Modeling Ecosystems: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead
Villy Christensen
Bio:
Villy Christensen is Professor and Co-Director of UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. He is the lead developer of the Ecopath with Ecosim approach and software, which is used extensively throughout the world for ecosystem-based management of marine and freshwater areas. This work is coordinated through the Ecopath International Research and Development Consortium, which has 24 institutional members, and for which he serves as the Executive Board Chair. He has led more than 50 related training courses and workshops throughout the world, and through this gained considerable experience with the ecology and management of marine ecosystems. He has also authored or co-authored close to 300 publications, including >115 peer reviewed. He currently serves as Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and has been involved in numerous global assessments, e.g., CBD’s Global Biodiversity Outlook, UNEP’s Global Environmental Outlook, EU’s The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, and UN’s Millennium Assessment.
Abstract:
Villy will give a brief and subjective overview of the history of ecosystem modeling, going back to Raymond Lindeman, passing by the International Biological Program, and fast forward with an overview of how foraging arena theory came into the picture. The foraging arena theory has fundamentally improved our capability to model the history of ecosystems, and helped improve our modeling capabilities to the degree that it provides just a little bit of confidence that we may be able to model how our actions may impact ecosystems in the future. He will briefly touch upon where ecosystem modeling is heading, and his own current and coming activities and research interests.
Maery is a Master of Arts student working under the direction of Drs. Terre Satterfield and Nathan Bennett. She entered the interdisciplinary environment of IRES after completing a Bachelor of Arts in Geography from the University of Victoria where her coursework focused on human geography, natural resource management, and environmental sustainability. Her primary research interests include natural resource governance & management and the intersections of perception, livelihoods, and change processes within social-ecological systems.
Marine protected areas (MPAs), increasingly implemented, have produced both positive and negative consequences for adjacent communities. Maery’s current work contributes to research on the human dimensions of conservation by situating MPA governance within a context of broader social-ecological changes affecting coastal communities. Her research is grounded through a qualitative investigation of changes, impacts and adaptations in a fishing village located within a Mexican biosphere reserve and is supported by both the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Mitacs.
Jill Guerra
Bio:
With a background in international development, economics and Latin American studies, Jill has long been studying issues of poverty, inequality and sustainable development – both in the classroom and in the field. In recent years her research focus has narrowed in on the role of the food system in improving, or sadly exacerbating, instances of poverty and inequality around the world. Taking a social-ecological perspective and guided by tenets of food sovereignty and agroecology, her work highlights the connections and trade-offs between social and economic well being like food security or sustainable employment and the challenge of achieving agro-environmental sustainability. Her Master’s research within the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability probes these connections and trade-offs. Through a case study of Brazil’s National School Feeding Program (Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar – PNAE), Jill’s research explores how the incentives within the PNAE can improve the wellbeing of the country’s often marginalized family farmers while also encouraging their transition to organic agriculture and/or agroecology – systems of farming intended to be more environmentally sustainable. Her research employs mixed methods analyzing Brazilian agricultural census data while adding important nuances through in-depth, qualitative interviews conducted with a sample of farmers participating in the program. She hopes that her interdisciplinary research will contribute to growing sustainability literature highlighting the challenges and opportunities for creating a more sustainable and just food system.
Apartment Energy Costs and GHG Emissions Data – Do Buyers Care?
Abstract:
Vancouver, BC, Toronto and Ontario are currently considering legislation to require large building owners to benchmark and publicly release annual energy costs, GHG emissions and related data. These data could inform apartment buyers’ purchase decisions – but there is little robust evidence that they would find it valuable, with Canada’s low electricity, natural gas and emissions costs. Ian’s MSc thesis is assessing whether building energy and GHG emissions benchmarking data communicated through real estate multiple listing websites influence apartment buyers’ purchase criteria and behaviour.
Bio:
Ian Theaker’s engineering career has focused on greening North America’s buildings and communities. As technical problems are now largely solved, he is now studying systemic socio-economic policy that reduces climate impacts of the built environment.
As the Canada Green Building Council’s inaugural Program Manager, Ian lead adaptation of the LEED rating systems for Canada. Other signature efforts include Waterfront Toronto’s climate-positive Green Development Requirements, Infrastructure Ontario’s Building Sustainability Best Practices Manual, the OHSU River Campus (LEED-NC Platinum) and Lloyd Crossing Sustainable Urban Design (AIA Committee on the Environment Top Ten winner) in Portland, Oregon, and Green Building Design Guidelines for the City of Santa Monica.
Ian has served with many volunteer organizations, most recently as a Director CaGBC’s Greater Toronto Chapter and founder of its Advocacy Committee. He’s also served as Governor of the Association of Energy Engineers, BC Chapter, and co-founded Vancouver’s Designers for Social Responsibility and the Southeast False Creek Working Group.
“More precious than gold”: Yukon First Nations and water governance in the context of modern land claims agreements
Nicole Wilson
Abstract:
Water governance is of critical concern to Yukon First Nations, whose health, livelihoods and cultural well being are complexly connected to the waters within their traditional territories. Increasing social and environmental pressures, induced by high rates of resource development (largely mining) and climatic change, underscore the present urgency of protecting First Nations’ socio-cultural relations to water. Modern land claims agreements uniquely shape the water governance landscape of Yukon Territory. Through a twenty-year process of treaty negotiation, First Nations agreed to retain Aboriginal rights and title to less than 10% of the lands within their traditional territory in exchange for partnership in the governance of all Yukon lands and resources. The Umbrella Final Agreement and the 11 treaties, which resulted from the negotiation, express the fundamental principle of co-governance in critical areas such as water.
Through a qualitative case study, this presentation examines the divergence between Yukon First Nation relationships to water and water governance and their ability to influence the process and outcomes of decision-making about water governance despite modern land claims. Analysis reveals that while land claims resulted in a departure from previous governance arrangements, marked most notably by the creation of several co-management boards aimed at fostering shared decision-making, First Nations continue to face regulatory injustices as they navigate a governance network and relationships characterized by asymmetries of power, authority and legitimacy. Specific challenges include a disjuncture between First Nation and ‘settler’ views on water, a high level of distrust, failures of both consultation and respect for the ‘spirit and intent’ of land claims agreements, as well as the enduring legacy of colonialism more broadly. Opportunities nonetheless exist that might be leveraged to enhance First Nations influence over decisions and so strategic realization of goals within and outside of the present system.
Bio:
Nicole’s research focuses on the role of Indigenous peoples in water governance in the transboundary context of the Yukon River Basin, which spans Alaska, Yukon and British Columbia. Her work examines the socio-cultural impacts of hydrologic change and the how adaptive responses to environmental change employed by Indigenous peoples, are constrained or facilitated by the broader water governance context. Her dissertation research builds on existing partnerships with the Yukon River Inter-tribal Watershed Council – a grassroots Indigenous organization comprised of 70 Alaska Native and Canadian First Nations (partner since 2010).
Nicole is both a Vanier and Killam scholar. She is working under the supervision of Terre Satterfield and committee members including Leila Harris, Jordi Honey-Roses (SCARP) and Glen Coulthard (First Nations and Indigenous Studies/Political Science). She is a member of both the EDGES research group and Program on Water Governance. Prior to coming to UBC, she completed her Master’s of Science in Natural Resources at Cornell University. Her MS research examined the impacts of climate change on the subsistence livelihoods of the Koyukon Athapaskan people of Ruby, Alaska. She also holds a BA in Development Studies from the University of Calgary.
Nicole’s seminar will not be filmed.
Enforcement patterns and compliance outcomes in BC: Lessons learned from EAO’s pilot watchdog project
Allison Franko
Abstract:
How can we improve environmental management in BC? In 2011, the Auditor General of BC reported that post-certification monitoring of approved projects was largely absent. In response, the BC Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) implemented a compliance and enforcement (C&E) task force to review newly required self-reports submitted by proponents, conduct inspections, and review inspection reports completed by other agencies on EAO’s behalf. A total of 94 inspections on 40 projects have been conducted between August 2011 and November 2015.
This research examines the potential factors associated with enforcement patterns and compliance outcomes through an analysis of data extracted from government inspection reports; government websites, including EAO’s E-pic and the Legislative Assembly of BC (Hansard) websites; corporate company websites; and online search-engine query results. Although many regulatory theories detail factors that affect compliance, empirical evidence evaluating the effectiveness of enforcement strategies on compliance outcomes is lacking. The more empirical evidence (accompanied by expert elicitation) that can be gathered for different jurisdictions and their contexts, the more likely informed enforcement strategies will be to achieve compliance targets and environmental protection. Considering these issues, this research seeks to provide valuable insight useful for improving where necessary, and/or legitimizing the current C&E strategy based on the relative role of different factors associated with compliance outcomes (good and bad).
Bio:
Allison is an MSc student working under the supervision of Dr. Hadi Dowlatabadi. Her research focuses on the effectiveness of follow-up activities for projects certified under the BC Environmental Assessment Act. Allison holds an NSERC Industrial Post-graduate Scholarship. Since receiving her BA in Environmental Geography from UBC in 2012, she has been working for a consulting firm on Canadian environmental assessments under provincial and federal jurisdictions.
The Properties of Territory and Terrain: Himalayan Belongings after the 2015 Earthquakes
Sara Shneiderman, Assistant Professor in Anthropology and the Institute of Asian Research
Abstract:
This presentation explores how natural disasters such as earthquakes reshape human experience, drawing upon long-standing ethnographic research in areas of Nepal deeply affected by the Spring 2015 earthquakes. To do so, we must engage with the locality of terrain: Where are the landslide zones? Which road is passable? Where has the water source been dammed? But at the same time, humanitarian responses rely upon national and transnational networks, with flows of money and information mediated by the politics of territory and sovereignty: Who can raise funds? Where will they be deposited? Who is responsible for ensuring consistent needs assessment across the disaster zone, and organizing coordinated responses? Taken together, these questions begin to suggest how people affected by such events are compelled to reorient practices of place and belonging in relation to suddenly changed landscapes, both environmental and political.
This work-in-progress presentation joins my ongoing research about state restructuring in Nepal and Himalayan notions of “territory”—a concept that in English links the multiple scales of individual land-ownership, communal emplacement in locality, and belonging and ownership of sovereign space at the national level—with recent firsthand observations of life in Nepal’s central-eastern Dolakha district after the earthquake. I welcome feedback as I work toward developing new frameworks for analysis that can accommodate both place and resource-based understandings of such dynamics and sociocultural ones.
Bio:
Sara Shneiderman is Assistant Professor in Anthropology and the Institute of Asian Research at UBC. A socio-cultural anthropologist working in the Himalayan regions of Nepal, India, and China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region, her research explores the relationships between political discourse, ritual action, and cross-border mobility in producing ethnic identities and shaping social transformation. She is the author of Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Current research projects include an ethnography of “post-conflict” state restructuring in Nepal, with a focus on citizenship, territory, and religiosity, and an exploration of trans-Himalayan citizenship across the historical and contemporary borders of India, China, and Nepal.
One thing that neoclassical economists and critics of capitalism agree on is that status quo economic processes are adept ‘externalization machines’, dependent on enormous amounts of unpaid or incredibly cheap nonhuman labour (what Jason Moore helpfully terms ‘cheap nature’). What can we learn about the prospect of ending cheap nature from efforts to make nature visible in political economic processes, from attempts to create what I call “enterprising nature”? This talk weaves through three phases of enterprising nature: biosprospecting, ecosystem carbon markets, and my current research on conservation finance. The difficulties and challenges of bringing these strategies to scale provide evidence that cheap nature may be better conceptualized as integral to contemporary capitalism, not as an unfortunate blind spot or externality awaiting the right evidence or metric to facilitate correction. This all leads me to ask more questions, and I hope to spend some time discussing future lines of research with those gathered at the seminar.
Bio:
Jessica Dempsey is a new professor in the Department of Geography at UBC as of January 2016. Her research interests include global biodiversity politics, ecosystem services, and financial risk and biodiversity. With the CBD Alliance, she has participated in over a dozen major negotiations of biodiversity law and policy and worked with many NGOs and social movements to develop analysis and position papers on global biodiversity issues. She has published articles in leading geography and political ecology journals, including Environment and Planning A, Geoforum, and Progress in Human Geography. Her forthcoming book titled Enterprising Nature (Wiley-Blackwell), traces the rise of economic and market oriented approaches to global biodiversity conservation.
Note: Unfortunately, the video sound quality is not consistent throughout the whole video. We sincerely apologize.
Urbanization is now a leading cause of biodiversity loss, and access to the limited biodiversity and its benefits that remain in cities is inequitably distributed among people. I am an MSc-PhD fast-track student in the CHANS and M2L2 Labs interested in understanding the hidden ways that human activities in cities may undermine nature and its benefits, so that we can change these relationships to make cities more biodiverse, sustainable, and equitable. In my dissertation, I’ll explore the ways that abundant food waste and turf grass lawns may undermine the diversity of birds in Vancouver, using observations, statistical and conceptual models, field experiments, and interviews. I hope that this research will help identify interventions (e.g., private yard meadows, changes to waste bin designs) that disproportionately amplify urban biodiversity. I’ll be working closely with the City of Vancouver to help shape and apply my research and its findings.
Featured Publications
McManus, L. C., D. L. Forrest, E. W. Tekwa, D. E. Schindler, M. A. Colton, M. M. Webster, T. E. Essington, S. R. Palumbi, P. J. Mumby, and M. L. Pinsky. 2021. Evolution and connectivity influence the persistence and recovery of coral reefs under climate change in the Caribbean, Southwest Pacific, and Coral Triangle. Global Change Biology 27:4307–4321. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15725
Colton, M. A., L. C. McManus, D. E. Schindler, P. J. Mumby, S. R. Palumbi, M. M. Webster, T. E. Essington, H. E. Fox, D. L. Forrest, S. R. Schill, F. J. Pollock, L. B. DeFilippo, E. W. Tekwa, T. E. Walsworth, and M. L. Pinsky. 2022. Coral conservation in a warming world must harness evolutionary adaptation. Nature Ecology & Evolution 6:1405–1407. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01854-4
Forrest, D. L., F. Muatiche, C. Riaco, M. K. Gonder, and D. T. Cronin. 2017. Primate Communities Along a Protected Area Border: A Two-site Comparison of Abundance and Hunting Response in Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. African Primates 12:23–36.
Teehan completed a PhD with Milind Kandlikar, Hadi Dowlatabadi, and Tony Bi on the topic of life cycle assessment, energy consumption, and carbon footprint of personal electronics and IT systems. He has been working as a data scientist and software engineer in the private sector and is currently a software engineering lead at Recurve Analytics, a software company working to enable demand flexibility as a resource in the energy grid.
Sonja is a Principal with Reshape Strategies, an infrastructure consultancy. Sonja is a Professional Mechanical Engineer with a Master’s in Resource Management and Environmental Studies, and over ten years of experience in the field of low-carbon energy, particularly district energy systems. Her district energy experience ranges from planning and feasibility studies, to detailed design and construction projects. At Reshape, Sonja is focused on supporting low-carbon projects as they move beyond the feasibility study phase into internal business case development, ownership/business strategies, and policy development.
MA with Kathryn Harrison, 2012 Lead: Policy and Partnerships, Foundry BC
Bio
Darlene completed her MA at IRES under the guidance of Kathryn Harrison. Since then, she has worked across the social sector, within academia, nonprofit and government settings to improve health and social service systems across BC. She is currently Lead, Policy and Partnerships at Foundry BC.
