Science and Conservation at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and as a Research Scholar for the Liu Institute on Global Studies, Yale’s Center for Industrial Ecology and the African Forest Research Initiative on Conservation and Development (AFRICAD). Her academic research exists at the science-policy interface, developing methods for geographically representative monitoring and modeling of mercury contamination to support activities under the Minamata Convention.

 

Conor Reynolds

conor-reynolds

Conor Reynolds obtained his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Dublin, Trinity (Ireland). He moved to Canada in 1999 to pursue a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at UBC, and subsequently worked as a research engineer in UBC’s Clean Energy Research Centre. Between 2005 and 2010 he pursued an interdisciplinary PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from IRES on the topic of air pollutant and climate forcing emissions from transportation. As part of his PhD project he worked in Delhi, India for extended periods of time. His postdoc was also based on fieldwork in India, measuring emissions from biomass cook stoves in rural Karnataka. Since 2011, Conor has been part of the Air Quality & Climate Change team at Metro Vancouver, the regional government that delivers services, policy and political leadership on behalf of 23 local authorities. Conor’s work is primarily related to energy and climate change, in particular projects related to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from Metro Vancouver’s corporate operations. He is interested in the application of interdisciplinary, policy-relevant research on the topics of mobility options in urban areas, environmental and human health impacts of energy use, and how emerging energy technologies can impact GHG emission.  Conor is also an Adjunct Professor in IRES.

 

 

lily

Photo credit: Audrey from flickr/Creative Commons

RES PhD Candidate Ther Aung’s article is featured in a press release from the University of Washington

July 29, 2016

The University of Washington recently issued a press release about an article that Ther Aung co-authored which is one of her thesis chapters.

Please click here to view the press release.

For more information please email Ther Aung at theraung@alumni.ubc.ca.

cooking

Photo credit: Yogendra Joshi from flickr/Creative Commons

IRES Faculty Milind Kandlikar has a new publication

Willingness to Pay for Solar Lanterns: Does the Trial Period Play a Role?

Co-Authors: Semee Yoon1, Johannes Urpelainen2 and Milind Kandlikar3

1 Graduate School of International Studies & Underwood International College, Integrated Social Sciences Division, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
2 Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, New York
3 Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability & The Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

Abstract

Where electricity access is limited, solar lanterns are a viable and relatively inexpensive source of basic lighting for households. However, the creation of commercially viable business models for solar lanterns is difficult because the customers are poor and make decisions under tight liquidity constraints. To understand the economics of technology adoption in the case of solar lanterns, we conduct a field experiment on willingness to pay (WTP) for solar lanterns in rural Uttar Pradesh. Applying the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak method of eliciting WTP, we evaluate the ability of a trial period and postponed payment to increase sales. We find no evidence for the effectiveness of the trial period and only weak evidence for the positive effect of postponed payment. Overall, WTP for the product among the customers is low. There is no clear evidence for concerns about the uncertain quality of the product, liquidity constraints, or present-bias. In this context, policies to subsidize very small solar lanterns would not correct a market failure, as people appear to have only a limited interest in the product.

Click here to view the publication.

sunlight

Photo credit: Michael Pollak from flickr/Creative Commons.

Posted June 29, 2016.

IRES Faculty Associate Simon Donner and IRES Faculty Milind Kandlikar have a new publication

Measuring and tracking the flow of climate change adaptation aid to the developing world

Co-Authors: Simon D Donner1, Milind Kandlikar2,3 and Sophie Webber4

1 Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada

2 Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada

3 Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, 6476 NW Marine Drive, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2, Canada

4 Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, 1255 Bunche Hall, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Abstract

The developed world has pledged to mobilize at least US $100 billion per year of ‘new’ and ‘additional’ funds by 2020 to help the developing world respond to climate change. Tracking this finance is particularly problematic for climate change adaptation, as there is no clear definition of what separates adaptation aid from standard development aid. Here we use a historical database of overseas development assistance projects to test the effect of different accounting assumptions on the delivery of adaptation finance to the developing countries of Oceania, using machine algorithms developed from a manual pilot study. The results show that explicit adaptation finance grew to 3%–4% of all development aid to Oceania by the 2008–2012 period, but that total adaptation finance could be as high as 37% of all aid, depending on potentially politically motivated assumptions about what counts as adaptation. There was also an uneven distribution of adaptation aid between countries facing similar challenges like Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. The analysis indicates that data allowing individual projects to be weighted by their climate change relevance is needed. A robust and mandatory metadata system for all aid projects would allow multilateral aid agencies and independent third parties to perform their own analyses using different assumptions and definitions, and serve as a key check on international climate aid promises.

Click here to view the publication.

climate

Photo credit: Lisa Westerhoff

RES PhD Candidate Simon Harding and IRES Faculty Milind Kandlikar have a new publication

Taxi apps, regulation, and the market for taxi journeys

Co-Authors: Simon Hardinga, Milind Kandlikara, Sumeet Gulatib

a Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, 2202 Main Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada

b Food and Resource Economics, Land and Food Systems, MacMillan 341, 2357 Main Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide a starting point for discussion on how smartphone-based taxi applications (‘apps’) have changed the market for taxi journeys and the resulting implications for taxi market regulation. The paper focuses on the taxi apps and their impact on taxi markets. It provides a brief history of taxi regulation before outlining the underlying economic rationales of its current form in many parts of the world, characterised as the “QQE” framework (quantity, quality and economic controls on operators). It argues that current regulation assumes that taxi markets are subject to three sets of problems that require correction by regulatory intervention, namely: those associated with credence goods, problems related to open access and those resulting from transactions occurring in a thin market. It is then proposed that taxi apps solve both the credence good and thin market problems whilst largely mitigating the problems associated with open access. The paper then presents some potential problems for taxi apps, namely the potential for instability on supply and demand sides, collusion and monopoly. It also discusses concerns about driver background checks and safety. The paper concludes by arguing that instead of restricting the growth of the taxi market, regulators should focus on reducing the likelihood of monopoly and collusion in a taxi market led by apps.

Click here to view the publication.

taxi

Photo credit: Rob Nguyen from flickr/Creative Commons

IRES Postdoctoral Fellow Nathan Bennett co-organized an event regarding large marine protected areas

In February 2016 at an event co-organized Professor Patrick Christie from the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and Postdoctoral Fellow Nathan Bennett from UBC Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, more than 100 participants met for the first-ever major discussion of challenges associated with how people interact with large marine protected areas (MPAs).  The event was held in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Attendees representing 17 countries and 18 universities, several School of Marine and Environmental Affairs masters’ students and faculty members, staff from the world’s largest MPAs, and indigenous community leaders, collaborated to proactively identify solutions to overcoming challenges.

Click here to read more about this event.

 

fish

Photo credit: Peter Corbett from flickr/Creative Commons