Congratulations to Dr. Mark Johnson who has been promoted to full Professor, effective July 1, 2018!
Dr. Johnson is working to understand how land use practices influence interactions between hydrological and ecological processes, and how these ecohydrological processes further affect ecosystem services including carbon sequestration. Unraveling interactions between the water cycle and the carbon cycle is essential for improving the sustainability of land and water management, especially under changing climatic conditions. Dr. Johnson’s research in ecohydrology demonstrates that soil carbon processes are also integrally important to the health of freshwater ecosystems and drinking water supplies. Dr. Johnson and his team are testing carbon and water cycle interactions to address questions such as: How much carbon does water transport from the land into freshwater systems? His research can also help to answer very applied questions related to soil fertility and water use such as: How much food can be produced in urban environments, and how much water would that require? To address these and other related questions, Johnson is developing innovative approaches to ecohydrological research in partnership with communities, natural resource management agencies and organizations, and industry.
The city managed to stave off “Day Zero,” but does that mean Cape Town’s water system is resilient?
We think not.
This may well foreshadow trouble beyond Cape Town. Cities across the Northern Hemisphere, including in Canada, are well into another summer season that has already brought record-setting heat, drought and flooding from increased run-off.
In Cape Town, lower than average rainfall tipped the scales towards a “crisis,” but the situation was worsened by slow and inadequate governance responses. Setting aside debates around whose responsibility it was to act and when, the bigger issue, in our view, was the persistence of outdated ways of thinking about “uncertainty” in the water system.
Second, Cape Town’s water system neared disaster in part because demand management seemed to have reached its limits. Starting late last year, the city imposed a limit on water consumption of 87 litres per person per day. That ceiling thereafter shrunk to 50 litres per person per day.
Cape Town residents queue to fill containers from a spring water source on Feb. 2, 2018. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)
Despite these efforts, Cape Town consistently failed to cut demand below the 500-million-litre-per-day citywide target needed to ensure that the system would function into the next rainy season.
The mayor accused the city’s residents of wasting water, but her reprimanding rhetoric should not be seen as a sign that the citizens were non-compliant. The continuously shrinking water targets were an untenable long-term management strategy.
Buffers are key to water resilience
In the end, “Day Zero” was avoided primarily by relying on unexpected buffers, including temporary agricultural transfers and the private installation of small-scale, residential grey-water systems and boreholes in the city’s wealthier neighbourhoods. The former increased water supply and the latter lowered demand from the municipal system. These buffers are unlikely to be available next year, however, as the water allocations for the agricultural sector will not be renewed and there is uncertainty in the long-term sustainability of groundwater withdrawals.
For more than a decade, Cape Town has levelled demand, reduced leaks and implemented pressure management and water restrictions. This made Cape Town’s water system highly efficient and therefore less resilient because there were fewer reserves to draw from in times of unusual scarcity.
The UN Water 2015 report found that most cities are not very resilient to water risks. As water managers continue to wait for climate change models to become more certain or more specific, they defer action, paralyzing decision-makers.
If we really want our cities to be water-resilient, we must collectively change long-held ideas about water supply and demand. This will require technological and institutional innovation, as well as behavioural change, to create new and more flexible buffers — for example, through water recycling, green infrastructure and other novel measures.
Although Cape Town avoided disaster this year, that does not make it water-resilient. Despite the arrival of the rainy season, Cape Town is still likely to face Day Zero at some point in the future.
The Freda Pagani Awards have been endowed by family and friends for graduate students in the Resources, Environment and Sustainability graduate program. As founder and director of the Sustainability Office at UBC, Freda helped to develop green building guidelines for campus facilities, initiated an energy management program, created the UBC Social, Ecological, Economic, Development Students Program (SEEDS), and developed a community energy and water plan. In addition, Freda led the creation of the University’s first ecologically friendly building, the C.K. Choi Building.
The Les Lavkulich Scholarships for Resource and Environment has been endowed by colleagues, friends and UBC alumni in honor of Professor Les Lavkulich, who created the RES program in 1979, the first truly interdisciplinary graduate program at UBC. As the program’s inspirational leader between 1979 and 2004, he was able, with his unrelenting effort and visionary thinking, to build it into an internationally renowned program. The two awards are given every year.
Lucy Rodina is a PhD Candidate at IRES. In her doctoral work, Lucy Rodina address the gap in empirical and theoretical understanding of how resilience thinking is applied in the context of water governance, broadly defined. More specifically, she studies the intersection of water governance, resilience and environmental justice in urban contexts. Lucy studies the nascent challenges to urban water governance in the face of global environmental change and their implications for transformation in the urban water sector. She engages critically with resilience, evaluating the various ways in which resilience thinking and planning agendas are (re)shaping urban water governance across different scales. With a specific focus on a case study from South Africa, she theorizes and develops a situated understanding of water resilience – attentive to specific biophysical environments, lived experiences, socio-political and governance contexts, power and marginalization – for water experts and decision-makers on one hand, and residents of impoverished, peri-uban and informal settlements on the other. Her work further informs the possibilities for addressing equity and social justice concerns within a resilience framework, by investigating the discursive and practical manifestations of questions of poverty, inequality and differentiated water-related vulnerabilities in water governance. Ultimately, this project aims to engage with resilience thinking critically by investigating the different dimensions in which resilience can be evaluated.
Megan (Meggie) is a PhD Candidate at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability under the supervision of Dr. Terre Satterfield. Her Master’s work was completed at UBC and explored the human-animal interface found within zoos. It sought to explore the effectiveness of zoo-based conservation efforts through a species-based evaluation as well as identifying successes and challenges that zoological institutions faced individually and as a whole. Her current research expands upon her Master’s work and seeks a holistic investigation of different relationships between humans and wildlife. Her work will focus on three main aspects of the relationships: differentiation, benefits, and agency. This approach combines elements of anthropological inquiry, psychology-based perception work, and tenets of animal behavior and welfare in order to help characterize different aspects of the complex human-animal relationship. Meggie’s special affinity for wildlife began early in childhood, as she shared her home with a constant succession of furry, feathered, or finned friends. Her time spent working at a wildlife rehabilitation center combined with her collegiate studies at Pomona College solidified her interest in animal-human interactions. She is also a TerreWEB scholar.
Trained volunteers at large-scale public events and festivals are the most effective way to ensure people recycle correctly, suggests new UBC research. Researchers used data from the annual Apple Festival, held at the UBC Botanical Garden and attended by more than 10,000 people, to compare the effectiveness of different recycling and waste sorting methods.
Ivana Zelenika, a PhD candidate in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, explains why recommendations from the study will be crucial in ensuring recycling efforts are effective at upcoming summer events and festivals.
Ivana Zelenika, RES PhD candidate
How does contamination affect recycling?
For a long time, most recycling efforts have been focused exclusively on galvanizing participation, which is still very important, but if people are contaminating the bins it cancels out the participation effort. Contamination of waste streams makes the whole recycling enterprise costlier because it creates extra work for recycling facilities and reduces the quality and quantity of useful materials for resale. It’s no longer enough just to encourage participation—we need to encourage accurate sorting.
Recently there were a number of news stories about the cost of recycling contamination in cities across Canada. There is a huge financial incentive for event organizers, for institutions and for municipalities to recycle properly.
Why is contamination of recycling such a big issue at large events?
A large amount of waste is produced at events through food, drink and product packaging. When there are many different kinds of products and different vendors, it can be confusing for people to know what can be recycled and what can’t. When they are in social settings and in a hurry to get back to family and friends, this can lead to rushed waste disposal and contamination.
In our study, we found anywhere between 10 and 40 pieces of waste end up in the wrong bins, for example food or recyclable coffee lids being tossed into the garbage.
We tested the effect of having a trained volunteer stand by the bins to provide correct information about how to dispose of waste. The volunteers communicated with attendees so there was a chance to educate them. People like social interaction, so it also makes sense that people would approach someone standing by the bin, someone that they think is an expert that could help them, as opposed to trying to figure out signage on their own.
What were the findings of your study?
We conducted a randomized control trial at the annual Apple Festival at the UBC Botanical Garden to determine the most effective way to reduce waste contamination. We tried four different approaches: trained volunteers, bins with signs illustrating the waste products, bins with pieces of waste like aluminum cans or coffee lids attached to the top to indicate where the waste goes, and regular bins.
We determined that trained volunteers had a significant impact on the contamination levels of all waste streams. Volunteer staff were able to reduce contamination by 96 per cent in the organics bin, 97 per cent in the recyclable containers bin, 97 per cent in the paper bin, and 85 per cent in the garbage bin. The other bins—those with signage and even those with examples of waste sitting on top—had no significant effect on contamination levels.
Our results suggest that recruiting volunteer staff at waste stations is the most effective method to reduce contamination at public events.
What are the implications of this study for event organizers?
Trained volunteers are a huge resource because people need help sorting their waste. People are willing to recycle but providing bins and signage at events is not enough. We now have the data to show that volunteers are the only intervention that made a significant impact on decreasing contamination levels and we were quite surprised how well the volunteers worked to help people sort their waste correctly.
Volunteers make such a big difference, so let’s celebrate them and use them to help better support people and reduce contamination.
The Right to Breathe Clean Air: Catalyst for Change?
The World Health Organization reports that air pollution causes approximately seven million deaths per year, a terrible burden that affects all countries but disproportionately harms low- and middle-income States, mainly in Asia and Africa. These preventable deaths are caused in roughly equal proportions by ambient (outdoor) air pollution, produced by industry and motor vehicles, and household (indoor) air pollution, produced by cooking, heating, and lighting with polluting fuels.
Yet the right to clean air seems to have garnered far less academic, political, and legal attention than the right to water. Could political and legal recognition of the right to breathe clean air serve as a catalyst for improvements in air quality? If so, what types of laws and policies might prove effective in achieving cleaner air for all, and especially the most vulnerable individuals and communities?
Associate Professor of Law, Policy and Sustainability, IRES
Bio
David R. Boyd is the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment and an associate professor of law, policy, and sustainability at the University of British Columbia. He has a PhD in Resource Management and Environmental Studies from UBC, a law degree from the University of Toronto, and a business degree from the University of Alberta. His career has included serving as the executive director of Ecojustice, appearing before the Supreme Court of Canada, and working as a special advisor on sustainability for Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. He has advised many governments on environmental, constitutional, and human rights policy. Along with Mayor Gregor Robertson, he co-chaired Vancouver’s effort to become the world’s greenest city by 2020.
Boyd is also the author of nine books and over 100 reports and articles on environmental law and policy, human rights, and constitutional law. His most recent books include The Rights of Nature (ECW Press, 2017), The Optimistic Environmentalist (ECW Press, 2015), Cleaner, Greener, Healthier: A Prescription for Stronger Canadian Environmental Laws and Policies (UBC Press, 2015) and The Environmental Rights Revolution: A Global Study of Constitutions, Human Rights, and the Environment (UBC Press, 2012).
Theories of “the land,” political consciousness, citizenship, and their implications for conducting research with urban Indigenous peoples.
Abstract:
Research on urban Indigenous peoples is burgeoning field encompassing a wide spectrum of theoretical perspectives. These social theories contain descriptive and normative components about the “natural” world, urban communities, and consciousness. As such, this presentation will critically engage with theories of political consciousness (ranging from Indigenous ontological to contractarian) to understand their claims about how the world operates causally. This presentation will demonstrate that the descriptive components of each theory of political consciousness is laden with dualist assumptions which impact the normative components of their theories. This presentation will also demonstrate that these theories contain key theoretical insights which demonstrate that the human social world is complex, dynamic, and subject to power relations. This presentation will conclude by using insights from these theories of political consciousness to develop an analytic framework – which I call traditional differentiation – for conducting research with urban Indigenous peoples.
Johnnie Manson is a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation. His current research is interested in urban Indigenous people, conceptualizations of nature, and conceptualizations of citizenship. Johnnie Manson is also a poet whose poetry has been published in numerous literary journals.
Understanding Carsharing Demand: a lifestyle choice or an economic necessity?
Abstract:
Carsharing memberships have increased rapidly in the past decade. Municipal governments have supported this through various accommodations in the belief that they help address their key challenges related to mobility: e.g., reducing car ownership, VKT and GHG emissions. Here we provide findings from a 2017 survey providing further differentiation between one-way and two-way carsharing members in Vancouver, BC. One-way members take more than three times as many trips by private vehicle and twice as many trips by car share vehicle as two-way members, who inturn make more weekly trips walking and biking. Reported motivations for car share use correspond with these travel patterns. Two-way members preferentially view car-sharing as a way to live efficiently, save money, be environmentally friendly, and reduce their dependence on car ownership.
Rainer is an MSc student at IRES under the supervision of Dr. Hadi Dowlatabadi. He studies sustainable transportation, using a data driven approach to determine policy or business innovations that result in positive social and environmental impacts. Rainer graduated from Amherst College in 2015 with a BA in Geology and Mathematics. He then spent two years working in Boston for an environmental consulting company. His experience in the consulting industry, which involved enacting solutions for predetermined policies, influenced his desire to do work that helps shapes policy.
Fifty million poor women in India adopted cleaner-burning liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) since May 2016 under an ambitious Indian government subsidy and loan program called Ujjwala. Analysis of the enrollment and purchase history of 25,000 customers from rural India provide three insights. First, Ujjwala beneficiaries and non-Ujjwala consumers used LPG for 25% and 50% of their cooking energy demand in the first year respectively. Second, as LPG consumption of pre-Ujjwala consumers does not change over the first few years, Ujjwala consumers would likely continue to depend heavily on polluting solid fuels in near future. Third, there is a strong seasonal variation in LPG consumption due to climatic and economic reasons. As the envisaged economic, ecological, societal and health gains from clean cooking are linked to usage, policies directed at incentivizing usage, including seasonal discounts, is needed. Ujjwala is only the first-step towards cooking energy transition.
Abhishek Kar
Bio:
Abhishek Kar is a Ph.D. Candidate in IRES at UBC and was a participant in the 2018 Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). He was previously a Research Fellow at the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), an Indian think-tank.
Over the last ten years his multi-disciplinary research experience (and published work) spans aerosols, human behavior, and policy analysis related to household air pollution in specific and energy access in general. His doctoral dissertation entails application of classical behavior change theories in conjunction with large consumer behavior datasets to better understand clean cooking energy transitions.
An array of opportunistic foragers (brown trout, sculpins, common mergansers, North American river otters, American mink, and Pacific harbour seals) are suspected of preying on juvenile salmon in rivers and estuaries—and may account for critical low numbers of Chinook salmon in British Columbia. However, there is another piscivore predator that has been left off the list of usual suspects—the Pacific great blue heron. We investigated the role that herons might be playing in the decline of salmon by estimating rates of mortality caused by herons on juvenile Chinook salmon tagged with PIT tags in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 (~10,000 tags per year) in the Cowichan River on Vancouver Island. We scanned three heron rookeries located ~10, 20, and 30 km from the mouth of the river using a Biomark IS1001 mobile array, and found 410 tags in fecal remains under nests. Most of the tags (406) came from the closest rookery with ~100 nests, and the remaining few were from the two smaller more distant rookeries (7 nests, ~30 nests). Predation occurred primarily in the lower river and was higher during years of low water flow. Recovering so many tags at heron rookeries was unexpected, and indicates that blue herons are a major predator of juvenile Chinook. The location of heron nests relative to the distance to salmon bearing rivers is likely a good predictor of the impact on local salmon runs, and a potential means to assess coast-wide impacts of great blue herons on salmon recovery.
Zachary Sherker
Bio:
Zachary is completing his MSc in the RES program at UBC investigating freshwater and estuarine predation on juvenile salmon during their out-migration from natal rivers. Prior to coming out west, Zach completed an interdisciplinary BSc in Aquatic Resources and Biology at ST. F.X. University in Antigonish, N.S. During his undergraduate degree, Zach ran field and lab experiments to explore predator-induced phenotypic plasticity in intertidal blue mussels exposed to the waterborne cues of a drilling predator snail. He also conducted biological surveys on lobster fishing boats and worked as a fisheries observer for offshore commercial snow crab fleet.
Photo Credit: Robin Harder, Postdoctoral Fellow at IRES
There’s a good chance that the city is not alone.
