March 5, 2020: IRES Professional Development Seminar with Tom Hetherington

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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From climate grief to action

People from all walks to life are struggling to cope with the emotional impact of the climate crisis. In this Professional Development Seminar, Tom will share strategies and supports from the “From Climate Grief to Acton (FCGA)” group for dealing with feelings associated with eco-grief and/or climate anxiety, including non-judgmental personal storytelling, building communities of mutual support, mindfulness exercises, and self-empowering action planning.

Tom Hetherington

Bio:

Tom Hetherington, MSW, is a recently retired Social Worker who has supervised professional teams of counsellors and students for many years. Tom is the leader of a team of other professionals, practitioners, and students who have developed the From Climate Grief to Acton (FCGA) group to create a space for people to express their thoughts and grief about the climate emergency without judgment.

February 27, 2020: IRES Faculty Seminar with Jiaying Zhao

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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The impact of direct giving on people experiencing homelessness: Experimental evidence from Vancouver, Canada

A growing body of research suggests that direct cash transfers are an effective solution to reduce global poverty, although most evidence comes from developing countries. The current study is the first randomized control trial in developed countries examining the impact of unconditional cash transfers on homeless individuals. Specifically, we distributed a one-time unconditional cash grant of $7,500 to each of 50 homeless individuals in Vancouver, with another group as controls. Our preliminary data show that the cash transfer results in significant improvements in housing stability, food security, savings, and cognitive function, with no increases in spending on temptation goods. Based on a cost-benefit analysis, the cash transfer results in net savings per person per month via reduced shelter use. Our preliminary findings suggest that unconditional cash transfers can be an effective and cost-effective solution to reduce homelessness in developed countries.

Jiaying Zhao

Associate Professor, IRES and Department of Psychology

Canada Research Chair (t2, Behavioral Sustainability)

Bio:

Jiaying Zhao is the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Sustainability, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at UBC. Her research uses psychological principles to design behavioural solutions to address financial and environmental sustainability challenges.

Website: https://zhaolab.psych.ubc.ca/

IRES Profile: https://ires.ubc.ca/person/jiaying-zhao/

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=w6d1YTgAAAAJ&hl=en

February 20, 2020: No Seminar Due to Reading Week

There will be no seminar on Thursday, February 20 due to Reading Break (Feb 18-21).

February 13, 2020: IRES Student Seminar with Juan Diego Martinez and Andrea Byfuglien

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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*** CLICK HERE TO VIEW RECORDING (Andrea 04:30-32:28) (Juan Diego 34:22-54:47)***

Reducing inequality in food access as a means to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The synergies between the whole set of SDGs highlights the relevance and central role the food system plays in achieving a better future for humanity and staying within planetary boundaries. Two main determinants of food access at the individual level are national food availability and household income. For this reason, the reduction of inequality among and within countries (SDG 10) will better enable achieving some of the most morally profound SDGs, ending poverty and eradicating hunger (SDGs 1 and 2). In this study we provide insights into within-country inequality in food access to enable future income-based estimation of environmental impacts across the globe. We used national income distribution by decile and national food availability estimates by major food group to estimate how food and nutrient access varied by income within countries over the past half century. We then used a scenario-based approach to study different future interactions of income growth, inequality trends and food productivity to estimate future food security and nutrition indicators. Our results show that future inequality plays a key role in pathways toward ending hunger and poverty.

Juan Diego Martinez

IRES PhD Program

Bio:

Juan Diego is a PhD student at IRES working with Dr. Navin Ramankutty. His research is centered at the intersection between Food and Nutrition Security and the environmental impacts of different diets. Currently understanding how access to food is shaped by income/expenditure inequality, illustrating the disparities among and within countries in the past decades.

He holds a B.Sc in Biology and a B.Eng in Industrial Engineering for the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. In the past, he worked with the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Research Institute and as a renewable energy consultant for Latin America

The roles of affect and sustainability education in increasing pro-environmental actions in a botanical garden

Human impacts on the environment are evident. Behaviour change lies at the root of solving environmental issues and realizing the Sustainable Development Goals. A key question is how to promote pro-environmental behaviour. We conducted an experiment in UBC Botanical Garden to determine how affect and a sustainability education program influence pro-environmental behavior. To our surprise, we find no significant effect of affect or education on behaviour. Our findings contrast with previous research showing the benefit of heightened affective responses or education. This study highlights the complicated relationship between human emotions, knowledge, and pro-environmental behaviour. It calls for further research to better understand how the feeling system and the learning system relate to pro-environmental behaviour.

Andrea Byfuglien

IRES MSc Program

Bio:

Andrea joined IRES in 2018 as a Master of Science student under the supervision of Dr. Jiaying Zhao. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Geography from The University of Melbourne. Her research at IRES is in collaboration with UBC Botanical Garden, and examines how education and emotions can be leveraged to foster pro-environmental behaviour. Andrea is interested in advancing sustainable development through applied behavioural science. As an advocate for climate justice, she is determined to amplify meaningful engagement with the public and empower others in addressing the climate crisis.

February 6, 2020: IRES Faculty Seminar with Mark Harris

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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*** VIEW SEMINAR RECORDING (Audio begins at 4:55min)***

Dancing for Country (towards Reconciliation?) – A non-Indigenous Australian perspective

On December 1, 2019, for the first time in history, Indigenous communities from across Australia danced in unison at the same time, dancing for Country, for ancestors and for healing. For the first time in over 150 years, Corroboree took place on Gundungurra Country (in south-eastern New South Wales). In this presentation I want to juxtapose this moment with the recent history of moves to achieve Reconciliation in Australia that began with the establishment of a Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991 and was followed by the attempts to comprehend Australia’s history of forced removal of Aboriginal children from the 1900s through to the 1970s (dubbed the Stolen Generations). This presentation will consider this historical context and the question of whether Reconciliation is possible in a settler-colonial society such as Australia and what lessons (if any) might be drawn for non-Indigenous peoples seeking to achieve Reconciliation.

Mark Harris

Associate Professor, Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice

Bio:

Dr. Mark Harris is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice where he teaches courses on Globalization and Social Justice and Gender, Race, Law and Social Justice. His research focuses primarily on social justice issues with an emphasis on Indigenous rights in relation to cultural heritage, land claims, the stolen generations, intellectual property and criminal justice issues in both Australia and globally. He has worked as a lawyer giving advice on native title (land) claims for Indigenous communities in South-Eastern Australia.

Website: https://grsj.arts.ubc.ca/person/mark-harris/

January 30, 2020: IRES Professional Development Seminar with Steve Chignell, Erika Luna Perez, Leonora Crema, and Stephanie Savage

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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Scholarly publishing and the knowledge economy: how did we get here, where are we going, and what can we do about it?

Scholarly publishing is in crisis. A handful of corporations own most of the world’s top academic journals, making as much as 37% profit from library subscriptions, paywalls, and the volunteered time of researchers. Publishers have also found new ways of monetizing open access, as scholars seeking to make their results open to the public pay thousands of dollars for each paper published without a paywall. Meanwhile, companies have developed a suite of metrics that are now being sold to universities as a way to ‘track impact’ and boost rankings. This increases the pressure to publish, spurring the proliferation of hundreds of new journals of varying quality. This seminar will describe how we got here and how you, as scholars and authors, can navigate this complex system. It will then open into a discussion exploring potential alternatives and challenges to realizing them.

Stephen Chignell

IRES PhD Program

Bio:

Stephen Chignell is a Ph.D. Student in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability supervised by Dr. Mark Johnson. He is interested in both the physical and social aspects of environmental and sustainability issues, and enjoys finding creative ways to understand their intersection. Prior to UBC, he completed a M.S. studying the relationships among water development, land change, and urban growth in Ethiopia. He also worked to reconstruct the history of Antarctic science with the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long-Term Ecological Research project. He is passionate about making scholarly research and its outcomes more open and collaborative.

Leonora Crema

Scholarly Communications and Copyright Services Librarian, University of British Columbia

Bio:

As a UBC Scholarly Communications Librarian, Leonora advises researchers about making works open access, managing one’s scholarly identity, and navigating the changing landscape of academic publishing. She administers the UBC Scholarly Publications Fund, has been instrumental in recent open textbook projects, and is UBC’s contact person for the Canadian ORCID consortium.

Erika Luna

IRES MSc Program

Bio:

Erika Luna is an MSc student at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability supervised by Dr. Navin Ramankutty and Dr. Amanda Giang. Her current research interests are food security and international development. She holds a BSc in Earth and Environmental Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Erika gained research experience from working at different universities across North America where she studied a variety of socio-environmental problems. This past research experience contributed to build her passion on data science and GIS as tools to think critically and holistically about the interactions between humans and the environment.

Stephanie Savage

Scholarly Communications and Copyright Services Librarian, University of British Columbia

Bio:

Stephanie Savage is a Scholarly Communications and Copyright Services Librarian at UBC Library. In this role Stephanie educates the UBC community in matters of copyright law and policy and advises researchers on open access publishing and author rights. Stephanie is also the campus administrator for Open Journal Systems, an open publishing platform that hosts over 40 journals published out of UBC.

January 23, 2020: IRES Faculty Seminar with Lenore Newman

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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*** VIEW SEMINAR RECORDING (Audio begins at 4:18min)***

Farm in a Bottle: Implications of the Coming Future of Dairy

The global environmental impact of rising consumption of animal products presents serious environmental challenges. One alternative is cellular agriculture: the production of animal products in-vitro. Such “clean meat” technologies promise improvements in environmental metrics, animal welfare, and human health. This discussion highlights research into the potential impact of cellular agriculture on the dairy industry; though cellular dairy could offer significant ecological benefits, these could be countered by intensification of agricultural activity in equatorial regions for the production of feedstocks for cellular agriculture. Using the concept of telecoupling, an umbrella concept that refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances, this talk examines the policy landscape needed to prevent unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of alternatives to animal products.

Lenore Newman

Associate Professor, University of the Fraser Valley

Director, Food and Agriculture Institute Canada Research Chair

Bio:

Lenore Newman is the director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Food Security. Lenore is also a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s New College. Lenore researches agricultural land use policy, bioengineering in the food system, and the role of food and agriculture in the creation of place. Her first book, Speaking in Cod Tongues, was published to wide acclaim in January, 2017. Her second book, Lost Feast, was published by ECW Press in 2019. She holds a PhD in Environmental Studies from York University.

Website: http://lenorenewman.com/

Faculty Profile: https://www.ufv.ca/geography/faculty-and-staff/faculty-members/newman-lenore.htm

January 16, 2020: IRES Student Seminar with Bronwyn McIlroy-Young and Harold Eyster

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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*** CLICK HERE TO VIEW RECORDING (Harold 04:08-31:36 ) (Bronwyn 32:38-1:02:06)***

Chemical controversy: exploring scientific disagreements about the assessment of endocrine disrupting chemicals

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) pose a wicked dilemma for science and regulation. EDCs interact with the endocrine (hormonal) system effecting development and reproduction. They are constitutive of numerous products that promote health, nutrition and beauty; however, EDCs also pose a potential threat to human and environmental health. Globally, scientists lack consensus over how to assess EDC risk: some advocate for a precautionary, hazard categorization approach; others for a more permissive risk assessment approach. Each side accuses the other of being unscientific and biased. This controversy has exacerbated difficulties in developing EDC regulation. Our study employed focus groups with scientists supporting a hazard and risk approach. The findings reveal fundamental differences in the framing of the challenge posed by EDCs, including the nature of the EDC problem, influences on chemical policymaking, and the roles of scientists in supporting or impeding effective regulation.

Bronwyn McIlroy-Young

IRES MA Program

Bio:

Bronwyn is a second year Masters student at UBC working with Dr Gunilla Oberg at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. She received her Bachelors in Knowledge Integration from the University of Waterloo in 2018 with her honour’s thesis on weather and climate change communication. Bronwyn’s research interests include risk perception, environmental justice, and values in post-normal science. Her Masters research explores scientific controversy around endocrine disrupting chemicals. She hopes her work will help to improve the conduct and communication of science for environmental policy.

Using genetic distinctness to motivate people to conserve a widespread species

Conservation efforts have been particularly successful at bolstering rare species. Yet widespread, common species continue to decline, affecting ecosystems and human connections to nature—e.g., North America has lost nearly 30% of its individual birds in the last several decades. New methods to motivate people to protect widespread species are needed. Drawing on a relational values framework, I deploy a discrete choice experiment to test whether emphasizing genetic distinctness of local populations and a relational framing can motivate people to conserve a widespread species (Rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss). Modeling these data with a mixed multinomial logit model, I find that genetic distinctiveness and the relational reframing significantly increase the motivation to restore Rainbow Trout habitat. These findings suggest a new avenue for using an abundant resource (genetic data) to motivate conservation of a widespread, common species. These findings also demonstrate the fruitfulness of constructing environmental problems, and solutions, as relational.

Harold Eyster

IRES PhD Program

Bio:

Harold Eyster is a PhD candidate supervised by Dr. Kai Chan. Harold peers at environmental challenges through a relational lens: at the center of every environmental challenge or success are human–nature relationships. To understand these relationships, and how they might be harnessed to create a more verdant Anthropocene, Harold leverages methods from the natural and social sciences. Before coming to UBC, Harold received a BA at Harvard University. Harold brings his joy for birding, painting, Bayesian inference, and outdoor adventure into his research as much as possible, though he has yet to figure out a way of incorporating his enthusiasm for sourdough baking.

January 9, 2020: IRES Faculty Seminar with Rashid Sumaila

IRES Seminar Series

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

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

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*** VIEW SEMINAR RECORDING (Audio begins at 8:30)***

The Global Struggle to Discipline Overfishing Subsidies

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was tasked with eliminating overfishing fisheries subsidies way back in 2001. This is yet to be accomplished. To support the ongoing WTO negotiations, the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at UBC has been providing fisheries subsidies data and analysis to the global community since the early 2000s. Dr. Rashid Sumaila will present his latest findings and describe the state of play in the struggle to discipline harmful subsidies.

Rashid Sumaila

Professor, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries

Canada Research Chair (t1, Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics)

Bio:

Dr. Rashid Sumaila is Professor and Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, University of British Columbia. He specializes in bioeconomics, marine ecosystem valuation and the analysis of global issues, e.g., fisheries subsidies, illegal fishing, climate change and oil spills. Dr. Sumaila is widely published including in journals such as Science, Nature and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He has won a number of awards, including, the 2017 Volvo Environment Prize and the 2017 Benchley Oceans Award in Science. Dr. Sumaila is a FRSC; named a Hokkaido University Ambassador in 2016 and serves on the Board of Oceana. He is also a Faculty Associate in IRES.

IOF Profile: https://oceans.ubc.ca/rashid-sumaila/

Don’t demonise farmers

Balsher Singh Sidhu, a PhD student at UBC’s Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, wrote an article about agricultural burning and air pollution in North India.