IRES Faculty Associate Rashid Sumaila has won a prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award, in recognition for his work on sustainable fisheries around the world.
We at IRES would like to extend our warm congratulations to Dr. Sumaila for his achievement!
The UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries’ press release can be found here:
Dr. Rashid Sumaila
RES PhD student, Helina Jolly, the 2016 recipient of the Nehru Humanitarian Graduate Scholarship in Indian Studies, was honoured for her work at the annual Goel Family Charitable Foundation’s Jawaharlal Nehru Award Night. The Goel family has been supporting generations of students at UBC through this and seven other student awards. Congratulations Helina!
An interview of her with the UBC’s Centre for India and South Asia Research can be found here: http://cisar.iar.ubc.ca/south-asia-scholar-interview-series-helina-jolly/
On left: Helina Jolly
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract:
Recent advances in the data sciences have provided us with a number of new tools for dealing with the scientific “data deluge”, however, scientific data are often noisy, poorly collated, and often wrong. This results in solutions that require both technical knowledge and deep disciplinary knowledge. The PalEON project brought together paleoecologists, climate and ecosystem modelers, statisticians and historical ecologists to begin to help improve climate forecasts by constraining slow ecosystem processes using historical data. This talk will review some of the challenges, solutions, and results of this data intensive project, in particular, highlighting the significant impact of EuroAmerican settlement on species distributions and climate relationships in the American Midwest.
Engagement with the Neotoma Paleoecological Database (https://neotomadb.org), and the technical problems inherent in the PalEON project has also fostered deep involvement with the EarthCube program (http://earthcube.org), a joint program of the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and Geosciences divisions, focused on developing scientific cyberinfrastructure for the 21st century. I will discuss developments wihin EarthCube, their impacts on the Earth Sciences and successful outcomes from early projects including Flyover Country, GeoDeepDive and the EarthLife Consortium.
Bio:
Simon Goring has had a varied academic career: A city kid growing up in Toronto, a forest tech, with a diploma from Sir Sandford Fleming and a stint in the woods of northern Manitoba, a canoe guide on the Bow and North Saskatchewan Rivers, and a plant biologist with a B.Sc from UNBC. He finished his Ph.D with Rolf Mathewes in Biology at SFU, using fossil pollen to understand climate and vegetation change in British Columbia over the last 10000 years. His approach to paleoecology and data analysis brought him to a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin in the department of Geography, where he is now an Assistant Scientist, working as the Technical Lead of the Neotoma Paleoecological Database, and a member of the Leadership Council for the EarthCube program.
Photo credit: Joshua Mayer from flickr/Creative Commons
New this year: With humanity’s creation of a new geological era marked by dominant human influences on planetary processes, the Anthropocene seems to offer little hope.
And yet, the same ingenuity that enables human domination over the Earth also allows a certain genius in addressing the many rising environmental and sustainability challenges.
Hope in the Anthropocene will showcase such inspirations and solutions in tackling climate change, harnessing energy, feeding humanity, governing states, and meeting our collective water and sanitation needs all while respecting Indigenous peoples and protecting nature and its benefits for people.
A collaboration between Green College and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Hope in the Anthropocene will feature 6 accomplished speakers from around the world presenting in the IRES Seminar Series.
Photo credit: Dennis Leung
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract:
Creating behavior change at local levels to mobilize significant and widespread transition toward a sustainable future is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Botanical gardens play an important role in this shift because they provide an environment conducive to education, research, and conservation. Inspired by the UNFAO Farmer Field School, we developed a collaborative and community-based education program to engage adults from local businesses and organizations in topics of sustainability. Our Sustainable Communities Field School, hosted at UBC Botanical Garden, operates as a corporate team-building retreat event. Participants are guided through a 300-meter-long treetop canopy walk, visit a food garden, bee hive and engage in group activities while receiving verbal education about water, food, waste and biodiversity.
A total of 405 participants took part in the 2016-2017 study. We found that after their visit, Field School participants were significantly more knowledgeable about ecological topics, more connected to nature, and more willing to engage in sustainability actions compared to regular garden visitors who did not receive a guided tour. Our results suggest that a sustainability education program delivered at a botanical garden can be an effective model to promote environmental knowledge, attitudes and willingness to act.
Seminar video coming soon!
Bio:
I am a PhD Candidate working with co-supervision of Dr. Jiaying Zhao and Dr. John Robinson. Completed a Master’s of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University (Kingston), and a B.A. from Carleton University (Ottawa) in Environmental Studies, with a minor in Political Science.
As an active member in campus life I worked as a Zero Waste Coordinator with UBC Campus and Community Planning Sustainability Office for 2 years in a work-learn position. During this time, I collaborated with campus sustainability groups and departments in rolling out the recycling and composting infrastructure, prepared communication materials, and provided support in education and research of zero waste. My research is supported by SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and the UBC Four Year Fellowship.
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Abstract:
Resilience has become a key discourse and a policy tool in many urban contexts, including Cape Town. A recent addition to the 100 Resilient Cities Initiative, the City of Cape Town is facing the dual goals of dealing with increasingly more pronounced climate change impacts – such as intensified flooding and more frequent droughts – while also delivering equitable services and redressing historically entrenched spatial and socio-political inequalities. Facing one of its worst droughts in over a century, Cape Town is leveraging ideas of resilience in dealing with the current water shortages and planning for a new approach for water management in the future. To trace how the resilience agenda is unfolding in Cape Town and what the associated implications are for planning in the water sector, this research investigates situated notions of resilience through qualitative research conducted with city officials, managers and planners at the City of Cape Town.
Seminar video not available.
Bio:
Lucy Rodina is a PhD Candidate, supervised by Leila Harris, at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, a Liu Scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, and International WaTERS Graduate Fellow. She is also involved with the Water Ethics Network as an outreach coordinator, helping to develop strategies to promote awareness around water ethics. Lucy co-chairs Sustainable Water Future’s Water Ethics core working group. In her doctoral research, she studies the intersection of water governance, resilience and environmental justice in urban contexts. Her focus is on 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 is reshaping urban water governance across different scales.
Photo credit: Mark Kao from flickr/Creative Commons
IRES extends our congratulations to Dr. Mark Johnson on being newly appointed as a Canada Research Chair in Ecohydrology. His role as an ecohydrologist will help contribute to research on water and carbon cycle management in relation to environmental sustainability and climate change. Mark Johnson joins IRES faculty members Navin Ramankutty, Stephanie Chang, Hadi Dowlatabadi, and Jiaying Zhao in holding the Canada Research Chair designation.
UBC’s announcement of this news can be found here:
https://academic.ubc.ca/academic-community/news-announcements/news/ubc-receives-115-federal-government-support-researchers
Mark Johnson
Photo credit: Thales from flickr/Creative Commons
IRES Postdoctoral Fellow Nathan Bennett recently published an article on Biological Conservation titled “Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation” and was recently featured on the University of Washington’s website.
Link to the UW article can be found here: http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/12/06/put-people-at-the-center-of-conservation-new-study-advises/
Link to the published journal article can be found here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320716305328
Nathan Bennett
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People must be part of the equation in conservation projects. This will increase local support and the effectiveness of conservation.
That’s the main conclusion of a study published online Nov. 29 in the journal Biological Conservation. In it, an international group of scientists recognizes the need to consider humans’ livelihoods, cultural traditions and dependence on natural resources when planning and carrying out conservation projects around the world.
“We really need to think about people as we’re creating conservation initiatives. Forgetting about humans in the conservation recipe is like forgetting yeast in a loaf of bread,” said lead author Nathan Bennett, a researcher at the University of Washington, the University of British Columbia and Stanford University.
As the Earth continues to lose species and natural resources, the common approach to conservation has been to emphasize natural science to solve ecological problems, leaving people’s relationships to natural resources out of the discussion. Increasingly, natural scientists and social scientists are partnering to try to consider both the needs of nature and of stakeholders. But for lack of good precedent, funding and will, often conservation organizations and activities don’t fully consider the human dimensions of conservation, the authors found.
“When people are ignored and conservation measures are put in, we see opposition, conflict and often failure,” Bennett said. “These problems require the best available evidence, and that includes having both natural and social scientists at the table.”
This paper follows dozens of studies that point out the need for humans to be considered in environmental management and conservation, but few have articulated the benefits of doing so and exactly how to do this, Bennett explained. This review paper is the first to bring together the entire storyline by listing the practical contributions the variety of social sciences can offer to improve conservation.
“This paper helps us to move beyond statements about the need for this toward actually setting the agenda,” Bennett said.
Two years ago, Bennett convened an international working group to find ways to practically involve more social scientists from fields such as geography, history, anthropology and economics in conservation projects. This paper is one of several outcomes from that working group. Another paper published in July 2016 suggests that conservation organizations and funders should put more emphasis on social sciences and explains what an ideal “conservation team” could look like.
“Modern environmental problems require diverse and creative teams to find solutions,” Bennett explained.
This new study calls for action to ensure that we have learned the lessons from past failures and successes of ignoring or considering human dimensions in conservation.
In Thailand, for example, officials set up a series of marine protected areas along the country’s coastline to try to conserve threatened habitats, including coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass meadows. But they didn’t consider the thousands of fishermen and women who live near or inside the marine protected areas and rely on fishing and harvesting for livelihoods and feeding their families. Fishing bans and unfair treatment have led to resentment and opposition. In one case, fishermen burned a ranger station in protest.
To add to the divisiveness, big commercial boats still caught fish in these areas because the protection zones were not well enforced.
A recent successful example was the creation of California’s marine protected area network. Local fisheries and communities, along with scientists, fishery managers, government and industry, were all brought to the table and the outcome ultimately was supported by most groups involved, Bennett explained.
Similarly, right now in British Columbia planning for marine protected areas is underway, and First Nations leaders are working alongside local and federal governments.
Successful conservation projects happen when both natural and social scientists are working with government, nonprofits, resource managers and local communities to come up with solutions that benefit everyone. This can take more time and resources at the outset, but Bennett and his collaborators argue that social scientists are often in a position to help make this a more efficient process.
“Ignoring the people who live in an area can be a costly mistake for conservation. This is one of those cases where an ounce of prevention can be worth more than a pound of cure,” he said. “Specialists in the social sciences can develop more creative, robust and effective solutions to environmental problems that people are going to get behind.”
Patrick Christie, a UW professor in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, is a co-author on the paper. Other co-authors are from the University of British Columbia, Stanford University, the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the University of Victoria, the University of Wyoming, the University of Waterloo, the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Switzerland, Oregon State University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Cornell University, Slippery Rock University, Georgia State University and World Wildlife Fund International.
This study and co-authors were funded by the Canadian Wildlife Federation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, the Liber Ero Foundation, Fulbright Canada, the Smith Fellowship Program, the National Science Foundation and a number of other organizations. See the paper for a complete list.
IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Abstract:
We are awful at managing our resources. It would be good if we knew how to do better, but history is replete with dire future predictions which were well-intentioned and entirely wrong. How can we be wiser in avoiding long-term disasters while not falling prey to histrionics borne of error?
All century scale models of global change assume continued prosperity of humans. They are then tweaked to narrowly focus on a particular concern. This leads to myopic analysis of how we could influence whatever may pass. The longer a field shapes its long-term vision with this style of approach, the more likely it is to accumulate systematic blind spots. Malthus pioneered a narrative of doom around prosperity, population growth and agricultural production. Has the IPCC made much progress since the 18th-century?
In this talk we focus on a case study of catastrophic climate change outlooks, and the systematic errors embodied in that narrative. We will explain how these errors have crept in to the broader public, political and scientific discourse. We invite a lively and critical discussion of how to engage the public with questions of deep uncertainty about the long term.
Bios:
Hadi Dowlatabadi’s research is focused at the interface of nature, humans, technology and policy. He uses a systems approach to capture the dynamics of such systems, applying a value of information approach to focus on research that matters most.
Justin Ritchie is a PhD Candidate at IRES. His work in energy economics focuses on cultivating wise prospects for investment in regional and global energy system development by drawing on integrated studies of physical and social science.
Photo credit: Moyan Brenn from flickr/Creative Commons
IRES would like to congratulate our recent graduates of May 2017! Esteemed congratulations from all of us!
We wish you the very best in your future careers and endeavors!
(Photo credit: BdwayDiva1 from flickr/Creative Commons)
(Photo credit: Stiller Beobachter from flickr/Creative Commons)
Tropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time—averting climate change and promoting sustainable development. Despite their importance, tropical forests are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort to reverse tropical deforestation.
Why Forests? Why Now? is a new book by Frances Seymour and Jonah Busch that synthesizes the latest research on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decision-makers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.
This seminar will not be filmed.
Dr. Jonah Busch is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. He is an environmental economist whose research focuses on climate change and tropical deforestation. His research on climate and forests has been published in academic journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics, and Environmental Research Letters. He serves on the editorial board of Conservation Letters. He is a research fellow at the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the College of Environmental and Resource Sciences of Zhejiang University.