Photo credit: Lisa Westerhoff
RES PhD student Daniel Klein
Exploring Vancouver’s water data
Daniel Klein is a PhD student with the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC.
As a 2015 Greenest City Scholar, he has worked with the City of Vancouver’s Park Board on new strategies for reducing potable water use in parks and golf courses by analyzing the city’s water data.
Photo credit: Daniel Klein
February 4, 2016: Guest Lecture
Julian Yates
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30-1:30 pm
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
Between metaphor and practice: environmental governance and the decolonial option in the Peruvian Andes
Julian Yates
Abstract:
In this presentation I engage with debates on decolonizing structures of education and environmental governance. In the Peruvian Andes, government and non-government ‘technical extension’ programmes are designed to improve environmental management practices and enhance production techniques in rural communities. Increasingly at the centre of these programmes is a network of kamayoq: Indigenous, peer-to-peer practical educators engaged in projects of farmer-to-farmer knowledge extension on issues such as irrigation, animal husbandry, crop cultivation, etc. With kamayoq practices originating in pre-Hispanic Andean societies, the kamayoq farmer-to-farmer model has been cast as a “culturally appropriate” means to overcoming top-down and Western forms of technical training. However, kamayoq are increasingly being incorporated within the national development programmes of the Peruvian state, which assess kamayoq knowledge according to fixed indicators in order to incorporate this knowledge within a broader environmental governance framework focussed on enhancing rural productivity. I explore this state programme of certification, positioning the kamayoq in between two arguments. The first argument stresses that decolonial discourse cannot simply be grafted onto existing discourses and institutional structures, such as technical extension programmes. The second argument – voiced by Indigenous activists in the Andes – revolves around the Andean notion that (decolonizing) knowledge is practice. In this sense, reorganizing adult environmental education and training around the forms of learning-by-doing that kamayoq embody is decolonizing environmental governance frameworks.
Bio:
Julian is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability and a member of both the Environment, Development, Gender, Equity, and Sustainability (EDGES) research collective and the Program on Water Governance team. Julian’s work focuses on the intersection between the politics of knowledge, environmental justice, and social mobilisation for overcoming poverty and inequality. His current work explores the rollout of small-scale water filtration facilities among BC’s First Nations communities – an approach that gained political expediency due to the recently introduced Water Sustainability Act. This work will focus on the intersections between indigenous conceptions of water in nature, and techno-scientific approaches to delivering ‘clean water’ to First Nations communities. These intersections will be located within political-ecological debates and current contexts of pursuing autonomy and self-governance.
Julian’s doctoral (UBC, geography) research explored the revival and re-institutionalisation of indigenous social practices for adult peer-to-peer knowledge sharing and enhanced rural productivity in the Peruvian Southern Andes. Julian has published a historical account of these adult educators – known as kamayoq – in the Journal of Historical Geography, and he is currently working on a book manuscript based on his doctoral dissertation ( “Re-animating Andean worlds: kamayoq, the politics of ‘culturally appropriate’ knowledge extension, and ethnodevelopment in the Peruvian Andes”). Previous projects include research as an NGO consultant into adaptation to climate change in rural Nepal, and graduate (MA, University of Victoria, geography) research into inclusive waste management through recyclers’ cooperatives in São Paulo, Brazil. Julian has published the results of his work in journals such as Progress in Human Geography (debating post-neoliberalism in Latin America), Global Environmental Change (the scalar politics of adaptation), the Journal of Historical geography (historicizing ethnodevelopment), Environment and Planning A (an urban political ecology of food waste in São Paulo), and the Journal of Development Studies (public policy for inclusive waste management). He has also published a chapter in a book on community-based adaptation and is co-editor of a forthcoming special issue in Geoforum, titled ‘Rendering land investible’. These publications are included in his profile on Academia.edu and Research Gate.
February 25, 2016: Professional Development Seminar
Juanita Sundberg
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30-1:30 pm
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
Homework, fieldwork & community research
Juanita Sundberg: Associate Professor, Department of Geography at UBC
Please note: A significant portion of this seminar will be discussion based. Therefore, please come prepared with your thoughts, experiences, and questions regarding fieldwork with unknown communities. You are also invited to read Dr. Sundberg’s recent paper on this topic, which she will draw on in her presentation.
Abstract:
Fieldwork in communities framed as “different” and “distant” may spark various research questions along with many ethical dilemmas. Research ethics review boards tend to frame ethics as a set of guidelines to direct behavior towards research subjects. Especially in relation to fieldwork when the researcher is in direct contact with research subjects. In this framing, the primary goal of ethics is to minimize direct harm to research subjects while continuing to pursue research wherever, whenever, with whomever, and about whatever the researcher chooses. Ultimately, this conception of research ethics safeguards the researcher’s position of distance in relation to research subjects. And, home remains safely detached from the ethical dilemmas encountered in the field. In this seminar, I argue for a concept of ethics that shifts from being primarily about fieldwork to one that includes homework or the work one undertakes long before leaving for the field. Homework entails a self-reflexive analysis of one’s own epistemological and ontological assumptions; in other words, an examination of how these have been naturalized in academic practices in relation to the geopolitical and institutional power relations that constitute research. Shifting our focus from ethical behavior in the field to homework obliges us to take a much more explicit stance regarding the why, where, when, and how of our political agendas, research engagements, and practices.
Bio:
I bring the insights of feminist political ecology and the sensibilities of an ethnographer to bear on nature conservation, border security, and militarization. My work seeks to foster conversations between feminist geopolitics, critical race theory, posthumanism, political ecology, and Latin American Studies. My current project examines the environmental dimensions of United States’ border security policies in the United States-Mexico borderlands, with a specific focus on protected areas like national wildlife refuges.
New social vulnerability publication by RES PhD student Graham McDowell
[Photo Credit: Graham McDowell]
McDowell, G., Ford. J., Jones. J. (2016) 25 years of community-level climate change vulnerability research: Trends, progress, and future directions. Environmental Research Letters. 11:033001
April 7, 2016: Faculty Lecture
Leila Harris
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30-1:30 pm
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
Assessing States, Differentiating Citizens: Perspectives on water services and evolving state-society relations in Accra, Ghana and Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract:
This talk considers everyday assessments of state capacity, service quality and notions of citizen responsibility related to water access and governance across several underserved areas of Cape Town, South Africa and Accra, Ghana. Conceptually and methodologically, I argue that everyday citizen perspectives are key for a critical perspective on state building governance processes. Theoretically, the work speaks to broader interests related to differentiated and uneven services and infrastructures as key to both perceptions regarding the role or legitimacy of the state, as well as individuals’ own senses of responsibility as citizens. The analysis reveals a host of interesting insights related to these connections. Among them, that water quality and satisfaction are linked to trust in government in South Africa, but not to the same degree for Ghana. As well, although a number of indicators of water access and quality appear to be very good in South Africa, there is nonetheless deep contestation related to water services, ongoing senses of dis-enfranchisement, and an unequivocal sense that the government should be doing more. For Ghana, we see a complex portrait where access to and quality of water is important for people’s daily lives, but is perhaps less strongly connected to senses of government responsibility and legitimacy. These results cannot be read at face value, as derivative of service quality, but also must be read against other key features of history and context (most notably, the strong focus on equitable service delivery in the context of post-Apartheid South Africa). In addition to analysis of these questions based of a (2012) survey, the presentation will also address other insights and possibilities made possible through our use of participatory video to enrich the discussion. While emphasizing different themes, the arts-based qualitative aspects of the project highlight other important issues related to everyday lived dimensions of water access and quality, while also exploring insights related to citizen subjectivities, and possibilities for participatory water governance.
Bio:
Leila Harris is an Associate Professor at IRES Institute on Resources Environment and Sustainability and Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice. Faculty Associate at UBC Department of Geography, Faculty Associate at Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, Co-Director of the Program on Water Governance, Member of EDGES Research Collaborative: Environment & Development: Gender, Equity, and Sustainability, The University of British Columbia.
Trained as a political and socio-cultural geographer (PhD Minnesota), her work examines social, cultural and political-economic dimensions of environmental and resource issues, especially in developing contexts.
Primary Research Areas
- Water politics and governance
- Nature-society
- Developmental and environmental issues in the Global South
- Gender, ethnicity, and social difference
- Environmental politics/ citizenship/ subjectivity
- Nationalism, political ecologies of the state, and gendered citizenship
- Turkey and Middle East
- South Africa and Ghana
- Critical cartography, protected areas, and more-than-human worlds
[Photo Credit: Julian S. Yates]
Please note: For the above video, the audio cuts off during the question & answer period at 41 minutes, 39 seconds.
We sincerely apologize for the technical error.
April 14, 2016: IRES/RES Student Symposium
IRES/RES Student Symposium
Time: 1pm – 4:30pm
Location: AERL Theatre (main floor), 2202 Main Mall
(BBQ and Cash Bar afterwards from 4:30pm to 8pm)
This event showcases the research done by our current RES Master and PhD students.
[Photo Credit: Jonathan Taggart]
Speakers:
Simon Harding, PhD Candidate – no video available
Alicia Speratti, PhD Candidate
Leo Glaser, MSc Student
Chloe Sher, MA Student – no video available
Mike Lathuillière, PhD Candidate
Jackie Yip, PhD Candidate – no video available
Available Videos:
Leo Glaser
Talk Title: Life Cycle Cost Analysis and Energy Evaluation of University Buildings
Mike Lathuillière
Talk Title: Water Footprints: Freshwater volumes and impact assessment
Alicia Speratti
Talk Title: Biochar feedstock and pyrolysis temperature effects on maize cultivation on a Brazilian Arenosol
RES PhD student John Driscoll and colleagues win 2016 Vancouver Aquarium Murray A. Newman Award
[Photo Credit: Living Oceans Society / Wikimedia Commons]
A project that was co-negotiated by John Driscoll, an RES PhD student in Dr. Kai Chan’s lab, has won the 2016 Vancouver Aquarium Murray A. Newman Award for significant achievement in aquatic conservation. This award is shared by the team of environmentalists and fishing industry representatives that negotiated the British Columbia bottom trawl habitat management agreement. This agreement, which went into place in 2012, resulted in a suite of regulations that have reduced the fishery’s annual bycatch of coral and sponge by two orders of magnitude, reduced the fishery’s allowable spatial footprint by over 20% from historic levels, prevented the fishery from expanding into previously un-trawled areas, and permanently protected over 80% of particularly sensitive deep-sea habitats from the effects of trawling.
Learn more about the B.C. bottom trawl agreement:
Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARUJb9g3e3o
Initial media: http://www.nafo.int/about/media/oth-news/2012/03-29.html
Journal article: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X15001931