Colin Levings, an IRES Adjunct Professor, has published a new book with UBC Press. “Ecology of Salmonids in Estuaries Around the World- Adaptations, Habitats and Conservation” covers ecology of salmon, trout, and char species, describes physical and chemical aspects of estuaries and their habitats, outlines estuarine salmonid communities in the northern and southern hemispheres, has a major chapter on conservation and an extensive reference list. On line appendices provide supplemental references, data tables and a primer on estuaries and salmonids for citizen scientists. See ubcpress.ca for more details on the book including Table of Contents, sample chapter and endorsement.
Photo credit: US Fish and Wildlife Service from Creative Commons
As part of national Responsible Investment Week, the Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at SFU Beedie School of Business and the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at UBC Sauder School of are co-hosting an event on “Reconciliation: A New Relationship for Investors”.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called upon the corporate sector in Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework and apply its principles, norms, and standards to corporate policy. This included specific reference to obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of Aboriginal peoples before proceeding with economic development projects. The Commission also recommended that businesses “ensure that Aboriginal peoples have equitable access to jobs, training, and education opportunities in the corporate sector, and that Aboriginal communities gain long-term sustainable benefits from economic development projects.”
The panel will discuss the role Canadian investors can play in supporting public companies as they address these recommendations and work to build new relationships with Indigenous communities in Canada.
Join Stephanie Bertels, Director of the Centre for Corporate Governance and Sustainability, and Christie Stephenson, the Executive Director of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics, and our panelists:
Max Skudra, Director of Research and Government Relations, Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business
Cynthia Callison, founding partner of Callison & Hanna law firm, which helps Indigenous communities negotiate innovative agreements
Peter Chapman, Executive director of SHARE (the Shareholder Association for Research and Education), which recently released a report on business and reconciliation
Heather Lawrence, Global Manager of Indigenous Affairs, Teck Resources
A hearty congratulations to Graham McDowell, who was awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for his doctoral studies on adaptation to glacial change in high-mountain social-ecological systems.
On behalf of Undergraduate Research Opportunities, we would like to invite you to our 3rd annual Life Sciences Research Night, held in collaboration with six other undergraduate life sciences clubs. A mingling session will take place on the evening of Thursday, November 16, 2017 from 7:15 – 8:30pm. We are inviting you to this session to present your research to the attending undergraduate students.
A major component of our event is having graduate students and research professors bring their posters for a mingling session where undergraduate students can explore various types of life sciences research occurring at UBC. We are hoping to extend an open invitation to all active research professors and their graduate students in the Department of Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability.
The 2017 Life Sciences Research Night hopes to promote undergraduate research and showcase the diversity of life science research at UBC. If you are interested in attending this mingling session, we encourage you to bring a research poster and to reply to this email: ubc.lsrn.2016@gmail.com to confirm your presence by midnight October 25. Light dinner will also be provided at the event. We hope to see you there!
Top 5 Water Challenges that will Define BC’s Future documents dozens of examples of critical water issues unfolding in the province’s watersheds. Drawing on an extensive review of media, court and tribunal cases, and insights from attending over 100 recent events related to water issues, the study identifies five key water challenges and suggests possible solutions to create water security and sustainability in BC over the coming years.
We are writing to provide you with information about the Government of Canada Oceans Protection Plan, and invite you to participate in an introductory engagement session.
The Oceans Protection Plan is the largest investment ever made to protect Canada’s coasts and waterways. This national strategy will help establish a worldleading marine safety system that provides economic opportunities for Canadians today, while protecting our coastlines for generations to come. The Oceans Protection Plan has four main priority areas: increasing our capacity to
prevent and improve responses to marine incidents; preserving and restoring marine ecosystems and habitats; strengthening partnerships with Indigenous and coastal communities: and, ensuring Canada’s marine safety system is built on a stronger evidence base, supported by science and local knowledge.
The upcoming engagement session will provide an overview of the Oceans Protection Plan in British Columbia with a focus on the following initiatives:
Enhanced Maritime Situational Awareness
Proactive Vessel Management and Anchorages
Coastal Environmental Baseline Program and Assessment of Marine Shipping
Impacts
Pilotage Act Review
Other initiatives may be added as well. A full-day session is being planned for November 2, 2017, in Vancouver. To register for the session please contact OPPPacreg-PPOPacenreg@tc.gc.ca by October 5th. Space may be limited. Additional details will be available in the coming weeks.
RES PhD Candidate Krista English was invited to present at the 3rd International & Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mathematical Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Health: Challenges and Opportunities in Latin America. The meeting was in Quito, Ecuador from July 18-22, 2016. She presented the results of a Bibliometrics & Network Analysis of Health Policy and Systems Research literature to understand how much research influences policy in this context.
Through the bees’ eyes: seeking food system sustainability
Abstract:
Using pollinators as a lens for examining agriculture and food system issues, Kremen will discuss how our current food system is not only unhealthy for the planet, but also for pollinators and people. She will describe studies of native bees that reveal how to create environmentally-friendly farming systems that are also highly productive. These studies show that by diversifying crops, adding hedgerow borders, and incorporating natural habitat patches into farming landscapes, we can promote pollinator biodiversity, increase pollination services, while creating other ecosystem service benefits. Structural and policy barriers often prevent broader adoption of these strategies, but many benefits could be realized through policy reforms.
Bio:
Claire Kremen is Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at University of California, Berkeley, and co-directs the Center for Diversified Farming Systems and the Berkeley Food Institute there. She is an ecologist and conservation biologist whose work focuses on understanding and characterizing the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services, and utilizing this information to develop conservation and sustainable management plan. Her current research explores the ecological, social and economic benefits, costs and barriers to adoption of diversified farming systems, and on restoring pollination and pest control services in intensively farmed landscapes. Her work reaches from concept to practice and includes hands-on conservation action such as, for example, the scientific design and establishment of a network of protected areas to protect Madagascar’s endemic flora and fauna. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2007, and was elected to the California Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Abstract: Push the button and it’s gone! A white porcelain flush toilet has become a symbol of civilization. The introduction of central sewer systems in European and North American cities in the late 19th century was indeed extremely successful from a local public health perspective but the long-term sustainability of the ‘out of sight out of mind’ approach is increasingly questioned. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the questions of concern and how these have changed over time from the end of the 19th century until today. I will touch upon how these concerns have been framed and ‘solved’, and discuss how the technical framing of sewage management hides the fact that all solutions have unequal distribution of risks and benefits. To illustrate, I will use as a case the presently ongoing revision of BC’s OMRR (Organic matter recycling regulation), which regulates land-application of the semi-solid residual that remains after treatment (aka biosolids) and the stakes involved in the conflict that erupted in Nicola Valley in 2015, which led to that the revision process stranded (see for example Friends of Nicola Valley on Facebook).
Photo Credit: Gunilla Öberg/Artist Dino Pai
Bio: Dr. Gunilla Öberg, professor a IRES, is inspired by her deep knowledge in chlorine biogeochemistry, environment and sustainability, and her experience as a leader of complex interdisciplinary research and education. Her recent projects address sustainable sanitation planning, particularly in growing urban areas. Questions that drive her work include: What kind of knowledge is needed, used and trusted? How does the knowledge used impact perceived solutions and how are risks and benefits distributed? Research of late involves land-application of biosolids/sewage sludge, contaminants of emerging concern and sustainable sanitation solutions for informal urban settlements.
Rethinking the role of multilateral trade rules in 21st century food security
Abstract:
Before sharp increases in global food prices in 2007-2008, the dominant causal narrative explained food insecurity as the result of abundant but poorly distributed supplies. After the price shocks, the narrative shifted. Demand for food was presented as a threat that might overwhelm supply, in the context of natural resource scarcity and unstable markets. Food insecurity was attributed to failed social safety nets and a chronic lack of investment in agricultural production. Both food security narratives rely on international trade, yet they diverge on its relative importance and on the precise nature of its role. The new narrative changed priorities: governments implemented domestic policy reforms, creating new programmes and renewing investment in agriculture. They negotiated new international commitments. Trade rules were an obvious area for reforms that would reflect the new priorities. But governments failed to reform trade rules. Instead, food security became another bone of contention in the already paralyzed World Trade Organization negotiations. My thesis examines this paralysis. Based on interviews with diplomats, public speeches and policy documents, government negotiating texts, and the theory and analysis of legal scholars, economists, political scientists and philosophers, I assess the WTO’s fulfillment of its mandate as the institution of global governance charged with negotiating trade rules that uphold the international order, including the realization of food security.
Bio:
Sophia Murphy has 25 years of professional experience in international development cooperation. Her work started in multilateral advocacy, focused on the UN conferences that marked the 1990s, including two years in Geneva at the UN itself. From 1997, her work has focused on international trade agreements and their relationship to agriculture, food security and rural development. Most of her work has been with non-governmental organizations, though she has also consulted for government agencies and think tanks. Sophia returned to full-time studies in 2013 as a graduate student at IRES. She is serving a second concurrent term as one of 15 members of the international High Level Panel of Experts to the UN Committee on World Food Security. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of ActionAid USA. She has lived and worked in Canada, Belgium, the United States, Switzerland, India and Australia and now lives in Squamish, BC.
Agri-‘culture’ and Biodiversity: Rethinking Payments for Ecosystem Services in light of agrarian values
Abstract:
Engagement of private agricultural landowners is essential to achieve many biodiversity and conservation objectives. Programs that compensate farmers partly or completely for conservation practices (e.g., payments for ecosystem services) are often employed to this end. Yet enrollment of farmers is a continuing challenge for many programs. I discuss a program focused on restoration of riparian areas in Washington State’s Puget Sound region. I examined how participation can be facilitated or hindered by differences in incentive program structure and rules with rural landowners’ values around landscape, place and nature. Using in-depth interviews of land owners and experts, we found key value differences around relationships to land and nature. For example, rules requiring ‘no touch’ riparian buffers clash with the ways that farmers and rural landowners often view their relationship to the land—one centered around active care and stewardship. Aligning conservation incentive programs with the environmental values of targeted participants could increase participation rates, protecting additional habitat and creating more wildlife friendly landscapes.
Bio:
Mollie Chapman is doctoral candidate at IRES and a scholar at the Liu Institute and the Public Scholars Initiative. Her research spans the natural and social sciences seeking to better understand the ways that the values of individuals and communities as well as understandings from the scientific world can better be integrated into environmental management, programs and decision making. Her current work focuses on innovate ways to shift food systems towards sustainability, looking at Payment for Ecosystem Services programs on agricultural lands in B.C., Washington State’s Puget Sound region and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.
Mollie received her B.A. in Anthropological Sciences from Stanford University and a M.S. in Sustainable Development from the University of Basel in Switzerland. She has previously worked as a consultant for international tech start-ups, at Yellowstone National Park, and as a coordinator for NGOs in ecotourism and appropriate technology.
