RES PhD Candidate Krista English was invited to present at the 3rd International & Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mathematical Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Health: Challenges and Opportunities in Latin America. The meeting was in Quito, Ecuador from July 18-22, 2016. She presented the results of a Bibliometrics & Network Analysis of Health Policy and Systems Research literature to understand how much research influences policy in this context.
Through the bees’ eyes: seeking food system sustainability
Abstract:
Using pollinators as a lens for examining agriculture and food system issues, Kremen will discuss how our current food system is not only unhealthy for the planet, but also for pollinators and people. She will describe studies of native bees that reveal how to create environmentally-friendly farming systems that are also highly productive. These studies show that by diversifying crops, adding hedgerow borders, and incorporating natural habitat patches into farming landscapes, we can promote pollinator biodiversity, increase pollination services, while creating other ecosystem service benefits. Structural and policy barriers often prevent broader adoption of these strategies, but many benefits could be realized through policy reforms.
Bio:
Claire Kremen is Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at University of California, Berkeley, and co-directs the Center for Diversified Farming Systems and the Berkeley Food Institute there. She is an ecologist and conservation biologist whose work focuses on understanding and characterizing the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services, and utilizing this information to develop conservation and sustainable management plan. Her current research explores the ecological, social and economic benefits, costs and barriers to adoption of diversified farming systems, and on restoring pollination and pest control services in intensively farmed landscapes. Her work reaches from concept to practice and includes hands-on conservation action such as, for example, the scientific design and establishment of a network of protected areas to protect Madagascar’s endemic flora and fauna. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2007, and was elected to the California Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Abstract: Push the button and it’s gone! A white porcelain flush toilet has become a symbol of civilization. The introduction of central sewer systems in European and North American cities in the late 19th century was indeed extremely successful from a local public health perspective but the long-term sustainability of the ‘out of sight out of mind’ approach is increasingly questioned. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the questions of concern and how these have changed over time from the end of the 19th century until today. I will touch upon how these concerns have been framed and ‘solved’, and discuss how the technical framing of sewage management hides the fact that all solutions have unequal distribution of risks and benefits. To illustrate, I will use as a case the presently ongoing revision of BC’s OMRR (Organic matter recycling regulation), which regulates land-application of the semi-solid residual that remains after treatment (aka biosolids) and the stakes involved in the conflict that erupted in Nicola Valley in 2015, which led to that the revision process stranded (see for example Friends of Nicola Valley on Facebook).
Photo Credit: Gunilla Öberg/Artist Dino Pai
Bio: Dr. Gunilla Öberg, professor a IRES, is inspired by her deep knowledge in chlorine biogeochemistry, environment and sustainability, and her experience as a leader of complex interdisciplinary research and education. Her recent projects address sustainable sanitation planning, particularly in growing urban areas. Questions that drive her work include: What kind of knowledge is needed, used and trusted? How does the knowledge used impact perceived solutions and how are risks and benefits distributed? Research of late involves land-application of biosolids/sewage sludge, contaminants of emerging concern and sustainable sanitation solutions for informal urban settlements.
Rethinking the role of multilateral trade rules in 21st century food security
Abstract:
Before sharp increases in global food prices in 2007-2008, the dominant causal narrative explained food insecurity as the result of abundant but poorly distributed supplies. After the price shocks, the narrative shifted. Demand for food was presented as a threat that might overwhelm supply, in the context of natural resource scarcity and unstable markets. Food insecurity was attributed to failed social safety nets and a chronic lack of investment in agricultural production. Both food security narratives rely on international trade, yet they diverge on its relative importance and on the precise nature of its role. The new narrative changed priorities: governments implemented domestic policy reforms, creating new programmes and renewing investment in agriculture. They negotiated new international commitments. Trade rules were an obvious area for reforms that would reflect the new priorities. But governments failed to reform trade rules. Instead, food security became another bone of contention in the already paralyzed World Trade Organization negotiations. My thesis examines this paralysis. Based on interviews with diplomats, public speeches and policy documents, government negotiating texts, and the theory and analysis of legal scholars, economists, political scientists and philosophers, I assess the WTO’s fulfillment of its mandate as the institution of global governance charged with negotiating trade rules that uphold the international order, including the realization of food security.
Bio:
Sophia Murphy has 25 years of professional experience in international development cooperation. Her work started in multilateral advocacy, focused on the UN conferences that marked the 1990s, including two years in Geneva at the UN itself. From 1997, her work has focused on international trade agreements and their relationship to agriculture, food security and rural development. Most of her work has been with non-governmental organizations, though she has also consulted for government agencies and think tanks. Sophia returned to full-time studies in 2013 as a graduate student at IRES. She is serving a 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 has lived and worked in Canada, Belgium, the United States, Switzerland, India and Australia and now lives in Squamish, BC.
Agri-‘culture’ and Biodiversity: Rethinking Payments for Ecosystem Services in light of agrarian values
Abstract:
Engagement of private agricultural landowners is essential to achieve many biodiversity and conservation objectives. Programs that compensate farmers partly or completely for conservation practices (e.g., payments for ecosystem services) are often employed to this end. Yet enrollment of farmers is a continuing challenge for many programs. I discuss a program focused on restoration of riparian areas in Washington State’s Puget Sound region. I examined how participation can be facilitated or hindered by differences in incentive program structure and rules with rural landowners’ values around landscape, place and nature. Using in-depth interviews of land owners and experts, we found key value differences around relationships to land and nature. For example, rules requiring ‘no touch’ riparian buffers clash with the ways that farmers and rural landowners often view their relationship to the land—one centered around active care and stewardship. Aligning conservation incentive programs with the environmental values of targeted participants could increase participation rates, protecting additional habitat and creating more wildlife friendly landscapes.
Bio:
Mollie Chapman is doctoral candidate at IRES and a scholar at the Liu Institute and the Public Scholars Initiative. Her research spans the natural and social sciences seeking to better understand the ways that the values of individuals and communities as well as understandings from the scientific world can better be integrated into environmental management, programs and decision making. Her current work focuses on innovate ways to shift food systems towards sustainability, looking at Payment for Ecosystem Services programs on agricultural lands in B.C., Washington State’s Puget Sound region and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.
Mollie received her B.A. in Anthropological Sciences from Stanford University and a M.S. in Sustainable Development from the University of Basel in Switzerland. She has previously worked as a consultant for international tech start-ups, at Yellowstone National Park, and as a coordinator for NGOs in ecotourism and appropriate technology.
Whose water? Challenges and complexities in wastewater reuse in peri-urban Bangalore, India
Abstract: Wastewater reuse has become an accepted practice in cities and peri-urban areas. However, in developing country settings, wastewater reuse presents multiple challenges. First, water treatment infrastructure is limited, implying that water reused may not meet the required water quality standards. Second, food crops grown in peri-urban areas and irrigated with contaminated urban wastewater pose health risk. Third, in water stressed cities, demand for wastewater may result in competing claims over it and lead to or aggravate conflicts between various users, such as urban residents and peri-urban farmers. I will draw upon research conducted in the water stressed city of Bangalore (also known as Bengaluru) in India and its peri-urban areas to illustrate these issues. In particular, I will focus on how peri-urban agriculture in the region has changed over the last 20 years, the role of urban wastewater and possible contestations around it.
Bio: Bejoy K Thomas is a social scientist, and Fellow in the Water, Land and Society programme at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, India. He has a Masters in Economics (Cochin, 2001) and a PhD in Development Studies (Tilburg, 2009). Thomas has a strong record of conducting problem driven research and working in interdisciplinary teams along with environmental scientists and engineers. His early work was on multidimensional poverty and participatory development. He has recently been part of a large research initiative on water in urbanizing areas, looking specifically at peri-urban areas and villages around Bangalore. Visit http://www.atree.org/research/ced/lwl/ACCUWa
Byramangala reservoir near Bengaluru, India
Photo credit: ACCUWa project team
Below is the video shown in Bejoy Thomas’ presentation.
Conservation Social Science: Understanding and Integrating Human Dimensions to Improve Local to Global Conservation Policy and Practice
Abstract: It is often claimed that decisions should be based on the best available evidence. For conservation practitioners, managers and policy-makers, this requires an understanding of both the natural and human dimensions of environmental issues. The term “human dimensions” refers broadly to the set of social, economic, cultural, political, and institutional considerations related to a problem. The social sciences are one means through which we can seek to understand the human dimensions of conservation. In this talk, I will explore the results of a recent collaboration that examined the scope, focus, tools and contributions of the conservation social sciences. Next, I will turn to a discussion of how the results of social science can be communicated to guide conservation policy and practice at local and global scales. To illustrate, I will draw from my recent research projects, publications and a global “think tank” on the human dimensions of marine conservation.
Bio: Dr. Nathan Bennett is a broadly trained environmental social scientist whose work interrogates various aspects of the complex relationship between the marine environment and human society with a solution-oriented lens. His publications and research interests are broad – with projects focusing on the human dimensions of small and large-scale marine protected areas globally, responses of coastal communities to environmental change in Southeast Asia and North America, marine planning initiatives in North America, the social side of fisheries management and issues related to global ocean politics and governance. Nathan has a PhD in Geography (UVic, 2013), an MS in Environmental Studies (Lakehead, 2009) and a Bachelor of Education (UVic, 2002). He is currently cross-appointment as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington and a Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia. He is also an affiliate of the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford, the OceanCanada Partnership, and the Community Conservation Research Network and serves as a senior advisor to the IUCN’s Global Economics and Social Science Program.
Affiliations:
Liber Ero Postdoctoral Fellow, IRES, University of British Columbia
Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington
Affiliate Researcher, Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford University
Local Air Quality, Global Climate Change and Development: Shall the twain meet?
Abstract:
Global climate change and local air pollution both result from the combustion of fossil fuels and biomass. In addition to their local impacts, air pollutants also influence the global radiative balance. Some local pollutants such as Black Carbon particles (BC) and Ozone contribute to heat trapping while others such as Sulfate Aerosols cool the global atmosphere. The idea that that there are common sources of air pollution and greenhouse warming has led analysts to search for ‘co-benefits’, i.e., ways of reducing air pollution that secondarily help meet climate reduction goals, or conversely, meeting climate goals while improving local air quality as an attendant consequence. The co-benefits framing is particularly attractive for developing countries, because it suggests a ‘win-win’. In this ‘win-win’ framing of the problem, developing countries can improve air quality – an important short term development goal, while reducing radiative forcing of the planet and contributing to longer term climate goals. This talk examines the validity and usefulness of a ‘co-benefits’ framing in a major developing country. I use India – a country that is the world’s fourth largest emitter of GHGs, and also one facing severe and often catastrophic air pollution – to examine the scope of the air pollution challenge that India faces and to assess the extent to which there is, in fact, a climate/air quality win-win.
Bio:
Milind Kandlikar
Professor, IRES
Professor, Liu Institute for Global Issues
Milind Kandlikar is Professor at IRES and the Liu Institute of Global Issues. He works at the intersection of technology innovation, human development and the environment, and his current projects are in two thematic areas. First, his work on the risks, benefits, regulation and social acceptance of emerging bio and nano technologies includes research on differences in expert and lay understanding of risks, expert judgment tools for assessing novel risks, and new/novel regulatory challenges of emerging technologies. He also works on the science, policy and politics of biotechnologies in the developing world, and more recently, on the emerging challenges of gene editing and gene drives. His second area of work relates to climate change in the developing world – including climate co-benefits from air quality improvements, climate finance and adaptation, and assessments of ‘development friendly’ technologies such as off-grid solar and improved cook-stoves. Milind has also published extensively on the science and policy of climate change including: on the role of uncertainty in scientific assessments and climate mitigation policy; on questions of detection and attribution of climate change; on modeling agricultural adaption in industrialized and developing countries. He is a visiting professor in the Climate Studies Program at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, and was a Reid Fellow (2012-13) at Princeton University. He has been a contributing author to four reports of the IPCC. He has a Bachelors from IIT Bombay and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University.
The Columbia River Treaty is an international water agreement between the U.S. and Canada governing the use of upper Columbia River water for hydro-power efficiencies and flood control of urban areas. Signed in 1961 and implemented in 1964, the treaty did not take into consideration the loss of agricultural land, ecological values such as fish and riparian losses, or tribal/First Nations needs. With the treaty now up for possible renewal, how might the agreement be altered to support the return of a more sustainable and ecologically integrated Columbia River system? What would a more sustainable system of dams and storage reservoirs look like? What are the cultural challenges that stand in the way of achieving this goal?
Bio:
Eileen Delehanty Pearkes lives in Nelson, B.C., where she writes about landscape and human history. Particularly interested in the indigenous world view, her book A Geography of Memory (2002), about the only “extinct” First Nation in Canada, has opened many eyes to a long lost story and increased understanding of the dramatic changes experienced by the landscape and First People where she lives. A River Captured: the Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change (2016) is the result of 10 years of research and writing. An American educated at Stanford University (BA, 1983) and the University of B.C. (MA, 1992), she has lived in Canada for three decades. Her perspective is uniquely bi-national and firmly grounded in place.
There will be some copies of A River Captured: the Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change (2016) for sale in the AERL Theatre after Eileen’s seminar. Total cost $21. Payable by cash, credit card or debit. This book is also available for sale in the UBC Bookstore.
Eileen’s second book, The Geography of Memory: Recovering Stories of a Landscape’s First People, will also be for sale in the AERL Theatre after the seminar. Total cost $20. Payable by cash only.
Picturing High Places in the Anthropocene: Continuity and Change in High Mountains and the Arctic
Photo Exhibition
Where:
Liu Institute for Global Issues, Lobby Gallery
6476 NW Marine Drive
Vancouver, BC Canada, V6T 1Z2
When:
Photographs will hang from 1 September to 30 November 2016
Exhibition Description:
High places––mountains and the Arctic––are home to some of the planet’s most distinctive cultures, unique ecosystems, and compelling landscapes; they are also among the most environmentally sensitive areas on the planet. This sensitivity, and its attendant social and ecological implications, is a timely concern now that the planet has entered the Anthropocene, a period when human activities are driving rapid, global-scale changes in the biosphere. However, while scholarly work on the Anthropocene is of growing interest, engagement with the topic to date has been primarily theoretical. In this exhibition environmental change researcher Graham McDowell draws together photographs from his work in high places (e.g. Greenland, the Himalayas, and the Canadian Arctic) to help ground-truth our understanding of this new period in Earth’s history. His photographs reveal the multitude of ways in which places, people, and ecosystems in high mountains and the Arctic experience and respond to environmental change, drawing attention to the tension between profound change and often underappreciated occurrences of socio-ecological continuity. His exhibition aims to provoke more meaningful and productive discussions about how the Anthropocene intersects with concerns related to sustainability, social justice, and human security, within and beyond high places.
(Photo credit: Graham McDowell)
Photographer Bio:
Graham McDowell is an environmental change researcher working in high mountain and Arctic regions. His research is focused on vulnerability, adaptation, and transformation with a particular emphasis on the development of governance strategies that promote human well-being and ecological resilience in the context of a changing cryosphere. Graham has led projects in the Nepal Himalaya, Rocky Mountains, Greenland, and the Canadian Arctic as well as numerous global-scale assessments of environmental change in cold regions. As a photographer, he believes that compelling images from the frontlines of environmental change provide a strong complement to text-based communication approaches. He is also motivated by the challenge of obtaining compelling images in demanding situations, where factors such as cold, altitude, and cross-cultural differences require high levels of tact and resourcefulness in addition to photographic competence. He has been actively involved in the use of photography-based science communication methods for several years, with photos appearing in numerous popular and academic outlets including Vice, CBC News, and Nature Climate Change. Graham is currently a PhD student, Vanier Scholar, Liu Scholar, and Public Scholar at the University of British Columbia, where he is affiliated with the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES). Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, he obtained an MSc in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford and an Honours degree in Geography at McGill University. For more information about Graham’s background and research please see: grahammcdowellresearch.com
