In Common: Recent Episodes
The In Common Team
In Common explores the connections between humans, their environment and each other through stories told by scholars and practitioners. In-depth interviews and methods webinars explore interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work on commons governance, conservation and development, social-ecological resilience, and sustainability.
In this episode, the second in our series previewing the themes of the upcoming IASC conference, Michael sits down with the co-leaders of the Forests, Livelihoods, and Tenure sub-theme ahead of the conference in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia next summer. His guests are Moira Moeliono, a forest and climate researcher with more than twenty years at what is now the Landscape Alliance; Sandeep Khandekar, a commons practitioner based in India with Living Landscapes; and Jude Kimengsi, who leads the Landscape Governance and Development research group at Göttingen University.
The conversation covers why forests, livelihoods, and tenure belong together as a theme. The guests discuss the unresolved tensions around carbon regimes and REDD+, asking whether programs like these ultimately serve forest-dependent communities or replicate the exclusions of earlier extractive regimes. They explore the colonial roots of state forest ownership in Indonesia and Cameroon, the limited reach of social forestry reforms, and the informal and often invisible forms of power that shape who actually benefits from forest governance.
The subtheme is actively seeking submissions across multiple categories: academic papers, practitioner-academic dialogues, and policy roundtables. Topics of particular interest include innovative benefit-sharing mechanisms for forest communities, the role of technology in tenure mapping and rights claims, and research that surfaces the informal rules and hidden interests shaping forest governance. The call for submissions is now open: visit the conference website for details: https://2027.iasc-commons.org/
Scholars publish more papers every year, but does that output actually add up to knowledge? In this episode, Michael sat down with three scholars who have been asking exactly that question within the field of environmental governance.
The guests are editors and contributors behind a special issue of Environmental Policy and Governance (Fall 2025), dedicated to the problem of scientific cumulation: whether research in this field is building on itself, or simply accumulating.
Guests* Michael Rose — Senior Researcher, Leuphana University * Jens Newig — Professor, Leuphana University * Sina Leipold — Professor, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research
In this episodeMichael Rose and Jens discuss their own contribution to the special issue, "How to Assess Knowledge Cumulation in Environmental Governance Research? Conceptual and Empirical Explorations," which analyzes the Earth Systems Governance (ESG) research community. Their findings are sobering: ESG research shows limited potential for knowledge cumulation, marked by a fragmented journal landscape, core-periphery citation structures, heterogeneous research questions, and few shared reference works, concepts, or frameworks.
The conversation also ranges across the special issue as a whole, which tackles the cumulation problem from several angles:
- Bibliometric analysis mapping how key concepts like "environmental governance process" are used inconsistently across research communities
- Methodology, including whether archetype analysis in social-ecological systems research can serve as a genuine building block for theory
- Why researchers chase novelty and what that costs the field
- Forest carbon offsetting in Uganda as a case study showing how even a small, focused body of literature can fail to accumulate when papers rest on incompatible theoretical assumptions
- Epistemological diversity, indigenous and local knowledge, and the role science-policy interfaces play in translating knowledge into practice in climate and biodiversity governance
Link to special issue:
Special issue: Knowledge Cumulation in Environmental Governance, Environmental Policy and Governance, Fall 2025
In this episode, Michael interviews organizers of the upcoming IASC 2027 conference: Yanti Kusumanto, Nurhady Sirimorok, and Micah Fisher. Together they discuss the conference's theme, sub-themes, and the significance of hosting it in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, a region with deep relevance to commons governance.
The conference website is live! For more information, go to https://2027.iasc-commons.org/
This is the first in a new series of episodes exploring each of the conference's subthemes, so stay tuned for more!
In this episode, Michael speaks with Thomas Falk, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Thomas works at the intersection of research and development, and for many years he has been designing and testing what he calls experiential learning games: structured, face-to-face exercises that help communities understand and address their shared resource challenges. Thomas employs games in the service of a key principle: that the best way to help communities manage their shared resources isn't to tell them what to do, but to create a space where they can figure it out for themselves. And that space, it turns out, can look a lot like a game.
In this conversation, Thomas discuss an important principle shared by many commons scholars: that communities are often better at identifying the right institutions for their own contexts than outside researchers are. The games he designs don't hand communities a solution. Instead, they help participants see the structure of their own collective problems clearly, often for the first time, and then work out the rules they want to live by together.
Michael and Thomas discuss how such games are run, the role of gender in collective decision-making, what it actually looks like to facilitate one of these sessions in a village in rural India, and what the evidence actually shows about whether any of this changes behavior in the real world.
Thomas would like to acknowledge the financial support for his work from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the CGIAR Policy Innovations Science Program, the CGIAR Gender Equality and Inclusion Accelerator, and the Co-Impact Philanthropic Funds.
References:
Falk, Thomas, Wei Zhang, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Lara Bartels, Richu Sanil, Pratiti Priyadarshini, and Ilkhom Soliev. 2023. “Games for Experiential Learning: Triggering Collective Changes in Commons Management.” Ecology and Society: A Journal of Integrative Science for Resilience and Sustainability 28 (1). https://doi.org/10.5751/es-13862-280130.
Janssen, Marco A., Thomas Falk, Ruth Meinzen-Dick, and Björn Vollan. 2023. “Using Games for Social Learning to Promote Self-Governance.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 62 (101289): 101289. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101289.
Steimanis, Ivo, Thomas Falk, Lara Bartels, Vishwambhar Duche, and Björn Vollan. 2025. “The Role of Women in Learning Games and Water Management Outcomes.” PNAS Nexus 4 (8): pgaf243. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf243.
In this episode Divya speaks with Rachel Carmenta, Associate Professor of Climate Change and International Development at the University of East Anglia. They discuss Rachel’s recent work on the poverty–biodiversity loss association (PBLA) and the idea of connected conservation. In this scholarship, Rachel and her colleagues critically examine how mainstream conservation narratives have often framed poor and rural communities as drivers of biodiversity decline, while overlooking the larger structural forces, such as extractive industries, unsustainable patterns of consumption, and unequal political and economic systems, that are central to environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. They also discuss how poverty is often reduced to income deprivation and how that framing has made conservation and development programs to focus heavily on cash-based incentives and payment schemes. Rachel argues that poverty is way more than income deprivation; instead, it must be understood as multidimensional, encompassing wellbeing, dignity, health, education, security, and access to social services. This broader understanding challenges narrow approaches to both poverty alleviation and conservation governance. Another important theme in their discussion is connected conservation, which emphasizes the interconnected relationships between people, ecosystems, livelihoods, cultural practices, and local knowledge systems, rather than viewing conservation and human wellbeing as separate or competing goals. In this context, Rachel reflects on biocultural conservation and the importance of recognizing the ways communities live with, care for, and understand their environments and what these relationships can teach us about more just and meaningful approaches to conservation in a rapidly changing world.
References:
Carmenta, R., Lima, M.G.B., Choiruzzad, S.A., Dawson, N., Estrada-Carmona, N., Hicks, C., Kallis, G., Nana, E., Killick, E., Lees, A. and Martin, A., 2025. Unveiling pervasive assumptions: moving beyond the poverty-biodiversity loss association in conservation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 74, p.101537.
Tebboth, M.G., Carmenta, R., Minas, A., Adelekan, A., Cao, X., Fullonton, A., Kinally, C., Cataldo, N.L., Mander, S. and Shelton, C., 2025. The ‘how’of transformation: Principles for a justice-centered response to the climate and biodiversity crises. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 67(3), pp.7-23.
Carmenta, R., Barlow, J., Lima, M.G.B., Berenguer, E., Choiruzzad, S., Estrada-Carmona, N., França, F., Kallis, G., Killick, E., Lees, A. and Martin, A., 2023. Connected Conservation: Rethinking conservation for a telecoupled world. Biological Conservation, 282, p.110047.
Lapola, D.M., Pinho, P., Barlow, J., Aragão, L.E., Berenguer, E., Carmenta, R., Liddy, H.M., Seixas, H., Silva, C.V., Silva-Junior, C.H. and Alencar, A.A., 2023. The drivers and impacts of Amazon forest degradation. Science, 379(6630), pp. 8622.
Carmenta, R., Zaehringer, J.G., Balvanera, P., Betley, E., Dawson, N.M., Estrada‐Carmona, N., Forster, J., Hoelle, J., Lliso, B., Llopis, J.C. and Menon, A., 2023. Exploring the relationship between plural values of nature, human well‐being, and conservation and development intervention: Why it matters and how to do it?. People and nature, 5(6), pp.1720-1738.
In this episode Michael speaks with Duan Biggs, Associate Professor and Olajos Goslow Chair at Northern Arizona University. They discuss Duan’s extensive work and engagement in management and global policy in the governance of wildlife trade, and in a community and rights-based response to the Illegal Wildlife Trade. Based on his extensive experience, Duan describes how managing wildlife trade, and tackling illegal trade towards sustainable conservation outcomes requires alignment with the late Nobel Laureate Lin Ostrom’s principles of good sustainable governance. The principles of those affected by policies and rules needing to be key participants in their formulation and fair and legitimate distribution of costs and benefits from policies being particularly important. Duan highlights that legitimate and strong enforcement is key ingredient in managing wildlife trade and curbing illegal wildlife trade, but needs to be accompanied by strong deeply participatory governance systems. In this episode we also discuss how the governance challenges in the Convention of Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), are echoed in other domains of global governance and the backlash and political and governance challenges in the US.
Resources and references:
Duan Biggs’ Lab website: https://www.resilientconservation.org/
Biggs, D., Holden, M. H., Braczkowski, A., Cook, C. N., Milner-Gulland, E. J., Phelps, J., Scholes, R. J., Smith, R. J., Underwood, F. M., Adams, V. M., Allan, J., Brink, H., Cooney, R., Gao, Y., Hutton, J., Macdonald-Madden, E., Maron, M., Redford, K. H., Sutherland, W. J., & Possingham, H. P. (2017). Breaking the deadlock on ivory. Science, 358(6369), 1378–1381. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aan5215 Biggs, D., Peel, A. J., Astaras, C., Braczkowski, A., Cheung, H., Choi, C.-Y., Orume, R. D., Cáceres-Escobar, H., Phelps, J., Plowright, R. K., Rooyen, J., Velden, J., & McCallum, H. (2023). Governance principles for the wildlife trade to reduce spillover and pandemic risk. CABI One Health, 2023, ohcs202300013. https://doi.org/10.1079/cabionehealth.2023.0013 Cheung, H., Challender, D. W. S., Anagnostou, M., Braczkowski, A. R., Marco, M. D., Hinsley, A., Kubo, T., Possingham, H. P., Song, A. Y., Takashina, N., Wang, Y., & Biggs, D. (2025). Protect the Integrity of CITES: Lessons From Japan’s IWC Withdrawal to Keep Polarization From Tearing CITES Apart. Conservation Letters, 18(2), e13099. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.13099 Gaillard, C., Keany, J. M., Diehl, J. L., Ranjan, P., & Biggs, D. (2024). Mobile apps for 30×30 equity. Nature Sustainability, 7(6), 683–684. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01309-7
What does it take to grow more forests and ensure they last? In this episode, Michael Cox speaks with conservation scientist and award-winning science writer Lauren E. Oakes, author of Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future. Through reporting and research that spans from the Scottish Highlands to tropical forests in Central America, Treekeepers tells the story of the global movement to restore forests and the people working to make it possible.
Drawing from these experiences, Oakes reflects on the promise and complexity of natural climate solutions and what successful reforestation requires on the ground. She also examines a central question in the climate conversation: to what extent can forests help save us from climate change? Along the way, Oakes discusses her path bridging science and narrative storytelling, and why human stories can play a powerful role in helping people understand and engage with climate solutions.
In this episode, Divya chats with Pallavi Sethi, a Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment at the London School of Economics, where she works on climate misinformation and disinformation. Pallavi brings a unique perspective to this work, shaped by her background in advertising and media studies, as well as her experience in the fact-checking department for a large social media company. It was through these experiences that she began thinking more deeply about climate narratives and its influence on public perception.
At the beginning of their conversation, they discuss some fundamental questions, such as what is climate misinformation and disinformation, what fact-checking is and how it intersects with debates around free speech, and, lastly, who bears responsibility for the information we see and share.
A central thread in Pallavi’s work is her commitment to empowering the public — not just by calling for stronger platform governance, but by building media literacy and awareness so people can better recognize and challenge misleading climate narratives themselves.
Pallavi has done extensive work in this area and brings sharp and thoughtful insights to an incredibly complex issue. But what is truly commendable about her work is that it does not stop at diagnosis; it also points to meaningful responses, such as the media literacy programs for kids in Finland and the efforts of a climate coalition called Climate Action Against Disinformation.
Pallavi discussed the role of Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), a coalition of over 90 organizations working to make the information sphere safer regarding climate information. She explained that CAAD's collective efforts have been instrumental in putting climate disinformation on the global agenda, with information integrity appearing on the provisional agenda at COP30 for the first time. She highlighted that CAAD's strength lies in its ability to bring together diverse voices, making it harder for governments to ignore their demands.
Sources:
Information on Pallavi's bio & background:
https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/profile/pallavi-sethi/
Sethi, P (2024). Kemi Badenoch’s climate scepticism: a growing problem for the Conservative Party and its voters in LSE Blogs.
Sethi, P., & Ward, B. (2024) Reform UK’s climate denial undermines democracy in LSE Blogs.
Sethi, P (2024). Why countering climate misinformation must be a priority in Global Government Forum.
Sethi, P. (2025). The myth of Meta’s free speech places democracy at risk in LSE Blogs.
Sethi, P (2025). Strategic Obstruction: How Europe’s Far-Right Parties Are Blocking Urgent Climate Action. https://hopenothate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/state-of-hate-2025.pdf
Sethi, P (2025). Inside Trump’s campaign to censor climate science. LSE Blogs
In this episode, Michael speaks with Nathan Truitt, Executive Vice President of Climate Funding for the American Forest Foundation. Nathan works in support of AFF's Family Forest Carbon Program, which it implements in collaboration with the Nature Conservancy. The program is designed to enable small-scale forest landowners to access carbon markets and credits. Together, Michael and Nathan talk about the goals of the program and how it meets the primary challenges that any such program faces, namely ensuring that real and lasting impacts on carbon storage and sequestration are made through the interventions that it supports.
References:
Nathan's background and bio: https://www.forestfoundation.org/who-we-are/people/nathan-truitt/
More information about the Family Forest program: https://www.forestfoundation.org/why-we-do-it/family-forest-blog/
More information about the permanence trust: https://www.forestfoundation.org/permanence-trust/
In this episode, Xavier Basurto, a former guest of the show, joins Michael to interview Fikret Berkes and Nicole Franz. Fikret is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Natural Resources Institute of the University of Manitoba. He is a legend in the field of the commons and social-ecological systems, with some of his most well-known works included Sacred Ecology, Coasts for People, and Navigating Social-ecological Systems. Nicole is a Research Scholar at the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University. She has over two decades of experience working in intergovernmental organizations, namely the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Rome as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris
Michael asks Nicole and Fikret’s about their new edited book entitled Governing for transformation towards sustainable small-scale fisheries, which is open access and published by the FAO. The book was written in support of the FAO's Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries, and provides a human-centered, interdisciplinary approach to managing fisheries in a complex world. It addresses challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and privatization by advocating for a shift from top-down, single-species management to cooperative, adaptive governance systems that incorporate the knowledge and needs of resource users. During the interview, Michael and Xavier also take the time to discuss Fikret’s long career as a key contributor to the literatures on the commons, social-ecological systems and small-scale fisheries governance.
References:
FAO. 2015. Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. Rome. https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/20.500.14283/i4356enBerkes, F. & Franz, N. eds. 2025. Governing for transformation towards sustainable small-scale fisheries. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cd4289en
Website of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication. https://www.fao.org/voluntary-guidelines-small-scale-fisheries/en/
In this episode, Divya speaks with Sean Fox and Gregory Randolph about urbanization and how it is unfolding amid global shocks and affecting inequality.
Sean Fox is a Professor of Geography and Global Development at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of global urbanization, the political economy of urban governance, and sustainable city futures.
Gregory Randolph is an Assistant Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. His work focuses on how local economies and urbanization patterns are being reshaped by 21st-century transitions namely technological, energy and demographic transitions, with a particular focus on inequality.
Together, Sean and Gregory offer rich interdisciplinary insights that challenge conventional understandings of urbanization, showing that urbanization is not just about the growth of cities or a straightforward shift from rural to urban. Rather, it's a geo-demographic transformation that is deeply embedded in political, social, and economic processes.
The conversation also sheds light on the hidden stories of urbanization in the global south for example, the stories of migration in the indian state of Bihar where Gregory has been working, deindustrialization, regional divergence, and the hollowing out of labor markets and how these processes contribute to interpersonal and inter-place inequalities.
This episode was recorded at a time when massive wildfires in Los Angeles were making headlines everywhere, prompting a timely question for our guests: What should planners be thinking about as they rebuild cities after disasters?
Both Sean and Gregory voiced serious concern about the increasing frequency and scale of natural disasters and how such events are amplifying pre-existing inequalities. They emphasized that recovery and rebuilding cannot be the task of planners alone. It must also be a political project—one that demands bold, inclusive, and forward-thinking political leadership committed to building cities that account for vulnerability, address structural inequalities, and prioritize resilience for all.
Sean and Gregory are both compelling storytellers, and their work offers a grounded and timely lens on how urbanization is evolving in a world marked by rising uncertainties and deepening inequalities, and I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to engage with them and their brilliant & relevant scholarship
References:
Fox, S., & Goodfellow, T. (2022). On the conditions of ‘late urbanisation’. Urban Studies, 59(10), 1959-1980.
Randolph, G. F., & Currid-Halkett, E. (2022). Planning in the era of regional divergence: place, scale, and development in confronting spatial inequalities. Journal of the American Planning Association, 88(2), 245-252.
Randolph, G. F., & Storper, M. (2023). Is urbanisation in the Global South fundamentally different? Comparative global urban analysis for the 21st century. Urban Studies, 60(1), 3-25.
Fox, S., & Wolf, L. J. (2024). People make places urban. Nature Cities, 1(12), 813-820.
Fox, S., Agyemang, F., Hawker, L., & Neal, J. (2024). Integrating social vulnerability into high-resolution global flood risk mapping. Nature communications, 15(1), 3155.
Randolph, G. F. (2024). Does urbanization depend on in-migration? Demography, mobility, and India's urban transition. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 56(1), 117-135.
Randolph, G. F., & Deuskar, C. (2024). Urbanization beyond the metropolis: Planning for a large number of small places in the global south. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 44(1), 279-291.
Randolph, G. F. (2025). Planning the “Ruralopolis” in India: Circular Migration, Survival Entrepreneurship, and the Subversive Non-Farm Economy. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 45(2), 305-317.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Rachelle Gould, Associate Professor at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and an Environmental Fellow at the Gund Institute at the University of Vermont.
Rachelle is a prominent and productive scholar on several topics, and one of the main ones she has written about is relational values, which were introduced to represent a different way of relating to the environment that hadn’t been expressed by the more traditional dichotomy of intrinsic and extrinsic value. Relational values have become very popular within academia and have become a focal point of publications by the The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, or IPBES, which Rachelle describes as the IPCC for Biodiversity. Rachelle was also a Lead Author on the recent IPBES Values Assessment.
During their conversation, Michael asks Rachelle about some concerns he has about relational values, primarily that it seemed to be so popular that it was becoming a way of labeling anything that we like as relational, and secondly, that it had become a new panacea: something that doesn’t present trade-offs but which we should simply want more of, regardless of context. They discuss these concerns as well as the significant value that Rachelle sees in a concept that can better represent how human beings can and do relate to the natural world.
References:
Routledge Handbook of CES and Rachelle's critiques chapter
IPBES Transformative Change Summary for policymakers
IPBES Values Assessment
West et al. relational turn paper
Gould et al. response focused on Indigenous relationality
Gould et al. response focused on Latin American relationality
Muraca’s original relational values paper
“Key to pluralistic valuation” Himes and Muraca 2018
Hoelle et al Relational values desirability paper
Spash tribute critiques of monetary valuation
Pratson relational values review
Relationality is not WEIRD paper
In this episode, Divya speaks with Saad Gulzar, Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. At the time of recording of this episode, he was at Princeton University and has since moved to Notre Dame.
Gulzar’s research focuses on the politics of development in South Asia and centers on a critical question: How can governments deliver better outcomes for their citizens? His work combines randomized control trials, administrative data, and in-depth qualitative insights to examine how political representation and bureaucracies can become more responsive. The conversation explores Gulzar’s research on the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, and the conditions under which their collaboration leads to more effective governance.
Gulzar’s findings highlight how the everyday decisions and motivations of these key actors shape the design and delivery of public policy. By uncovering these dynamics, his work offers valuable insights into how governments can better align expectations and improve the delivery of services in people's daily lives.
References:
Gulzar, S., Pathak, D., Thompson, S., & Toth, A. (2025). Can Party Elites Shape the Rank and File? Evidence from a Recruitment Campaign in India. American Political Science Review, 119(2), 812-831.
Gulzar, S., & Khan, M. Y. (2025). Good politicians: Experimental evidence on motivations for political candidacy and government performance. Review of Economic Studies, 92(1), 339-364.
Gulzar, S. (2021). Who enters politics and why?. Annual Review of Political Science, 24(1), 253-275.
Gulzar, S., & Pasquale, B. J. (2017). Politicians, bureaucrats, and development: Evidence from India. American Political Science Review, 111(1), 162-183.
In this episode, Divya speaks with Scott Hardy. Scott is an Extension Educator with the Ohio Sea Grant College Program, where he leads research and runs education and outreach programs on watershed restoration, coastal zone management, and stormwater runoff. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, where he works on several research projects.
Scott’s work is all about collaboration — bringing people together to solve problems that no one can tackle alone. He knows that collaboration isn’t automatic. It takes time, trust, and spaces where people feel heard and included. He also believes that every place is different, and you need to really understand the local context to make teamwork work. Different projects need different kinds of partnerships, and Scott is skilled at figuring out what each situation needs.
In this episode, they talk about Scott’s ongoing work on Cuyahoga River restoration, where he has been closely collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders ranging from state agencies to industry to local communities. They also talk about his recent experience as a Fulbright Specialist at the Universidad de Atacama in Copiapó, Chile, where he was invited to share his expertise on sustainable water management.
References:
Hardy, S. D. (2022). Power to the people: Collaborative watershed management in the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern (AOC). Environmental Science & Policy, 129, 79-86.
Hardy, S. D. (2022). Transaction costs for collaboration in the watershed management of the Cuyahoga River Area of Concern. Regional Sustainability, 3(2), 146-156.
https://u.osu.edu/hardy.116/
Koontz, T. M. (2002). Federalism in the forest: National versus state natural resource policy. Georgetown University Press.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Nate Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. Nate is a biological anthropologist and an evolutionary biologist, studying the behavior, ecology, and functional morphology of humans and nonhuman primates. Nate speaks with Michael about his new research program on the role of fire in promoting social cohesion among humans. Fire is argued to have played an important role in human evolutionary history, and there are multiple mechanisms that have been hypothesized for how it could promote cohesion, including its rhythmic nature (its flicker rate), and its ability to enable storytelling, which itself is known to facilitate an increased sense of belonging and togetherness. This topic is an important complement to more traditional commons and institutional studies discussed on this podcast, which largely focus on how rules and norms can promote collective action and other outcomes.
References:
Nate’s website: https://anthropology.dartmouth.edu/people/nathaniel-j-dominy
Dunbar R.I.M., Gowlett J.A.J. 2014 Fireside chat: the impact of fire on hominin socioecology. In Lucy to Language: The Benchmark Papers (eds. Dunbar R.I.M., Gamble C., Gowlett J.A.J.), pp. 277–296. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Lynn C.D. 2014 Hearth and campfire influences on arterial blood pressure: defraying the costs of the social brain through fireside relaxation. Evolutionary Psychology 12(5), 983-1003. (doi:10.1177/147470491401200509).
Wiessner P.W. 2014 Embers of society: firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi bushmen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111(39), 14027-14035. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1404212111).
In this episode, Michael speaks with Maron Greenleaf, assistant professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College. They discuss Maron’s recently published book, Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon, in which she examines a set of carbon offset programs in the Brazilian state of Acre. Unlike traditional forest commodities that require extraction, carbon offsets monetize forest protection by paying communities to keep carbon stored in standing trees. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Maron describes how forest carbon markets and offsets can be unexpectedly inclusive, providing economic opportunities for marginalized communities, while simultaneously reinforcing some of the inequalities they claim to address. Maron uses this study to illuminate broader questions about whether market-based solutions can effectively address environmental crises. Her work suggests that while green capitalism offers compelling possibilities for reconciling economic growth with environmental protection, it also reproduces some of the structural problems inherent in capitalist systems.
References:
Maron’s website: https://www.marongreenleaf.com/forest-lost
Greenleaf, M. (2024). Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon. Duke University
Press. https://dukeupress.edu/forest-lost
Ferguson, J. (1994). The anti-politics machine:’development’, depoliticization and bureaucratic power in
Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.
Ferguson, J. (2015). Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution. Duke University Press.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Jake Kheel, Vice President of Sustainability at the Grupo Puntacana Foundation, a non-profit organization located in the Dominican Republic. The Foundation is funded in large part by Grupo Puntacana, a major tourism company in Punta Cana, which is the most well-known tourism destination in the DR. As background, Michael met Jake some years ago through Michael's longtime collaborator, Freddie Payton, who runs the Dominican NGO AgroFrontera in the province of Montecristi on the other side of the country.
Jake and Michael discuss Jake’s 2021 book, Waking the Sleeping Giant: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Business to Save the Planet. In the book Jake describes his experiences working in Punta Cana, and the efforts that he and his colleagues have made to address numerous social and environmental issues, including overfishing, coral degradation, invasive seaweed, waste disposal, and water management. Jake and Michael discuss the reasons behind the successes of the Foundation, including the presence of local champions who invest in a particular place and its problems for the long term, which may be less glamorous but is critical for enduring success.
References
Jake’s website: https://www.jakekheel.com/
Kheel, J. 2021. Waking the sleeping giant : unlocking the hidden power of business to save the planet. Lioncrest Publishing.
In this episode, Divya interviews Usman Ashraf, a PhD student at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Sciences at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on forest governance and the complexities of the implementation of development policies in Pakistan. This discussion centers around Usman’s report on Pakistan’s ambitious "10 Billion Tree Tsunami" project, titled "Participation and Exclusion in a Mega-Tree Planting Project in Pakistan." The conversation explores how this massive reforestation initiative, aimed at combating climate change, has inadvertently disrupted the lives and livelihoods of the nomadic herder communities in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Usman explains how the long-standing relationship between Pashtun landowners and the nomadic goat-herding communities has been disturbed by government incentives to plant trees, fundamentally altering these traditional dynamics. This episode goes beyond academic discussion to provide a deep dive into the real-world implications of climate mitigation projects on marginalized communities. Usman’s ethnographic insights reveal how large-scale plantation projects, often driven by political motives, can have significant ecological, social, and economic consequences.
Overall, the conversation highlights the complexities of such initiatives in the Global South, emphasizing the need to consider both ecological and socio-economic factors to ensure that development projects are genuinely sustainable and equitable.
In this final episode in our series on the future of fisheries management, Michael speaks with two of the co-organizers of the initial meeting that led to this series. Ilia Murtazashvili is a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also serves as the Associate Director at the Center for Governance and Markets. Christine McDaniel is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which also has a central focus on markets and society.
Each guest discusses their respective careers and the academic centers where they work. Ilia introduces the concepts of polycentricity and polycentric governance and their relationship to large-scale commons dilemmas such as overfishing, while Christine helps to explain the role of the World Trade Organization in fisheries policy through its rules and fishing subsidies, which has been a central topic throughout this podcast series.
To conclude this series, we want to thank Garret Brown at the Mercatus Center, where he is the Senior Director for Publications. Garrett was on the zoom call for this interview and you’ll hear him mentioned him a few times.
In this episode, Stefan speaks with Brendan Coolsaet.
Stefan and Brendan discuss the history of environmental justice movements and scholarship, current frameworks, critical reflection on the field, transdisciplinary approaches, and the links the field has to activism. The also discuss environmental justice in the context of differen regions.
Brendan Coolsaet is a tenured Research Associate with the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research and a Research Professor at UCLouvain in Belgian. He is also the current Chair of the JUSTES research group on social and ecological justice, and an organizing committee member of the French Environmental Justice network.
Brendan refers to himself as an environmental social scientist studying environmental (in)justice in Europe. His research projects have focused on justice issues posed by the governance of agricultural biodiversity, the conservation of protected areas, the intensification of land-use changes, and the transformation of rural landscapes in Europe. He has also focused on diversifying the field of environmental justice research, both conceptually (beyond liberal approaches) and geographically.
https://brendan.coolsaet.eu/
This is the fifth episode in our future fisheries management series, which we are running in collaboration with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh.
Today’s guest, Kerrlene Wills, participated in the negotiation process for the 2022 World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on fishing subsidies as a representative of the nation of Guayana, and has written about the resulting agreement. This is primarily aimed towards curbing subsidies for what is known as illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. It also tried curb the fishing of over-depleted populations, and vessels fishing on the unregulated high seas. A point that Kerrlene makes is that not all subsidies are the same, and therefore should not be subject to the same rules and constraints. The main category that Kerrlene highlights are subsidies that developing countries give to small-scale fishers, which are important for local livelihoods and which don’t necessarily lead to overfishing through overcaptilazition.
Kerrlene is currently the director of Ocean and Climate at the UN Foundation, and she discusses her current work with Michael, in which she is involved in efforts to decarbonize the global transportation industry trough some type of pricing mechanism along the lines of a carbon tax or a cap and trade scheme.
Resources:
Kerrlene’s website at the UN Foundation: https://unfoundation.org/author/kerrlene-wills/
Kerrlene’s article on fisheries subsidies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4607279
WTO agreement on fisheries webpage: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/rulesneg_e/fish_e/fish_e.htm
Guardian piece about the WTO agreement: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/21/first-wto-deal-on-fishing-subsidies-hailed-as-historic-despite-big-holes
In this episode, Michael speaks with Alex Smalley, an expert in Environmental Psychology and researcher at the University of Exeter. Alex’s research program explores, in his words, “the cognitive and emotional impacts of virtual encounters with the natural world”. He has collaborated extensively with the BBC in the UK, including in the creation of a wonderful podcast entitled “The Healing Power of Nature”.
An important take-away from Alex’s work is that virtual experiences with nature can have a positive impact on our well-being, and that this effect is stronger for those with previous experiences with the natural environment itself. This undelies another important lesson, that virtual experiences in nature should be seen as an important complement of but not a substitute for the real world. But with many of us spending most of our time indoors, such a complement can prove to be very important, as Alex explains during the interview.
References:
Alex’s website: https://medicine.exeter.ac.uk/people/profile/index.php?web_id=Alexander_Smalley
Audible podcast: https://www.audible.com/podcast/The-Healing-Power-of-Nature/B0CLW481KM
Smalley, Alexander J., Mathew P. White, Rebecca Ripley, Timothy X. Atack, Eliza Lomas, Mike Sharples, Peter A. Coates, et al. 2022. “Forest 404: Using a BBC Drama Series to Explore the Impact of Nature’s Changing Soundscapes on Human Wellbeing and Behavior.” Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions 74 (May): 102497. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102497.
Smalley, Alexander J., Mathew P. White, Rebecca Sandiford, Nainita Desai, Chris Watson, Nick Smalley, Janet Tuppen, Laura Sakka, and Lora E. Fleming. 2023. “Soundscapes, Music, and Memories: Exploring the Factors That Influence Emotional Responses to Virtual Nature Content.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 89 (August): 102060. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102060.
In this episode, Michael talks with Marty Anderies, Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.
They discuss a book that Marty co-authored with Marco Janssen, a colleague of his at Arizona State, entitled Infrastructure for Sustainability. The book is designed to introduce readers to the work of Elinor “Lin” Ostrom and her colleagues on the role of institutions in shaping behavior. Ostrom pioneered the study of institutions, particularly in context of the self-governance of resource-dependent communities. Marty discusses Lin’s work and the role that she played in his career.
The book also introduces readers to the work of Buzz Holling and his colleagues on the resilience of complex systems. Resilience is an important boundary concept, being used by multiple fields to describe the ability of a system to “bounce back” and sustain itself in a particular regime or state. It is related to but distinct from the idea of robustness, which relates the ability to maintain a desired system function in the face of disturbance and uncertainty. In the last half of the conversation, Michael and Marty try to unpack what these terms mean and how they can and should be used to understand our relationships with each other and the natural environment.
Finally, Marty also talks about the importance of the term infrastructure, which is similar to but different from the idea of capital as many people use it. In describing his preference for infrastructure, Marty has provided this quotation from Bowles and Gintis (2005) that has influenced his thinking:
"Perhaps social capital, like Voltaire’s God, would have to have been invented had it not existed. It may even be a good idea. It is not a good term. Capital refers to a thing that can be owned—even a social isolate like Robinson Crusoe had an axe and a fishing net. By contrast, the attributes said to make up social capital describe relationships among people. ‘‘Community’’ better captures the aspects of good governance that explain social capital’s popularity, as it focuses attention on what groups do rather than what people own" (Bowles and Gintis, 2005, p. 381).
References:
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2005). Social capital, moral sentiments, and community governance. In Gintis, H., Bowles, S., Boyd, R., and Fehr, E., eds. Moral sentiments and material interests: The foundations of cooperation in economic life. Vol. 6. MIT press.
Janssen, M., and Anderies, J.M. 2023. Infrastructure for Sustainability. https://pressbooks.pub/cisi/
This is the fourth episode in our Future Fisheries Management series, which we are running in collaboration with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Andrew Johnson, the CEO of MarFishEco, a consultant-based organization that provides advice and support for the future of sustainable, profitable fisheries. Andrew founded MarFishEco based on his experience with short term environmental consultancies that, in his terms, he felt were delivered "quickly but often without the rigor of academic research".
During the interview they discuss Andrew’s experience moving into and out of academia and his lessons from founding and running a consulting organization that brings theoretical and applied expertise to conservation challenges. And like each of the other guests in this series, Michael asks Andrew about the World Trade Organization’s role in fisheries policy through it’s recent agreements to limit the role of subsidies in this sector. This conversation is a bit dated now as since the time of recording, as the WTO has had a subsequent meeting on subsidies that is not reflected in our conversation. Check out the WTO's website for up-to-date information.
References:
Andrew’s website: https://www.marfisheco.com/
Website for WTO subsidy agreements: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/rulesneg_e/fish_e/fish_e.htm
This episode is a webinar in which Michael and a panel of his colleagues discuss his new book, Common Boundaries: The Theory and Practice of Environmental Property. The panel members are Forrest Fleischman, Associate Professor in the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota, Maron Greenleaf, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, and Carey Nadell, Associate Professor of Biology at Dartmouth College. Together the panelists discuss the book and how it relates to their own fields and research programs.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Stephen Posner, the Director of Pathways to Planetary Health at the Garrison Institute. The Garrison Institute is located in Garrison, New York along the Hudson River. Its mission is to apply the skills and wisdom cultivated through contemplative practice, together with the insights emerging from science, to today’s urgent social and environmental challenges, leveraging transformational change and helping build a more compassionate, resilient future.
Stephen obtained his PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont in 2015, and has maintained an active research program that among things has focused on the role of boundary spanners, or organizations that are able to bridge gaps between groups and perspectives. Stephen’s answer to the question, what makes a good boundary spanner, emphasizes the importance of what he calls “self attention work” and developing a self-awareness of the reasons behind one’s own actions. Stephen also speaks about the importance of contemplative practice which is a major theme of the Garrison institute, and the importance of combining contemplation with action.
References:
Posner, S., Fenichel E.P., McCauley, D.J., et al. 2020. Boundary spanning among research and policy communities to address the emerging industrial revolution in the ocean. Environmental Science and Policy 104: 73-81.
Neal, J., Posner, S., Brutzman, B. 2021. Understanding brokers, intermediaries, and boundary spanners: a multi-sectoral review of strategies, skills, and outcomes. Evidence & Policy.
Stephen’s recent blog entry on combining inner and outer change: https://www.garrisoninstitute.org/blog/integrating-inner-and-outer-systems-change/
Metamorphosis event page: garrisonmetamorphosis.org
In this episode, Stefan speaks with Daniel Aldrich. Daniel is a Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Northeastern University in Boston. He received his PhD from Harvard University, and has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles and 5 books on topics related to social capital and community resilience in relation to disaster risk reduction, with a focus on public policy. He has been referred to as a ‘social capitalist’ given his wide ranging research and writing showing the value of building social capital with public policy and the essential role social capital plays in avoiding disasters caused by natural hazards.
In the episode we discuss Daniel’s personal experience having to evacuate his family during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, and the role that neighbors and informal networks played in helping his family navigate the loss of their home, and the role that government and markets did not play. We then discuss what the concept of social capital is, how to measure it effectively with inter-disciplinary methods and how public policy interventions can proactively build social capital in at-risk communities.
Daniel’s institutional profile page
https://cssh.northeastern.edu/faculty/daniel-aldrich/
In this episode, Stefan speaks with Josephine Chambers. Josie is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, situated within the Urban Futures Studio at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Her research develops and examines approaches to questioning so-called ‘inevitable’ unjust futures and fostering collective imagination and agency towards more just and sustainable societies. She weaves together artistic, participatory, imaginative, decolonial concepts to collaboratively explore possibilities for transformative changes with diverse societal groups.
In the podcast, they speak about two papers Josie and colleagues published analyzing co-production research, one titled ‘Six modes of co-production for sustainability’’ published in Nature Sustainability and the other titled ‘Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to
sustainability transformations’ published in Global Environmental Change. They also discuss the role of creativity in science, and how linking art, creativity and science has potential to extract pluralistic sustainability narratives for just futures. Josie also explains how she brings her knowledge and passion for co-production and creativity into the classroom to reshape learning and student engagement.
Six modes of co-production for sustainability
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00755-x?utm_campaign=related_content&utm_source=HEALTH&utm_medium=communities
Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to sustainability transformationshttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021002016Josie’s ‘Urban Pulses’ blog
https://www.uu.nl/en/research/urban-futures-studio/initiatives/blog-utopian-pulses
Josie’s ‘Map of Rural Utopias’
https://www.uu.nl/en/research/urban-futures-studio/initiatives/techniques-of-futuring-a-mixed-classroom-with-policymakers/rural-utopias
This is the third episode in our Future Fisheries Management series, which we are running in collaboration with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Paige Roberts, a fisheries ecologist and geographic information systems, or GIS, expert who is currently an independent consultant after working for nine years for the One Earth Future Foundation, an organization that specializes in finding sustainable solutions in fragile and conflict-affected settings. During her time with One Earth, Paige was closely involved with Project Badweyn in the country of Somalia. Through this project Paige and her colleagues created a free online tool to map out Somali coastal resources and fishing activities to help a range af actors better understand interactions between human activities and the environment. Michael and Paige discuss this project as well as efforts of of the One Earth Future Foundation to promote the sustainability of coastal fisheries through a co-management approach. The conversation concludes with a discussion of Paige’s next steps since leaving the One Earth Foundation.
References:
A summary of Project Badweyn: https://oneearthfuture.org/en/secure-fisheries/project-badweyn-mapping-somali-coastal-resources-0
Paige describing Project Badweyn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU2fCo6Y1JU
GIS resources that Paige shared after the interview:
Esri makes some of the most popular GIS software. It's a subscription service, but you can get a personal license for around $100 for a year, which gives you access to ArcGIS Pro Software, ArcGIS Online, and the self-paced online training which has a slew of training modules from beginner to advanced. The ArcGIS Pro software is fairly intuitive once you learn the basics of GIS.
For a free option, QGIS is an open-source GIS software with all the same capabilities as ArcGIS but in a slightly less intuitive interface. It's widely used so there are ample resources online including its own Training Manual. There are many other free resources online and a quick Google search can get you anything you need, from blogs to videos on beginning to advanced techniques and troubleshooting.
In this episode, Divya speaks with Mathew Mabele. Mathew is a Conservation Social Scientist, currently appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Dodoma in Tanzania. Mathew’s research uses the lenses of political ecology and decolonial thinking to shed light on the systemic structures and processes driving socio-ecological injustices. His work explicitly focuses on knowledge systems, power, and politics over framings of concepts such as biodiversity conservation, protected areas, human-wildlife coexistence, and sustainability.
Divya discusses Mathew’s work on decolonizing conservation research in Tanzania. This conversation was based on Mathew’s recent work highlighting the challenges of representation and the impacts of the global North funding on conservation research in the global South. Mathew's balanced perspective resonates throughout the discussion—not anti-global North, but rather, a call to recalibrate research practices for greater inclusivity and justice.
The conversation concludes with a discussion on Mathew’s other ongoing collaboration on the Convivial Conservation project, where he has collaborated with a large group of scholars to chart pathways for a socially just, democratic, and inclusive form of biodiversity governance.
References:
Mabele, M. B., Nnko, H., Mwanyoka, I., Kiwango, W. A., & Makupa, E. (2023). Inequalities in the production and dissemination of biodiversity conservation knowledge on Tanzania: A 50-year bibliometric analysis. Biological Conservation, 279, 109910.
Mabele, M. B., Kiwango, W. A., & Mwanyoka, I. (2023). Disrupting the epistemic empire is necessary for a decolonial ecology. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1-1.
Kiwango, W. A., & Mabele, M. B. (2022). Why the convivial conservation vision needs complementing to be a viable alternative for conservation in the Global South. Conservation & Society, 20(2), 179-189.
Mabele, M. B., Krauss, J. E., & Kiwango, W. (2022). Going Back to the roots: Ubuntu and just conservation in southern Africa. Conserv. Soc. 20, 92.
Collins, Y. A., Macguire-Rajpaul, V., Krauss, J. E., Asiyanbi, A., Jiménez, A., Bukhi Mabele, M., & Alexander-Owen, M. (2021). Plotting the coloniality of conservation. Journal of Political Ecology.
Corbera, E., Maestre-Andrés, S., Collins, Y. A., Mabele, M. B., & Brockington, D. (2021). Decolonizing biodiversity conservation. Journal of Political Ecology, 28, 889.
Massarella, K., Nygren, A., Fletcher, R., Büscher, B., Kiwango, W. A., Komi, S., ... & Percequillo, A. R. (2021). Transformation beyond conservation: how critical social science can contribute to a radical new agenda in biodiversity conservation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 49, 79-87.
Büscher, B., & Fletcher, R. (2019). Towards convivial conservation. Conservation & Society, 17(3), 283-296.
This is the second in the Future Fisheries Management series that we are producing in collaboration with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Bubba Cook, the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Programme Manager at the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF. Bubba’s career has included multiple phases. He obtained his law degree from Lewis and Clark Law School, working for the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service in Alaska where he led a team in the implementation of of a catch share, also known as an individual transferable quota, program for the North Pacific crab fishery made famous by the TV show “Deadliest Catch.”
Bubba later joined WWf’s Arctic Programme to support fisheries conservation and management efforts across the Bering Sea from the Russian Far East to Alaska’s remote indigenous communities. In 2010, he joined the U.S. Peace Corps and servedin Fiji, where he supported several grassroots marine conservation projects over two years. Since 2012, Bubba has worked as the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Programme Manager for WWF out of Suva, Fiji, and Wellington, New Zealand, where he focuses on improving tuna fisheries management at a national and regional level in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean through policy improvements, market tools, and technological innovation.
Michael and Bubba discuss the lessons that Bubba has learned at each step along the way, and Michael asks him about the recent WTO fishing subsidies agreement that were a central focus of the workshop where they met.
In our final episode of 2023, Michael speaks with the editors of the International Journal of the Commons, which In Common has worked with for the past few years, producing podcast episodes based on articles published there.
Today’s guests are Frank van Laerhoven, Associate Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Mike Schoon, Associate Professor in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, Sergio Villamayor-Tomas, Ramon y Cajal Senior Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology in Barcelona, Spain, and the journal's new editor-in-chief, Maria Claudia lopez, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.
Michael and the IJC editors talk about the journal and its role in the commons research community, and how the editors think about issues such as journal impact factor, one of many metrics that seem to be exerting more and more influence over our professional lives and affecting how we think about ourselves individually and collectively. Frank describes his view of the journal as a means for community development, applying the same principles of the commons and commoning that many in the commons community use in their research activities. This is also how we view the role of the In Common Podcast. Thank you for listening to us this year. Feel free to reach out with feedback and suggestions for what you like like to hear moving forward. See you in 2024!
In this episode, Michael speaks with Billie Turner II, Regents Professor at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Billie holds other positions as well, including Distinguished Global Futures Scientist at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, also at Arizona State, member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and Associate Editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Billie is a geographer and human-environmental scientist who studies land use and land cover change from prehistory to the present, and he has also contributed to our understanding of the determinants of social vulnerability and resilience. He works on deforestation, primarily in Mexico and Central America, and urban design in arid environments, especially the American Southwest.
Michael and Billie talk about two topics that Billie has written on, one being the reasons for the decline of a lowland Maya population around the years 800 to 1000, and the other being a long-standing debate between Thomas Malthus, who predicted that exponential population growth would inevitably outstrip linear growth in resources, and Esther Boserup, who argued that population-induced scarcity would motivate the necessary innovations to avoid systematic decline.
The interview concludes with a discussion of the book that Billie recently wrote, entitled: The Anthropocene, 101 Questions and Answers for Understanding the Human Impact on the Global Environment.
References:
Turner, B. L., and Jeremy A. Sabloff. 2012. “Classic Period Collapse of the Central Maya Lowlands: Insights about Human–environment Relationships for Sustainability.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (35): 13908–14. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1210106109.
Turner, B. L., and A. M. Ali. 1996. “Induced Intensification: Agricultural Change in Bangladesh with Implications for Malthus and Boserup.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 93 (25): 14984–91. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.93.25.14984.
Turner, B. L. 2022. The Anthropocene: 101 Questions and Answers for Understanding the Human Impact on the Global Environment. Agenda Publishing.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Victoria Bikowski, a PhD student in the Department of Politics at York University in Toronto, Canada, and a consultant for Suslop Incorporated, a consulting firm that specializes in sustainability and community development. The conversation primarily focuses on the main topic of Victoria’s PhD dissertation: the duty to consult, or the obligation held by provincial governments and the Federal Canadian Government to consult with indigenous peoples about the potential consequences of government-supported projects, such as natural resource development. Victoria’s primary question that she is addressing is about the effects that consultation processes have on the uncertainties that each of the groups involved faces. Victoria also talks about her role as a consultant for Suslop Incorporated, and how she navigates her dual role as an academic and a practitioner.
This is the first episode in a new series on the Future of Fisheries Management (FFM), conducted in collaboration with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University as well as the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Elizabeth Mendenhall, Associate Professor of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island. Elizabeth is an expert in international marine policy with a particular emphasis on the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS. During the conversation, she speaks with Michael about the origins of this policy, the elements of it that she admires, and the promise and challenges it presents for helping states deal with their shared environmental problems. At the end of the interview Michael and Elizabeth discuss the workshop on fisheries policy where they met, co-hosted by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University as well as the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh.
Elizabeth’s website: http://www.elizabeth-mendenhall.com/
References:
Mendenhall, Elizabeth. 2023. “Making the Most of What We Already Have: Activating UNCLOS to Combat Marine Plastic Pollution.” Marine Policy 155 (September): 105786.
Mendenhall, Elizabeth, and Kahlil Hassanali. 2023. “The BBNJ Agreement and Liability.” Marine Policy 150 (April): 105549.
Mendenhall, Elizabeth, Cullen Hendrix, Elizabeth Nyman, Paige M. Roberts, John Robison Hoopes, James R. Watson, Vicky W. Y. Lam, and U. Rashid Sumaila. 2020. “Climate Change Increases the Risk of Fisheries Conflict.” Marine Policy 117 (July): 103954.
Mendenhall, Elizabeth, Rachel Tiller, and Elizabeth Nyman. 2023. “The Ship Has Reached the Shore: The Final Session of the ‘Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction’ Negotiations.” Marine Policy 155 (105686): 105686.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Eric Klopfer, the chair of the department of Comparative Media Studies and Writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. At MIT Eric is also the director of the Scheller Teacher Education program as well as the Education Arcade.
Eric is a leader in the space of game design for education. He recently co-authored a book on the subject: Resonant Games, Design Principles for Learning Games that Connect Hearts, Minds and the Everyday. During the conversation, Eric discusses games as an example of experiential learning and emphasizes the importance of combining a game exercise with reflection, which is where the real learning happens through what Eric calls an action-reflection cycle.
Eric and Michael also discuss the game that originally led Michael to speak to Eric: a simulation of the tragedy of the commons in a fishery, which Eric led the development of. In addition to this episode, Michael discusses his implementations of this game in a recent blog post on the In Common website. You can find more about this game and Eric's work at this web address:
https://education.mit.edu/project-type/games/
This Insight Episode comes from full episode 111 with Dan Holland.
Dan is a senior scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center within the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more commonly known as NOAA. Dan is also an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, Chair of the Science and Statistical Committee of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, an associate editor of Marine Resource Economics, and a former President of the International Institute for Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET).
Dan talks with Michael about his work on risk pools, a form of collective-based management where fishers combine their quotas for species with the potential to constrain overall catch. They touch upon the pros and cons of this system as well as a few examples.
Dan’s website: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/contact/dan-s-holland-phd
References:
Holland, Daniel S. 2018. “Collective Rights–Based Fishery Management: A Path to Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management.” Annual Review of Resource Economics 10 (1): 469–85. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-100517-023110.
This insight episode comes from full episode ninety-four with Dan Brockington.
Dan is a professor and director of the Sheffield Institute for International Development at the University of Sheffield. Michael and Stefan talk with Dan about his book, Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania, specifically looking at the myths that help to sustain nature reserves and the positive and negative implications of fortress conservation.
References:
Brockington, D. 2002. Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania. Indiana University Press.
Brockington, D., Duffy, R., and Igoe, J. 2008. Nature Unbound: Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas. Routledge.
Brockington, D. 2009. Celebrity and the Environment: Fame, Wealth and Power in Conservation. Bloomsbury Publishing.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Peter Stein, a managing director at The Lyme Timber Company in Hanover, New Hampshire.
In addition to his current work, Peter has a long history of work in the land conservation movement. He was one of the founding staff of the Trust for Public Land, eventually becoming a senior vice president there. Michael and Peter discuss the history of the land trust movement and the challenging but still evolving relationship it has had with equity and community rights. Later on they talk about Peter’s role at Lyme Timber, which is what is known as a Timber Investment Management Organization, or TIMO. Peter described how his move there was at a fortunate time, given several important transitions that were occurring. First, there was a large divestment of paper products companies of their forest assets, creating organizations like Lyme Timber. And second, such organizations were increasingly using what are known as conservation easements, which constrain the development rights on a piece of land in exchange for some kind of subsidy.
Finally, Michael and Peter discuss the role that carbon markets and specifically carbon offsets are playing in the forest sector. Carbon offsets are a kind of payment for ecosystem service that are often integrated into the regulatory regime of a carbon market, but the voluntary offset space is now growing rapidly as well.
In this episode, Stefan speaks with Joshua Cinner.
Josh is a distinguished professor in the social sciences at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is one of world's leading researchers on human-environment interactions in fisheries, marine conservation and coral reef systems. His research brings together a wide range of social science disciplines including human geography, common property, anthropology, and conservation policy. He often works closely with ecologists on interdisciplinary research topics. Increasingly, his research is moving beyond the case study approach toward a ‘big picture’ comparative exploration of human-environment interactions. This includes work with coastal peoples in the Pacific Islands, South East Asia, East Africa, and the Caribbean, to better understand how socioeconomic factors influence the ways in which people use, perceive, and govern coral reefs.
In our conversation, Josh explains his origin story connecting to marine systems, his research on coral bright spots and ambitions to continue large scale comparative analyses of human-nature interactions in fisheries. He also explains his approach to collaborative project design and implementation, and how he navigates the social networks of science and science management.
Josh’s JCU page
https://research.jcu.edu.au/portfolio/joshua.cinner/
Josh’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pgldl5oAAAAJ&hl=en
Publication link: Bright spots on the world’s coral reefs
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18607
Publications link:
Sixteen years of social and ecological dynamics reveal challenges and opportunities for adaptive management in sustaining the commons | PNAS
This insight episode comes from full episode 102 with Erin O'Donnell.
Erin is an Early Career Academic Fellow at Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, where she is a water law and policy specialist focusing on water markets and governance.
Erin and Michael discuss the evolution of how the environment is seen and understood within the legal framework, as well as the differences between Western and Indigenous understandings of the environment, and what that means for the rights of nature movement as a whole.
Erin's Website: https://law.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/erin-odonnell
References: O’Donnell, Erin. 2018. Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration and Water Governance. Taylor and Francis.
This insight episode comes from full episode ninety-two with Kaitlin Cordes.
Kaitlin is an international lawyer and researcher who focuses on human rights and sustainable development. Most recently, Kaitlin spent eight years developing and leading the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment’s work on land, agriculture, food systems, and human rights.
Kaitlin talks with Michael about her work at CCSI on coffee production and commodity chains, where she worked to ensure sustainability and resilience in the production chain, as well as living wages for farmers.
Kaitlin’s website: https://www.kaitlincordes.com/
In this episode, Stefan speaks with Lindsay Campbell. Lindsay is a Research Social Scientist with the US Forest Service within the US Department of Agriculture. She is located in New York as part of the Northern Research Station, and is a founding member of the New York City Urban Field Station. With over 20 years in the Forest Service, her work has focused on the dynamics of civic stewardship, environmental governance, and sustainability policymaking--with a particular emphasis on issues of social and environmental justice. She aims to reveal how urban social-ecological systems are structured and function in order to support human well-being and environmental quality using social science methods. She does this by pursuing co-production and transdisciplinary approaches to engage the "many ways of knowing" and to develop more inclusive approaches to knowledge development.
Lindsay’s USFS profile
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/about/people/lindsaycampbell#research-tab
Lindsay’s Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=PD2AHNsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
In this episode, Michael speaks with Lance Robinson, a Research Scientist studying Human Dimensions of Sustainable Resource Development at the Center for Northern Forest Ecosystem Research in Ontario, Canada. Lance has studied rangelands as social-ecological systems for many years, and has contributed to an alternative way of viewing them that departs from some of the traditional assumptions about commons and governance. In this conversation, Michael and Lance make specific reference to the design principles for community-based resource management developed by Elinor Ostrom in her famous book, Governing the Commons. Much of the conversation has to do with Ostrom’s first principle, which stipulated that communities are aided by boundaries that delineate who is and who isn’t a community member, and where the community’s resources are. Lance’s work unpacks the importance of boundaries in part through what he calls a complex landscape mosaic, which reflects the fact that in real systems, particularly in rangelands, there are many overlapping and shifting boundaries that are designed to help resource users adapt to resource scarcity, not to prevent the overuse of the commons, which is how they are usually interpreted.
This conversation builds on a previous interview with Mark Moritz on pastoralists and open property, and you should check that interview out as well if this one interests you.
References:
https://landscapewanderer.link/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lance-Robinson
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.
Schlager, Edella, and Elinor Ostrom. 1992. “Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis.” Land Economics 68 (3): 249–62.
Robinson, Lance W., and Fikret Berkes. 2010. “Applying Resilience Thinking to Questions of Policy for Pastoralist Systems: Lessons from the Gabra of Northern Kenya.” Human Ecology 38 (3): 335–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-010-9327-1.
Robinson, Lance W. 2019. “Open Property and Complex Mosaics: Variants in Tenure Regimes across Pastoralist Social-Ecological Systems” 13 (1): 804.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Margot Clarvis, the head of Nature-based solutions at C-Quest Capital. They talk about Margot's current work on promoting nature-based solutions, which is a family of approaches designed to combat climate change. Margot helps Michael unpack what is and isn't a nature-based solution, which is important to do given the diversity of projects that might be placed within this umbrella of approaches.
A central question that Margot and Michael focus on during their conversation is how the primary goals of such projects, say carbon storage, relate to broader social and ecological outcomes, with one concern being that a singular focus on a small number of outcomes could crowd out important co-benefits. In contrast to this, Margot describes the goal and the hope that such projects could leverage funding for carbon storage to provide a suite of more holistic benefits for ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.
In this episode, Michael speaks with with Shauna Mahajan, lead social scientist with the global science team of the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF.
During their conversation, Shauna shares her thoughts about her educational experiences and her time at WWF, during which she has focused on helping conservation projects become more inclusive and holistic. Shauna has done this in part by developing decision support tools, including a tool called Elinor, so named in honor of Elinor Ostrom. This tool helps researchers and practitioners, in the language of the Elinor website, “track attributes critical to the success of area-based conservation over time, and share this information with decision makers and conservation supporters”. Shauna also discusses her experiences on the ground to support inclusive and holistic conservation, and a new program at WWF that is encouraging the career development of underrepresented groups at the organization.
Shauna’s website: https://www.worldwildlife.org/experts/shauna-mahajan
References
Deveson, A. (2005). Resilience (First Edition). Roundhouse Publishing Group.
Mahajan, S. L., Estradivari, E., Ojwang, L., & Ahmadia, G. N. (2022). The good, the bad, and the ugly: reflections on co-designing science for impact between the Global South and Global North. ICES Journal of Marine Science: Journal Du Conseil. https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsac115
Mahajan, S. L., Glew, L., Rieder, E., Ahmadia, G., Darling, E., Fox, H. E., Mascia, M. B., & McKinnon, M. (2019). Systems thinking for planning and evaluating conservation interventions. Conservation Science and Practice, 1(7), e44. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.44
https://elinordata.org/
https://www.worldwildlife.org/projects/the-art-and-craft-of-systems-change
In this episode, Michael speaks with Gustavo Gordillo de Anda. Gustavo has worked for the Mexican government as its vice minister of agriculture, and in this capacity he played a prominent role on the Mexican agrarian reforms of the early 1990s. He has also served as the assistant director general for the Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, in Rome.
Gustavo and Michael talk about the institution of the Mexican ejido, which is a well-known example of community-based resource management that relies in part on common property ownership of fields and forests across the country. Gustavo describes the history of this institution and its relationship to the Mexican state as well as his views on the 1990s Mexican agrarian reforms. Gustavo also discussed several secular changes that have occurred within the ejido sector, including the increased empowerment of women in ejido communities as well as the increasing prominence of non-members in or near ejido lands.
They conclude by talking about Gustavo’s current and future steps, which include finalizing a book on the 1990s agrarian reforms and a refocusing on literature, which has always been another passion of his.
References:
Bray, D. B. (2020). Mexico’s Community Forest Enterprises: Success on the Commons and the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene. University of Arizona Press.
Gordillo de Anda, G., Janvry, A. de, & Sadoulet, E. (1998). Between political control and efficiency gains: the evolution of agrarian property rights in Mexico. CEPAL Review 66.
In this episode, Stefan speaks with Lauren Thomas Quigley. Lauren is a research scientist at IBM Research and an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. She researches and develops practical data-centric solutions at the intersection of technology, data, and social justice with emphasis on collaboration with nonprofit organizations and community. Lauren has led education at scale efforts in government, higher education, nonprofits, and the tech industry, many of which have focused on learning outside of the traditional classroom. A core goal of her work is to improve interdisciplinary and intersectional pathways into STEM and ensuring that people have access to technology that works for them.
https://laurenthomasquigley.com/
www.incommonpodcast.org
This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-eight with Achim Schluter.
Achim is a Professor Social Systems and Ecological Economics at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, as well as the Social Science Department leader and head of the Institutional and Behavioral Economics working group at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research.
Achim talks with Stefan about the privatization of the ocean, specifically thinking about both the problems it creates and the potential to use it as a method of ensuring the rights of local actors and long-term sustainability.
Achim's Institutional Webpage: https://www.leibniz-zmt.de/en/marine-tropics-research/who-we-are/achim-schlueter-en.html
Achim's Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=L5ONyegAAAAJ&hl=de
In this episode, Michael speaks with Eddy Niesten, an independent consultant who spent more than a decade working for Conservation International as a conservation economist.
During his time at Conservation International, Eddy played a role in developing and implementing what is known as the Conservation Stewards Program, an example of the payment for ecosystem services (PES) approach. In a recent episode of the podcast, Michael spoke with Sarah Milne about a book that she wrote in which she is critical of the conservation stewards program as it was implemented in Cambodia. In this discussion, Eddy helps Michael understand the various components of the program and its logic.
Eddy and Michael conclude their conversation by discussing the steps that Eddy has taken since leaving Conservation International and some of the changes within the organization that he experienced during his career there.
Resources:
The Conservation Stewards Program
This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-four with Mark Moritz.
Mark is a professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University who has studied pastoralist communities around the world.
Mark talks with Michael about his interpretation of open property regimes as an adaptation to resource scarcity and vulnerability in pastoralist systems, specifically discussing the Pashtun system in Afghanistan and his research in Cameroon to illustrate his interpretation, and the different understanding of rights in these communities.
Mark’s website: https://anthropology.osu.edu/people/moritz.42
Moritz, M. (2016). Open property regimes. International Journal of the Commons, 10(2), 688.
Moritz, M., et al. 2018. Emergent Sustainability in Open Property Regimes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (51): 12859–67.
This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-four with Mark Moritz.
Mark is a professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University who has studied pastoralist communities around the world.
Mark talks with Michael about his interpretation of open property regimes as an adaptation to resource scarcity and vulnerability in pastoralist systems, specifically discussing the Pashtun system in Afghanistan and his research in Cameroon to illustrate his interpretation, and the different understanding of rights in these communities.
Mark’s website: https://anthropology.osu.edu/people/moritz.42
Moritz, M. (2016). Open property regimes. International Journal of the Commons, 10(2), 688.
Moritz, M., et al. 2018. Emergent Sustainability in Open Property Regimes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (51): 12859–67.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Tony Sutton, Assistant professor of Native American Food Systems at the University of Maine. Michael and Tony talk about the role of academics and researchers working with local communities and Tony’s research with the Wabanaki people who he works with as an equal partner. Tony also discusses how he views the distinction between scientific and indigenous knowledge as artificial and unhelpful. Finally, they discuss a project that Tony is involved in called the Maine Shellfish Learning Network (https://themudflat.org/). This network seeks to build relationships and communication around issues facing clam and mussel harvesters in Maine. One particularly pressing issue that Tony discusses with Michael is the loss of access such harvesters are facing as a result of displacement by incoming homeowners who purchase houses on the coast of Maine, as well as through Maine state policy that privileges sedentarism, requiring residence in a town as a criterion for fishery access, which marginalizes the Wabanaki and other people whose lifeways involve moving through a landscape to adapt to changes in resource availability.
In this episode, Divya talks to Dr. Johan Oldekop. Johan is a senior lecturer at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. He conducts interdisciplinary research and uses large-scale publicly available datasets to understand tradeoffs and synergies between conservation and development outcomes.
In this conversation, they primarily focused on Johan’s work on the impact evaluation of the zero hunger program in Brazil and his parallel research exploring the links between forests and livelihoods in the global south.
For both these projects, Johan conducted large-scale research and worked with big datasets. As we discussed these projects, it was interesting to learn what working on a large scale with big datasets looks like, including its advantages and also some of the key limitations.
Johan shared that in his research on the impact evaluation of the zero hunger program, a program that was implemented to meet the sustainable development goal of reducing hunger in Brazil, he found that in addition to addressing hunger, the program also improves households’ access to nutrition and address the supply chain issues of agriculture production. Johan emphasized that it is important to evaluate and understand the multidimensional impacts of social protection programs so they can be implemented to their fullest potential and yield maximum benefits.
For his research on exploring forest-livelihood linkages in the global south, Johan’s research showed that forest management and restoration programs that prioritized community rights are more likely to reduce deforestation and poverty and eventually align with global goals for climate mitigation, environmental justice, and sustainable development. Divya and Johan wrapped up the conversation with a discussion on Johan’s upcoming research project, which aims to examine the drivers of reforestation and sustainable forest transitions in India, Nepal, Brazil, and Mexico.
References:
Oldekop, J. A., Holmes, G., Harris, W. E., & Evans, K. L. (2016). A global assessment of the social and conservation outcomes of protected areas. Conservation Biology, 30(1), 133-141.
Oldekop, J. A., Sims, K. R., Karna, B. K., Whittingham, M. J., & Agrawal, A. (2019). Reductions in deforestation and poverty from decentralized forest management in Nepal. Nature Sustainability, 2(5), 421-428.
Hajjar, R., Oldekop, J. A., Cronkleton, P., Newton, P., Russell, A. J., & Zhou, W. (2021). A global analysis of the social and environmental outcomes of community forests. Nature Sustainability, 4(3), 216-224.
Oldekop, J. A., Rasmussen, L. V., Agrawal, A., Bebbington, A. J., Meyfroidt, P., Bengston, D. N., … & Wilson, S. J. (2020). Forest-linked livelihoods in a globalized world. Nature Plants, 6(12), 1400-1407.
Erbaugh, J. T., & Oldekop, J. A. (2018). Forest landscape restoration for livelihoods and well-being. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 32, 76-83.
Oldekop, J. A., Chappell, M. J., Peixoto, F. E. B., Paglia, A. P., do Prado Rodrigues, M. S., & Evans, K. L. (2015). Linking Brazil’s food security policies to agricultural change. Food Security, 7, 779-793.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Sarah Milne, a senior lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University about her recent book, “Corporate Nature: An Insider’s Ethnography of Global Conservation”.
In the book, Sarah recounts her experience with a conservation policy implemented in the Cardamom mountains of Cambodia by a major international environmental NGO, Conservation International. This policy is called a Conservation Agreement, and it is a type of payment for ecosystem services, or PES, policy. These involve an external actor paying a local resource user as an individual or a group to incentivize them to provide important public goods, in this case forest conservation. Sarah describes how the new conservation agreement model developed within Conservation International and how it grew into a corporate product to be applied in a range of contexts. Sarah worked on the ground in Cambodia as this policy was implemented, and describes the challenges it met when the simplifying theory and requirements of the model confronted political and ecological complexity in the field. An important point that Sarah makes is that we need to worry less about the promotion of a particular model and more about developing an “ethics of practice”.
Website: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/people/academic/sarah-milne
References:
Milne, S. 2022. Corporate Nature: An Insider’s Ethnography of Global Conservation. University of Arizona Press.
This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-two with Daniel Decaro.
Daniel is an associate professor at the University of Louisville with a joint appointment in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Daniel speaks with Michael about the basics of self-determination theory, and what he would add to the theory to expand the definition of self-determination.
Daniel's website: https://louisville.edu/psychology/d-decaro
This week Dustin speaks with Dr. Soumya Balasumbramanya, senior economist at the World Bank based with its global environmental practice. Soumya is trained as a development economist and works on applied research projects at the intersection of environment, poverty and development across Asia and Africa. Before joining the Bank in 2022, Dr. Balasubramanya spent 10 years at the International Water Management Institute, a part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, rising to group leader in economics. Her work has demonstrated extraordinary range and rigour, in her own words focused on “advancing knowledge on understanding the fractal vulnerabilities faced by the poor”. We discuss this sweep of work in three major parts. We start with the spark for becoming a development economist and what it means to think like an economist in terms of evidence and connections to other fields. We continue by exploring why we know so little about key topics in water, agriculture and development. We discuss why it is important to learn from failure, taking a deep dive into India’s groundwater management and the uneven success of policy experiments with energy pricing reforms and solar irrigation. We conclude by discussing the insights for early career researchers seeking to work in development research and what it is like to work at large development organizations in this path.
Soumya's website: https://soumyabalasubramanya.com/
Further reading:
Balasubramanya, S., Buisson, M-C. 2022. Positive incentives for managing groundwater in the presence of informal water markets: perspectives from India. Environmental Research Letters, 17, 101001.
Balasubramanya, S., Brozovic, N., Fishman, R., Lele, S., Wang, Z. 2022. Managing irrigation under increasing water scarcity. Agricultural Economics, 53, 976-984.
Buisson, M-C., Balasubramanya, S., Stifel, D. 2021. Electric pumps, groundwater, agriculture and water buyers: evidence from West Bengal. Journal of Development Studies, 57, 1893-1911.
Balasubramanya, S., Stifel, D. 2020. Water, agriculture and poverty in an era of climate change: why do we know so little? Food Policy, 93.
In this episode, Hita speaks with Dr. Sarah Bezan who is a scholar of environmental humanities currently employed as a Lecturer in Literature and the Environment at the Radical Humanities Laboratory at University College Cork in Ireland. Previously she was a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity in The University of York in the United Kingdom. In this conversation, they chat about how participating in a paleo dig and uncovering a Mosasaur skeleton sparked in her a curiosity that led to her current engagement with making sense of extinction. They speak about artistic representations of extinct animals such as Harri Kallio’s representations of the dodo bird on an island in Mauritius or Mark Dion’s Ichthyosaur installation, and how they manipulate imaginaries surrounding the temporal and spatial boundaries of the extinct species. In describing these imaginaries, they discuss the idea of animal atopias, a term she coined to refer to those placeless places surrounding extinction, where the animal exists not on a spatially defined space but a constructed one, evoking a nostalgia for what once was. They discuss about Sarah’s experiences on the Galapagos Islands where she studied the taxidermic specimen of Lonesome George, the last representative of the Pinta island tortoises and her observation that the extinct body is essentially an exploded one raising questions about what it means to be the last representative of a species and the responsibility that death places upon such individuals. They reflect upon how practices of taxidermy and museum curatorship are essentially performative, designed to evoke a specific emotion or knowledge, rendering them hyper visible, while subsuming others. They discuss de-extinction projects such as the Jurassic World like attempts at reviving the woolly mammoth or even theoretical ideas of re-creating Neanderthals as proposed by George Church are all ways in which we attempt to revive prehistoric fantasies of the human – a fantasy nevertheless that is separate from the idea of the modern human. The conversation concludes with some reflections on interdisciplinary research and the responsibility that early career scholars are placed with when attempting to straddle multiple schools of thought.
Sarah’s personal website: https://www.sarahbezan.com/
Some of the references we cite during the conversation are listed below:
- “Dodo Birds and the Anthropogenic Wonderlands of Harri Kallio.” Parallax, 25, no. 4, 2019: 427-445. (To be reprinted as a foreword to Harri Kallio, The Dodo and Mauritius Island: Imaginary Encounters*, 2nd Edition. Stockport, UK: Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2023).
- “The Endling Taxidermy of Lonesome George: Iconographies of Extinction at the End of the Line.” Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology, vol. 27, no. 2, 2019, pp. 211-238. Co-Edited by Sarah Bezan and Susan McHugh.
- “A Darwinism of the Muck and Mire: Decomposing Eco- and Zoopoetics in Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott’s decomp.” In Texts, Animals, Environments: Zoopoetics and Ecopoetics. Ed. Roland Borgards, Catrin Gersdof, Frederike Middelhoff, and Sebastian Schönbeck. Freiburg: Rombach Verlag “Cultural Animal Studies Series,” 2019, 241-253.
- Animal Remains. Co-edited by Sarah Bezan and Robert McKay. Routledge Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture Series. London: Routledge, 2022.
- “Taxidermic Forms and Fictions.” A special issue of Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology, 27, no. 2, 2019, pp. 131-138. Co-Edited by Sarah Bezan and Susan McHugh, Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Heise, Ursula K. Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
- Jørgensen, Dolly. “Endling, the Power of the Last in an Extinction-Prone World.” Environmental Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2017): 119–38.
In this episode, Hita and Michael speak with noted Indian environmentalist Ashish Kothari, who works at the interface between development and environment and focuses particularly on radical alternatives to development discourses. Ashish is a familiar name to people working in the Indian environmental context as well as those who engage with degrowth, not least because of his strong involvement in grassroots environmental movements such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan in the country. He is one of founders of Kalpavriksh, a Non-Profit Organisation in India which deals with environmental and development issues. In addition, he wears many other hats – as an academic and teacher, as a member of international steering committees such as those of the World Commission on Protected Areas or the Convention on Biodiversity Alliance. He has also worked as a member of several Government of India committees including those responsible for assessing India’s Forest Rights Act and drafting the country’s National Wildlife Action Plan and Biodiversity Act. He is also the coordinator of Vikalp Sangam, a platform that brings together organisations and individuals who work on development alternatives across India. He is also one of the editors of the book Pluriverse: a post development dictionary.
In our conversation Ashish reflects upon the influence of his early childhood experiences with environmental activism – particularly protests against the shooting of the Great Indian Bustard by Saudi Arabian Princes and against tree felling in the Delhi Ridge Forest upon his engagement with environmental conservation. He asks the pertinent question: can wildlife conservation happen at the cost of human rights? We speak about the eternal debate of development vs the environment, and his conviction that the idea of development per se itself is deeply flawed. Instead, he says, what we need are different notions of well-being emerging from different parts of the world serving to replace the idea of development. We spoke about the dangers of viewing community led action as yet another panacea but also recognising the inherent strength present within them. We discuss moving beyond dichotomies of community vs government instead looking towards alternatives where we can enable communities to regain their balance in different ways. We reflect upon the importance of building and being part of networks that both keep you going but also stand ready to continue in your place, and how that very act of working together poses further challenges if one were to consider identity building, branding or even issues of satisfying personal egos. We end with some reflection on Ashish’s conceptualization of the term Eco Swarajya and the challenges associated with misappropriation of culturally or spiritually loaded terms.
Some of the initiatives that Ashish mentions during this interview are:
Vikalp Sangam: https://vikalpsangam.org/
Kalpavriksh: https://kalpavriksh.org/
Radical Ecological Democracy: https://radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/
Global Tapestry of Alternatives: https://www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/
Pluriverse: a post development dictionary: https://www.ehu.eus/documents/6902252/12061123/Ashish+Kothari+et+al-Pluriverse+A+Post-Development+Dictionary-2019.pdf/c9f05ea0-d2e7-8874-d91c-09d11a4578a2
Ashish’s website and blog: https://ashishkothari.in/ ; https://ashishkothari51.blogspot.com/
This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-one with Nejem Raheem.
Nejem is an associate professor of economics at Emerson College, where he focuses on the economics of natural resource and environmental issues.
Nejem speaks with Michael about the similarities between his childhood experiences in Bangladesh and Nepal and the New Mexico acequias. The two discuss their work on the acequias and the complexity of the systems based upon western codifications of water rights and the subsequent valuation given to water in the US, and how this lacks a complete valuation of the social importance of water in the acequias.
Nejem's website: https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/nejem-raheem
References:
Raheem, N., S. Archambault, E. Arellano, M. Gonzales, D. Kopp, J. Rivera, S. Guldan, et al. 2015. “A Framework for Assessing Ecosystem Services in Acequia Irrigation Communities of the Upper Río Grande Watershed.” WIREs. Water 2 (5): 559–75. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1091.
This insight episode comes from full episode eighty with Arun Agrawal.
Arun is the Samuel Trask Dana Professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, and he has played an important role in the development of the Commons field and related areas of conservation and development.
Arun talks with Michael and Stefan about top-down versus bottom-up governance, and how people’s identity informs how they view the world. Arun also discusses how comanagement is not just a category, but a descriptor of the world around us, and the importance of understanding nuance rather than looking for binaries.
Arun’s website: http://www.arunagrawal.org/
In this episode, Michael speaks with Dan Holland. Dan is a senior scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center within the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, or NOAA. Dan joined the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in 2010. Prior to that he held positions with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. He is an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, Chair of the Science and Statistical Committee of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, an associate editor of Marine Resource Economics, and is a former President of the International Institute for Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET).
Michael and Dan talked about several aspects of Dan’s research, which is focused primarily on design and evaluation of fishery management tools and strategies. In particular, they discussed Dan’s research related to catch share policy, which involves placing a cap on the total allowable catch (TAC) for a species and a distributing a tradeable quota that is allocated to a group of fishers in proportion to this cap. These policies have been both quite popular and controversial, and Dan’s research can help us think about the mechanics of some of the most critical issues involved, including how to balance the costs and benefits of individual vs. collective fishing rights, options for limiting bycatch and dealing with choke species via quota pooling, and how to these relate to the idea of ecosystem management.
Dan’s website: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/contact/dan-s-holland-phd
References:
Holland, Daniel S. 2010. “Markets, Pooling and Insurance for Managing Bycatch in Fisheries.” Ecological Economics: The Journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics 70 (1): 121–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.08.015.Holland, Daniel S. 2013. “Making Cents Out of Barter Data from the British Columbia Groundfish ITQ Market.” Marine Resource Economics 28 (4): 311–30. https://doi.org/10.5950/0738-1360-28.4.311.Holland, Daniel S. 2018. “Collective Rights–Based Fishery Management: A Path to Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management.” Annual Review of Resource Economics 10 (1): 469–85. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-100517-023110.Holland, Daniel S., Joshua K. Abbott, and Karma E. Norman. 2020. “Fishing to Live or Living to Fish: Job Satisfaction and Identity of West Coast Fishermen.” Ambio 49 (2): 628–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01206-w.Holland, Daniel S., Cameron Speir, Juan Agar, Scott Crosson, Geret DePiper, Stephen Kasperski, Andrew W. Kitts, and Larry Perruso. 2017. “Impact of Catch Shares on Diversification of Fishers’ Income and Risk.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (35): 9302–7. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702382114.
IJC#10: Picking a bone with Elinor Ostrom? A conversation with Landon Yoder & Courtney Hammond Wagner
Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Landon Yoder and Courtney Hammond Wagner.
Together with Kira Sullivan-Wiley and Gemma Smith, Landon and Courtney co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections on Common-Pool-Resource Theory, an article that reflects on how to apply Ostrom’s design principles to larger-scale and more complex cases than the commons cases that we typically read about.
Their proposition is that there is an over-emphasis on using Ostrom’s design principles diagnostically. They argue that as the environmental challenges that we face today differ from the ones that the design principles were arguably developed for, we need more attention for building theoretical understanding of how collective action can contribute to solving larger-scale challenges where many problems intersect.
Landon is affiliated with the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University, Bloomington. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Geography from that same university. His work combines both social and natural science data and spatial analysis to examine how biophysical conditions, social dynamics, and institutional arrangements jointly influence environmental change.
Courtney received a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont, and worked as a postdoctoral scholar in sustainable groundwater at Stanford. She now works for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Courtney’s research broadly aims to understand how we design incentives, rules and policies to collectively change behavior in water resource dilemmas to improve community well-being and ecological outcomes.
In case you want to learn more about topics akin to the topic discussed in this episode, may we suggest you check out some of the other titles in the International Journal of the Commons that also look at, for example:
- Orazgaliyev, S., & Araral, E. (2019). Conflict and cooperation in global commons: Theory and evidence from the Caspian Sea. International Journal of the Commons, 13(2).
- Paavola, J. (2008). Governing atmospheric sinks: the architecture of entitlements in the global commons. International Journal of the Commons, 2(2).
- Stern, P. (2011). Design principles for global commons: Natural resources and emerging technologies. International Journal of the Commons, 5(2).
And of course, you should check out the special issue introducing the Social-ecological systems meta-analysis database (SESMAD) project, put together by Michael Cox. This project is guided by the following research question: can the variables found to be important in explaining outcomes on small-scale systems be scaled up to explain outcomes in large-scale environmental governance?
In this episode, Michael speaks with Danny Cullenward. Danny is a lawyer and climate economist working on the design and implementation of scientifically grounded climate policy. He is the Policy Director at CarbonPlan and a Research Fellow at American University’s Institute for Carbon Removal Law & Policy. He holds a PhD and a JD from Stanford University.
Danny talks with Michael about his book, Making Climate Policy Work , which he co-authored with David Victor. In this book, Danny and David critique the dominance of carbon markets in the climate change policy space. They argue that such markets are layered onto existing regulations that are doing most of the work to mitigate carbon emissions. A central challenge that markets face is that their implementation is highly political and often coopted by those who are regulated.
Danny and David also discuss carbon offset policies, which is essentially a payment for ecosystem services scheme that is often added to carbon market policies to provide regulated actors with an option to pay for carbon sequestration elsewhere to enable them to keep polluting where they are, with the presumption that the carbon budget can balance out. Danny and David are also critical of these, in particular due to their lack of additionality, or the lack of credible proof that the carbon sequestration being paid for is occurring because of the offset program and wouldn’t have happened without it. Danny and Michael conclude the conversation by talking about the future of voluntary carbon markets and the promise of carbon removal technologies.
Carbon Plan website: https://carbonplan.org/
References:
Cullenward, Danny, and David G. Victor. 2020. Making Climate Policy Work. Polity Press.
Badgley, Grayson, Jeremy Freeman, Joseph J. Hamman, Barbara Haya, Anna T. Trugman, William R. L. Anderegg, and Danny Cullenward. 2022. “Systematic over-Crediting in California’s Forest Carbon Offsets Program.” Global Change Biology 28 (4): 1433–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15943 (open access)
Propublica reporting on Badgley et al. (2022) article:
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-climate-solution-actually-adding-millions-of-tons-of-co2-into-the-atmosphere
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-nonprofit-promised-to-preserve-wildlife-then-it-made-millions-claiming-it-could-cut-down-trees
In this episode, Divya Gupta speaks with Dr. Daniel Miller. Dan is an Associate Professor in the School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and has been extensively working on the socio-economic, ecological, and political dimensions of forests in tropical countries.
In this conversation, they focus on Dan’s projects on conservation legacy and his other project looking at the role of forests as pathways out of poverty. Later in the episode, they also discuss Dan’s new role as the coordinator of FLARE, which stands for Forest and Livelihoods Assessment, Research, and Engagement.
For his project on conservation legacies, the projects that Dan started as a graduate student in the west Africa region at W National Park, a park that spreads across the countries of Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso, Dan focussed on how protected area governance interfaces with international aid. Interaction on this topic was a great way to explore the critical question of what conservation funding really does for people and protected areas in tropical countries. Dan shares that international aid has disproportionate impacts on people; while it provides new sources of income to some with the creation of jobs in the areas like park management, monitoring, and tourism, these opportunities only extend to some in the community. In fact, with the implementation of conversation projects, and many lose access to the forest, thereby creating more challenges for them. Dan suggests that this happens because the aid has a tendency of what he refers to as— ‘missing the middle’. When implemented, he says that the aid programs often tend to partner with the national government, national park agencies, and forest departments, but rarely or never with the local governments. He says this is a problem because these local governments have a bigger impact on people’s lives. As Dan continues to extend his work on conservation legacies in other countries like Bhutan, Peru, and Madagascar, he is finding that while external intervention in the form of aid in conservation in low-income countries is important, it works best when it is inculcated in the local governance structures and can bring clear benefits to people.
In the discussion on Dan’s parallel project on forest-poverty relationships, where he is working with a large team of scholars looking at the impacts that forests can have on poverty alleviation in low-income countries. Dan shares that the greater vision that he has for this project is to highlight how forests can serve as pathways to prosperity. He suggests that changing the framing of forests for prosperity is important because in the larger policy discourse benefits of the forests is mostly linked to carbon sequestration when the reality is that forests provide critical socio-economic benefits to especially people in low-income countries. Dan emphasizes that it is important to mainstream these benefits.
In the end, they discuss Dan’s new role as a coordinator of FLARE. He talks about how the FLARE community has been catalytic for him in establishing networks and collaboration for meaningful research. He shares that as a coordinator, he aims to retain the great sense of community that FLARE already has and grow the community by opening to new partners like practitioners, donors, activists, and local community members.
References:
Miller, D.C., Mansourian, S., Gabay, M., Hajjar, R., Jagger, P., Kamoto, J.F., Newton, P., Oldekop, J.A., Razafindratsima, O.H., Shyamsundar, P. and Sunderland, T., 2021. Forests, trees and poverty alleviation: Policy implications of current knowledge. Forest Policy and Economics 131: 102566.
Miller, D.C. Rana, P., Nakamura, K., Irwin, S., Cheng, S.H., Ahlroth, S. and Perge, E. 2021. A global review of the impact of forest property rights interventions on poverty. Global Environmental Change 66: 102218.
Miller, D.C., R. Hajjar. 2020. “Forests as Pathways to Prosperity: Empirical Insights and Conceptual Advances.” World Development 125: 104647.
Miller, D.C. 2014. “Explaining Global Patterns of Aid for Linked Biodiversity Conservation and Development.” World Development 59: 341-359.
Miller, D.C., A. Agrawal, and J.T. Roberts. 2013. “Biodiversity, Governance, and the Allocation of International Aid for Conservation.” Conservation Letters 6(1): 12-22.
Agrawal, A., Chhatre, A., & Gerber, E. R. (2015). Motivational crowding in sustainable development interventions. American Political Science Review, 109(3), 470-487.
Oldekop, J. A., Holmes, G., Harris, W. E., & Evans, K. L. (2016). A global assessment of the social and conservation outcomes of protected areas. Conservation Biology, 30(1), 133-141.
Persha, L., Agrawal, A., & Chhatre, A. (2011). Social and ecological synergy: local rulemaking, forest livelihoods, and biodiversity conservation. science, 331(6024), 1606-1608.
This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-nine with Courtney Carothers.
Courtney is a professor in the college of Fisheries and Oceans at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Courtney talks with Michael about the importance of indigenous expertise and knowledge systems in maintaining fisheries, and how multiple ways of knowing and understanding the land allows for a deeper relationship with the environment that must be valued when thinking about sustainable fisheries management.
Talk by Jessica Black, Courtney Carothers, and Janessa Esquible on Indigenizing Fisheries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=448tr90KUWQ
In this episode, Michael speaks with Dr. Esther Zeledon. Esther is a senior development advisor, former diplomat, President and founder of Optimax International and @be.act.change. Under these capacities, Esther serves as a senior consultant to international agencies, serves on NGO boards and coaches individuals and businesses.
During the interview, Esther talks about her experiences working in the international development space, particularly for USAID, where she worked for ten years. Esther describes the importance of genuine listening in this work, and of having a sense of one’s mission, purpose and vision. She argues that too often, practitioners view development projects as checkboxes due to time and resource constraints, experience burnout due to a lack of intrinsic engagement that fulfills their values, and overly exert their own expertise to establish an authoritative identity in their work. These dynamics can lead to projects that don’t meet or fit with local needs and goals, as has been often documented in the literature on international development. Esther also talks about how to make a transition to more locally-driven development in the context of an overall top-down framework that requires that development professionals be accountable to funders. This represents an ongoing tension for practitioners who ascribe to the localization movement.
In this episode Michael speaks with Bill Fischel, professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. Bill is arguably the global expert on zoning rules used by municipalities in the United States to influence development patterns at the local level.
During their conversation, Bill describes a shift from pro-growth to anti-growth approaches to local zoning in the United States (with exceptions being mostly in the South and in the city of Houston, Texas in particular, which has no zoning laws). During this shift, home-owners came to view their houses as investments or financial assets, whose exchange value they needed to protect, in addition to their use value as a home. This was partly because houses were one of the few assets whose value kept up with the rampant inflation in the 1970s, and because of some supportive tax policies.
Observing these trends led Bill to propose the Homevoter hypothesis, in which he argues that home-owners whose housing prices correlate with each other constitute an interest group, and who once they determined that additional housing in their communities would decrease their property values, decided to change zoning laws to prevent such development. This is an example of successful collective action on their part to contribute to a local public good: housing prices.
But this is also a story of exclusion: the only way to promote this in-group public good is to exclude outsiders. A final part of the conversation touches on the use of homeowners of environmental policies that also started in the 1970s to fight against development. And in this context homeowners in many areas have expressed what is known as NIMBYism (not in my backyard), who may argue for inclusive public housing policies, as long as it doesn’t happen where they live.
References:
Fischel, W.A. 2015. Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-seven with Derek Kauneckis.
Derek is an associate professor at the Desert Institute in Nevada where his work focuses on the waste commons and technological innovation.
Derek talks with Michael about how watersheds can be viewed as an information system, and the importance of designing technology that fits and serves the needs of the system it is used in.
Derek’s website: https://www.dri.edu/directory/derek-kauneckis/
In this episode Hita speaks with her colleague, Prof. AbdouMaliq Simone, a Senior Professorial fellow at the Urban Institute of The University of Sheffield. They speak of Maliq’s early life in pre-independence Sierra Leone and its influence on his thinking and his subsequent move from Freetown to Chicago, alongside his shift from pursuing psychology to engaging in developmental practice. Maliq mentions in the interview that his focus on the urban was an organic one and which stemmed from his work in psychology, the developmental sector, as well as what he describes as a long foray into radical politics. They discuss how his interpretation of the urban seeks to explain gaps in conventional definitions of what the urban means, particularly from the perspective of African cities where he noticed that there was a way in which urban economies were being elaborated to address a population that was being urbanized through their own efforts to provide for each other – and oftentimes in situations that were new to them.
They speak about Blackness and Black thought, of the field known as Black studies and its slight parallels with African Studies. As an urbanist, Maliq has been particularly influenced by black notions of locality – the extended idea of the locality – rooted within particular histories of the predominantly US based plantation system. He speaks about how black inhabitants of a plantation had to within the contexts of their own subjugation, develop tools and techniques to realize a sense of locality that extended beyond the immediate physical space, and how this notion of an extended locality helped the emergence of processes sustaining a black collective life. They then discuss the limits of using black thought as a methodological approach –focusing on the caution one has to exercise so that the usage of these knowledge systems does not reinforce the horrific forms of subjugation that it emerged from.
They next discuss Maliq’s latest book The Surrounds, which refers to those relational, improvised and interstitial spaces which accompany the formal urban as we know it. We discussed the idea of the surrounds in the context of changing and reconfigured relationships people build with ecological commons – especially in contexts where their access to formerly important spaces becomes restricted because of other urban agendas. They discuss how the book contrasts ideas of home and work, especially from the perspective of marginalized communities for whom the home is not a place of settlement – rather it is a place of transient thinking; for whom work may not represent stability, but rather a confinement that restricts their ability to engage with the city.
References
- Simone A.M. 2022. The Surrounds: Urban Life Within and Beyond Capture. Duke University Press.
- Schmid C. and Brenner N. 2011. Planetary urbanization. Urban Constellations, 1st ed., Gandy, M. Eds. Jovis-Verl: Berlin, Germany, pp.10-13.
- McKittrick K. 2020. Dear science and other stories. Duke University Press.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Julia Talbot-Jones, Senior Lecture in the School of Government at the University of Wellington. Julia studies how institutions solve environmental and natural resource problems, with a particular focus on rights of nature approaches. Julia collaborates with Erin O’Donnell, who is a previous guest on the podcast and has also written on this topic.
The formal rights of nature approach is ideally meant to instill into our laws a more intrinsic value in our treatment of the environment, rather than only viewing it instrumentally. Julia has studied maybe the most famous case of formalized rights to nature, this being the Whanganui River, Aotearoa New Zealand. This has been used as the basis for other rights of river approaches in other countries, but Julia cautions against the application of formal rules without local cultural and context, which cannot be so easily copied.
Julia’s website: https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/julia.talbotjones
References:
O’Donnell, E. L., and J. Talbot-Jones. 2018. Creating legal rights for rivers. Ecology and Society.
Talbot-Jones, J. 2017. The Institutional Economics of Granting a River Legal Standing. PhD Dissertation. The Australian National University.
Talbot-Jones, J., and J. Bennett. 2019. Toward a property rights theory of legal rights for rivers. Ecological economics: the journal of the International Society for Ecological Economics 164:106352.
Talbot-Jones, J., and J. Bennett. 2022. Implementing bottom-up governance through granting legal rights to rivers: a case study of the Whanganui River, Aotearoa New Zealand. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management 29(1):64–80.
Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Valentina Fonseca Cepeda .
Together with Daniel Castillo-Brieva, Luis Baquero-Bernal, Luz Angela Rodríguez, Eliane Steiner, and John Garcia-Ulloa, Valentina co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Magical Realism for Water Governance Under Power Asymmetries in the Aracataca River Basin, Colombia, an article on wetlands, water and conflict in the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta wetland complex in Colombia.
As many wetlands worldwide, this system is characterized by its high biodiversity and various livelihoods that are closely linked to water. Unfortunately, also as many wetlands worldwide, this system is vulnerable to and affected by many threats and conflict. Valentina and her colleagues unravel and examine this case employing a mix of methods that include a hydrological analysis, semi-structured interviews, and role-playing.
With a background in ecology, Valentina’s work focuses on local communities, more in particular the use of traditional ecological knowledge for the governance of natural resources. Valentina is affiliated with The Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia, teaching on the governance of socio-ecological systems, among other thing. At the same time, she works with the NGO ONF Andina where she helps designing and implementing participatory methods with institutional actors and community members to analyze ecosystem services and value chains with the purpose of co-creating alternative scenarios.
In case you want to learn more about topics akin to the topic discussed in this episode, we suggest you check out some of the other titles in the International Journal of the Commons that look at water, power and conflict:
- Chomba, M. J., Hill, T., Nkhata, B., & Nel, A. (2019). A social exchange analysis of adaptive governance in water allocation processes, the Kafue Flats, Zambia. International Journal of the Commons, 13(2).
- Leder, S., Sugden, F., Raut, M., Ray, D., & Saikia, P. (2019). Ambivalences of collective farming: Feminist political ecologies from the Eastern Gangetic Plains. International Journal of the Commons, 13(1).
- Olivier, T. (2021). Mechanism Design in Regional Arrangements for Water Governance. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1).
- Verzijl, A., & Dominguez, C. (2015). The powers of water-user associations: on multiplicity, fluidity, and durability in the Peruvian Andes. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Ilia Murtazashvili.
Together with Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Martin Weiss, and Michael Madison, Ilia co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Blockchain networks as knowledge commons.
Block chains are distributed append-only ledgers. The purpose of blockchains is to share resources – that is, knowledge, data and opportunities to use outputs created by networks. Knowledge commons are characterized by (i) the production of knowledge and information via one or more modes of action, (ii) institutions and other formal and informal structures for sharing these knowledge- and information resources, and (iii) governance processes that depend significantly on openness. In their article, Ilia and his colleagues convincingly show the usefulness of approaching block chain networks as knowledge commons as they rely on collectively managed technologies to pool distributed information.
Ilia is affiliated with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburg. Apart from an interest in block chain and knowledge commons, he is interested in American political development and the challenges of public administration and focuses his research on the relationship governance and legal titling in the developing world. Using the American frontier as an example, he investigates current challenges developing countries face, and how they can improve their prospects for economic development and political stability.
In case you want to learn more about topics akin to the topic discussed in this episode, may we suggest you check out some of the other titles in the International Journal of the Commons that look at technology-dependent and knowledge commons, such as:
- Berge, E., & Kranakis, E. (2011). Technology-dependent commons: The radio spectrum. International Journal of the Commons, 5(1).
- Henrich-Franke, C. (2011). Property Rights on a Cold War battlefield: managing broadcasting transmissions through the Iron Curtain. International Journal of the Commons, 5(1).
- Schweik, C., & English, R. (2013). Preliminary steps toward a general theory of internet-based collective-action in digital information commons: Findings from a study of open source software projects. International Journal of the Commons, 7(2).
- Sen, A., Atkisson, C., & Schweik, C. (2022). Cui Bono: Do open source software incubator policies and procedures benefit the projects or the incubator?. International Journal of the Commons, 16(1).
- Wormbs, N. (2011). Technology-dependent commons: The example of frequency spectrum for broadcasting in Europe in the 1920s. International Journal of the Commons, 5(1).
This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-six with Hillary Angelo.
Hillary is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she works as a historical sociologist focused on the relationship between the environment and large-scale transformations in urban contexts.
Hillary talks with Michael about the term social imaginary and how it allows an understanding of a certain set of social shared ideas about nature. They discuss Hillary’s recent book, “How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens,” in which Hillary argues that there is a social imaginary that she calls "urbanized nature" that can be traced and studied over time.
Hillary's website: http://www.hillaryangelo.com
In this episode, Divya speaks with Sharachchandra or Sharad Lele, Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy and Governance at ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment) in Bangalore, India. They discuss two of Sharad’s books, “Democratizing Forest Governance in India” which he co-edited with Ajit Menon, and his other book titled “Rethinking Environmentalism: Linking Justice, Sustainability and Diversity,” which he co-edited with Eduardo Brondizio, John Bryne, Georgina Mace, and Joan Martinez-Alier. Divya and Sharad use the discussion on the books as a way to unpack some of the fundamental questions like why are rights necessary, what is the meaning of democracy, and what is the role of state in the current context. They also talk about colonialism and its imprints on forest governance in postcolonial India. Sharad argues that, in the context of India, a country that has been traditionally hierarchical and where the state or the federal agency has all the powers, there are still colonial structures that are embedded in the system that reinforces those hierarchies. He suggests that recognizing citizens’ rights and their ability to exercise them fully is one way to break away from colonial and hierarchical mindsets.
Towards the end, Sharad shares that the commons is an arena with enormous scope for interdisciplinary work, yet academia and its various disciplines tend to fragment those spaces. He suggests that people working on the commons need to be alert to such tendencies and break away from the confines of a discipline by continuously asking how and in what ways their work can produce knowledge for meaningful change.
References:
Sharad’s bio: https://www.atree.org/users/dr-sharachchandra-lele
-
Agarwal, Anil, and Sunita Narain. "State of India's environment, 1984-85. The Second Citizens' report." (1985).
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Lélé, Sharachchandra M. "Sustainable development: a critical review." World development 19.6 (1991): 607-621.
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Lélé, Sharachchandra, and Richard B. Norgaard. "Sustainability and the scientist’s burden." Conservation biology 10.2 (1996): 354-365.
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Lele, Sharachchandra Madhukar, and Ajit Menon, eds. Democratizing forest governance in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014.
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Lele, Sharachchandra, et al., eds. Rethinking environmentalism: Linking justice, sustainability, and diversity. Vol. 23. MIT Press, 2019.
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Lélé, Sharachchandra, and Richard B. Norgaard. "Practicing interdisciplinarity." BioScience 55.11 (2005): 967-975.
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Wutich, A., Cardenas, J. C., Lele, S., Pahl-Wostl, C., Rauschmayer, F., Schleyer, C., ... & Zwarteveen, M. Integrating Sustainability, Justice, and Diversity?.
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Lele, Sharachchandra, et al. "Adapting to climate change in rapidly urbanizing river basins: insights from a multiple-concerns, multiple-stressors, and multi-level approach." Water International 43.2 (2018): 281-304.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Mehana Blaich Vaughan, associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Mehana is an environmental social scientist whose work focuses on indigenous and community-based natural resource management.
Michael asks Mehana about her book, Kaiaulu: Gathering Tides. In this book, Mehana describes the relationship between Hawaiian people and their land and water. Throughout this book Mehana describes how Hawaiians view nature as a partner rather than as a resource. The book is a guide to important Hawaiian concepts such as Kuleana, embodying the idea that access to the environment is partnered with obligations to it and to the one’s community. Mehana talks with Michael about this and other related terms that form a network of understanding for a worldview that is quite different from the dominant bureaucratized, westernized position. During their discussion, Mehana also talks about the land dispossession that Hawaiians have faced, and how some Hawaiian communities have been trying to reassert their environmental traditions in the context of Hawaiian state bureaucracy.
Mehana’s website:http://mehanavaughan.huiainamomona.org/
Website for Kipuka Kuleana: https://www.kipukakuleana.org/
References:
Vaughan, M. B. 2018. Kaiaulu: Gathering Tides. Oregon State University Press.
Diver, S., M. Vaughan, M. Baker-Médard, and H. Lukacs. 2019. Recognizing “reciprocal relations” to restore community access to land and water. International journal of the commons 13(1):400.
This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-five with Graeme Cumming.
Graeme is a Professor at James Cooke University in Townsville, Australia and the Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
Graeme talks with Stefan about the lack of methodological transparency in many datasets and the implications of this. Graeme discusses two of his past projects, one on the spread of avian influenza and the other on marine park permitting, to illustrate the importance of understanding and using scale correctly when doing research.
Link to scale mismatch on GBR paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220303511
University page: https://www.coralcoe.org.au/person/gscumming
In Common Website: https://www.incommonpodcast.org
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Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Samuel Adeyanju.
Together with Janette Bulkan, Jonathan C. Onyekwelu, Guillaume Peterson St-Laurent, Robert Kozak, Terry Sunderland, and Bernd Stimm, Sam co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Drivers of Biodiversity Conservation in Sacred Groves: A Comparative Study of Three Sacred Groves in Southwest Nigeria.
Sacred groves refer to land or bodies of water that have special spiritual significance to peoples and communities Biodiversity conservation appears to be an unintended, but arguably very fortunate by-product of sacred groves. Sacred groves in Nigeria are governed through a multiplicity of institutional arrangements that afford formal and informal roles to both communities and government.
Sam’s research shows how threats in the form of changing beliefs and taboos can lead to the gradual conversion of sacred groves into land used for agricultural and residential purposes, instead. Mistrust and tensions between communities and government, form another treat to what sacred groves can mean for biodiversity. Also, and paradoxically, the success of sacred groves may possibly also undermine the positive effect that they can have on biodiversity.
Sam’s is based at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research broadly focuses on African environmental politics with a special interest in livelihoods and community forestry. He has researched various forest management and environmental related issues in Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia, and Tanzania.
The paper discussed in this episode can be placed in a tradition of attention for the role of resources with spiritual or cultural meaning in the International Journal of the Commons. For example, you may want to check out the following titles, also:
- Bertacchini, E., & Gould, P. (2021). Collective Action Dilemmas at Cultural Heritage Sites: An Application of the IAD-NAAS Framework. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1).
- Reynolds, T., Stave, K., Sisay, T., & Eshete, A. (2017). Changes in community perspectives on the roles and rules of church forests in northern Ethiopia: evidence from a panel survey of four Ethiopian Orthodox communities. International Journal of the Commons, 11(1).
- Samakov, A., & Berkes, F. (2017). Spiritual commons: sacred sites as core of community-conserved areas in Kyrgyzstan. International Journal of the Commons, 11(1).
This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-four with Sara Meerow.
Sara is an assistant professor at the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary social-ecological systems, specifically urban geography and planning.
Sara talks with Michael about the multiple meanings of “resilience,” and the importance of clarity regarding what terms like “resilience” and “sustainability” signify in order for collaborative work to be produced.
Sara's Website: https://sgsup.asu.edu/sara-meerow
Meerow, Sara, and Joshua P. Newell. 2019. “Urban Resilience for Whom, What, When, Where, and Why?” Urban Geography 40 (3): 309–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2016.1206395.
In Common Website: https://www.incommonpodcast.org
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In this episode, Michael speaks with Erin O’Donnell, Early Career Academic Fellow at Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne.
Erin is a water law and policy specialist focusing on water markets and governance. She has worked in water resource management since 2002, in both the private and public sectors. Erin is recognized internationally for her research into the groundbreaking new field of legal rights for rivers, and the challenges and opportunities these new rights create for protecting the multiple social, cultural and natural values of rivers.
Erin’s latest book, Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration, and Water Governance, is available now from Routledge. In this book, Erin considers two case studies of legal rights for rivers, one in Southeastern Australia and one in the Western United States. In each case, the rights of rivers are promoted through what Erin calls environmental water managers who purchase water rights, and Erin argues that what might seem like a movement towards a more intrinsic value of nature in fact can lead to a backlash against the newfound power of nature as a legal entity, and can relegate nature to being “just another water user” that is competing with everyone else in water markets. Erin ultimately argues for what we call a paradigm shift, in which we come to see nature as living entity with value in its own right, at which point we wouldn’t need to worry as much about making it legible to the law as a legal person.
Erin’s website: https://law.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/erin-odonnell
References:
O'Donnell, Erin. 2018. Legal Rights for Rivers: Competition, Collaboration and Water Governance. Taylor and Francis.
This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-one with Bridie McGreavy.
Bridie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, Orono.
Bridie talks with Michael and special guest Karen Bieluch, a prior colleague of his at Dartmouth College and current colleague of Bridie at the University of Maine, about the importance of indigenous knowledge and relationships with the land in understanding and protecting shellfish fisheries and local communities in Maine.
Bridie's website: https://bmcgreavy.org
In Common Website: https://www.incommonpodcast.org
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In this episode Michael speaks with Priya Shyamsundar, lead economist at the Nature Conservancy. Priya speaks about her career trajectory that led her to the Nature Conservancy, and about her current position. They discuss the history of economics and social science at the Nature Conservancy and in Conservation more broadly, and Priya describes the increasing appreciation for the role that humans play in conservation that has occurred across many conservation organizations, but also that there remains a dominance of natural sciences simply in terms of how many natural scientists vs. social scientists are employed at the Nature Conservancy.
Michael and Priya also talk about a specific project that Priya has been involved in called the Prana (“breath”) project, dealing with agricultural residue management in rural India. There, the massive burning of residues after harvest each fall has created large-scale smoke and air pollution problems. Priya, along with a previous guest of the podcast, JT Erbaugh, have been working with local partners in India to conduct focus groups and a baseline survey to understand the preferences of local farmers for how best to address this issue. The interview concludes with a discussion of the factors that make it more or less likely for farmers to adopt new farming strategies, and Priya mentions a finding that the most significant factor in affecting whether or not a farmer adopts a new technique is whether people in their social network have adopted it as well. Just like many social behaviors, adoption can be contagious.
References:
Cool green science website that Priya mentions: https://blog.nature.org/science/
In this episode, Michael and Hita speak with David Bollier. David is an author, activist, blogger and consultant who spends a lot of time exploring the commons as a new paradigm of economics, politics and culture. In 2010, David co-founded the Commons Strategies Group, a consulting project that works to promote the commons internationally. More recently, he became the Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, based in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
David has authored and co-authored many books, and we focus in particular on his book Free, Fair, and Alive: the Insurgent Power of the Commons, which he co-autherd with the late Silka Helfrich. Much of this book and our conversation focus on the idea of commoning. This is a different take on the commons, think about it less as a physical description of the environment and more about the relationships that we have with each other and the environment. It is also seen as a response to historic enclosures of the commons and a western emphasis on governance and property as inherently exclusionary practices. This approach is an important alternative to the dominant way in which the commons are thought about.
David’s website: http://www.bollier.org/
References:
Bollier, D., and S. Helfrich. 2019. Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons. New Society Publishers.
This is our 100th (full) episode! To celebrate, a group of us from the In Common team got together to do some reflecting, with each participant responding to the same prompt. This asked us to discuss how we got involved in the podcast, some inspiring and challenging moments, something that we're looking forward to doing more of with the podcast in the future, and as an aside, to talk about a recent book we have been reading.
Enjoy and thanks for listening!
References:
Elliott, A. 2021. Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City (Pulitzer Prize Winner). Random House Publishing Group.
Eriksen, S. H. 2022. Is my vulnerability so different from yours? A call for compassionate climate change research. Progress in human geography.
Ghosh, A. 2019. Gun Island: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Nagendra, H. 2022. The Bangalore Detectives Club (The Bangalore Detectives Club Series). Constable.
Rao, K. 2021. Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India’s First Women in Medicine. Westland Publications Private Limited.
Tolle, E. 2006. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose. Penguin Publishing Group.
Vaughan, M. B. 2018. Kaiaulu: Gathering Tides. Oregon State University Press.
Vidal, G. 2011. Burr: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
In this episode, Sivee Chawla speaks with Dane Whittaker about their research published in the International Journal of the Commons. They have authored the paper “Social-Ecological Institutional Fit in the volunteer Based organization: A study of the lake management organizations in Vilas County, Wisconsin, USA” with Alise Crippen, Corinne Johnson, and Marco A. Janssen.
The episode starts with Dane’s journey towards commons research. It continues with a conversation about the paper which focuses on volunteer based organizations as commons users and the theory of social-ecological fit in the context of Wisconsin lake social-ecological systems.
Dane is a PhD student at School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, USA. They study polycentric environmental governance of lakes in the Midwestern United States, and look forward to expanding their research to consider the role of power in shaping polycentric governance processes and outcomes in their dissertation. Dane is also actively involved with the IASC Early Career Network.
To learn more about Dane, see the following links:
https://sustainability-innovation.asu.edu/person/dane-whittaker/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danewhittaker/
This insight episode comes from full episode sixty-eight, Stefan and Courtney's conversation with Kimberley Peters.
Kimberley is a Professor of Marine Governance at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), a research organization in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and University of Oldenburg (UOL), in Germany.
Kimberley talks with Courtney and Stefan about the need for a separate understanding of ocean geography as compared to land geography, and how that in turn leads to an evolving framework of ocean governance.
Kimberley's Website: https://kimberleypeters.com
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In this episode, Michael speaks with Jesse Ribot, Professor at the School of International Service at American University. Jesse is a human geographer who studies environmental justice and rural wellbeing. They discuss several aspects of Jesse’s research, including his foundational work on the theory of access, which he developed with Nancy Peluso. This theory broadens the traditional framing of environmental property rights to consider a broad suite of social factors, such as market access and access to technology and capital, that enable or limit access to the environment and the benefits that come with this access.
Michael and Jesse also talk about Jesse’s contributions to understanding climate change and climate risk. Here Jesse and his co-authors question the apolitical attribution of climate risk solely to the most proximate physical events such as hurricanes. Echoing Amartya Sen’s work on famine and entitlements, Jesse argues that this framing avoids the underlying dynamics of inequality that lead some to be more vulnerable to such events than others. This work continues a thread in Jesse’s research of unpacking concepts that have taken on a veneer of technicality, and reminding us that we cannot avoid asking about social inequality and the politics involved in addressing the underlying drivers of our environmental problems.
Jesse’s website: https://www.jesseribot.com/
References:
Giridharadas, A. 2018. Winners take all: the elite charade of changing the world. Alfred A. Knopf.
Kashwan, P., and J. Ribot. 2021. Violent silence: the erasure of history and justice in global climate policy. Current history 120(829):326–331.
Lahsen, M., and J. Ribot. 2022. Politics of attributing extreme events and disasters to climate change. Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Climate change 13(1).
Peluso, N. L., and J. Ribot. 2020. Postscript: A Theory of Access Revisited. Society & natural resources 33(2):300–306.
Ribot, J. C. 1998. Theorizing access: Forest profits along Senegal’s charcoal commodity chain. Development and change 29(2):307–341.
Ribot, J. C., and N. L. Peluso. 2009. A theory of access. Rural sociology 68(2):153–181.
Hidden Brain podcast interview with Eitan Hersh that Michael mentions: https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/passion-isnt-enough/
In this episode, Hita and Michael speak with Arati Kumar Rao who describes herself as a chronicler of landscapes - of both biodiversity as well as livelihoods using all the storytelling tools she has at her disposal - from photographs to writing to sketching. She is based out of Bengaluru, India. We speak about her enduring love for literature, writing, photography, and drawing and how that love translated into the work she does today. We talk of some of the stories from her experiences of chronicling landscape change across India and elsewhere that have stayed with her, and given her a sense of hope or despair as she navigates her own personal identity against those of the people she talks about. We speak of a particular historically practised form of rainwater harvesting in the deep Thar desert - the Khadeen - that is over 700 years old, and is intimately connected to agrarian practices in the region. We discuss the need to break down silos that exist across different disciplines or practice and to speak both to and across the social as well as the scientific stories of a landscape and how they need to be inclusive of the people that live and experience those stories in their daily lives. We speak about feeling the land with all of one’s senses and how that is different from zooming across it in a vehicle, linking those ideas to the privilege that comes from being an ‘other’ who studies people and livelihoods with the freedom of leaving that landscape and going back to the privilege we came from. Yet with the notion that we are not separate from what’s happening around us. We end with a discussion on the multilayered and deep rooted patriarchy that a woman encounters when leading a traveller’s lifestyle, both from within the communities she engages with, as well as the community she comes back to.
Arati’s website: https://www.aratikumarrao.com/about
In Arati’s own words, here is the story of the Khadeen: https://www.peepli.org/stories/miracle-of-sky-river/
She is also to found documenting stories of change on her Instagram handle: @aratikumarrao
In this episode, Michael speaks with Erik Thulin, Behavioral Science Director at Rare, an NGO dedicated to employing behavioral and social change for the benefit of the environment. Erik was a previous guest on this podcast during one of our episodes associated with a virtual conference of the international association for the study of the commons.
Erik talks to Michael about his role at Rare and several topics related to it. These included the relationship between applied conservation work and behavioral science and research in academia, the role and challenges of behaviorally-oriented policy panaceas, Erik's own findings on the importance of social influence in directing behavior, and the role that emotions play in behavior change.
Note: Erik mentions a program called “Make It Personal”. Since recording that program changed its name to Climate Culture.
Erik’s website: https://rare.org/person/erik-thulin/
References:
Brown, P. C., H. L. Roediger, and M. A. McDaniel. 2014. Make It Stick. Harvard University Press.
Heller, K., M. Berger, A. Gagern, A. Rakhimov, J. Thomas, and E. Thulin. 2021. Six behaviors policymakers should promote to mitigate climate change. Behavioral science & policy 7(2):63–73.
Henrich, J., R. Boyd, S. Bowles, C. Camerer, E. Fehr, H. Gintis, and R. McElreath. 2001. In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies. The American economic review 91(2):73–78.
Henrich, J. 2015. The secret of our success: how culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
Henrich, J. 2020. The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Rakhimov, A., and E. Thulin. 2020, December. Knowing Behavior Matters Doesn’t Hurt: The Effect of Individual Climate Behavior Messaging on Green Policy Support. https://psyarxiv.com/hu24g/
Richerson, P. J., R. Boyd, and B. Paciotti. 2002. An evolutionary theory of commons management. Pages 403–442 in Elinor Ostrom, Thomas Dietz, Nives Dolšak, Paul C. Stern, Susan Stonich, Elke U. Weber, editors. The drama of the commons. The National Academies Press.
Thaler, R. H., and C. R. Sunstein. 2009. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Penguin.
Thulin, E., and A. Rakhimov. 2019, November. Helping the Climate Because Others Do: An Exploratory Analysis of the Psychological Predictors of Intention to Perform High Impact Pro-Environmental Behaviors. https://psyarxiv.com/kah7s/
Williamson, K., and E. Thulin. 2021. Leveraging emotion-behavior pathways to support environmental behavior change. https://psyarxiv.com/wtms9/
Thulin, E. 2020. Cooperative Behavior Adoption Guide: Applying Behavior-Centered Design to Solve Cooperative Dilemmas. Arlington, VA: Rare.
https://www.jasoncollins.blog/avoiding-trite-lists-of-biases-and-pictures-of-human-brains-on-powerpoint-slides/
This insight episode comes from full episode sixty, Stefan's conversation with Emily Boyd.
Emily is the Director of Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies and Professor in Sustainability Science, as well as a leading social scientist with a background in international development, environment, and climate change.
Stefan and Emily talk about the benefits and challenges of an interdisciplinary education and approach to sustainability issues, specifically how to communicate and work with people from different fields, as well as how universities can work to support interdisciplinary training.
Emily Boyd is also an author for the IPCC, IPBES, and UKCCRA and is an Earth System Governance Senior Fellow.
https://www.lucsus.lu.se/emily-boyd
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=CatOY9oAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
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In this episode, Dustin and Hita speak with Giulio Boccaletti, a writer, entrepreneur and honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford. They discuss Giulio’s recent book, Water: a Biography, which he started writing during his former role as Chief Strategy Officer at The Nature Conservancy. In the book, Giulio traces the relationship between water and humanity from ancient civilizations and the Roman empire to the American West and China. He argues that the rise of the modern republic is linked to the central role water had in society, and he calls for a new era of constitutional reform that accounts for environmental and climate change. They discuss the political and institutional theory at the heart of the book, and several of its arguments and case studies, highlighted by the Tennessee Valley Authority. They conclude with brief reflections from Giulio on conservation strategy and practice, and the challenges of legitimacy in community-based conservation initiatives.
In this episode, Divya speaks with Dr. Ghazala Shahabuddin. Ghazala is an ecologist based in India, where she currently teaches at the Ashoka University and is also working on multiple projects focusing on the ecological and institutional aspects of decentralized forest management, conservation, wildlife policy and politics, and community-based ecotourism.
They talk about Ghazala’s important work on conservation-induced displacement in India, which she has written extensively about in several books and articles (links below), particularly her books: Conservation at the Crossroads: Science, Society and the Future of India’s Wildlife and Making Conservation Work (co-edited with Dr. Mahesh Rangarajan). They also discuss Ghazala’s ongoing work on the impacts of land-use change on natural ecosystems and community-based ecotourism in the mid-Himalayan region of India. Ghazala's work although diverse, we see that the common themes cutting across her work are the role of science in informing human dimensions of environment and policy, local people and histories in conservation, and the role of context-specific studies in informing global discourses on climate change and development.
More information on Ghazala’s work: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ghazala-Shahabuddin
References:
Shahabuddin, G. (2010). Conservation at the crossroads: science, society, and the future of India's wildlife. New India Foundation.
Shahabuddin, G., & Rangarajan, M. (Eds.). (2007). Making conservation work: Securing biodiversity in this new century. Permanent Black.
Shahabuddin, G., Goswami, R., & Gupta, M. (2017). An annotated checklist of the birds of banj oak–chir pine forests in Kumaon, Uttarakhand. Indian Birds, 13(2), 29-36.
Shahabuddin, G., Goswami, R., Krishnadas, M., & Menon, T. (2021). Decline in forest bird species and guilds due to land use change in the Western Himalaya. Global Ecology and Conservation, 25, e01447.
Shahabuddin, G. (2021). Lived in the lived landscape: A decade of insights. Sanctuary Asia, 41(10).
In this episode Hita and Michael spoke with Dustin Garrick who is an Associate Professor at the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada and a research fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford. We discussed how his passion for rivers led Dustin to move between theory and practice to understand the scope - and limits - of water markets as part of struggles toward more sustainable water management. Starting in the Colorado and Columbia Rivers of North America, Dustin’s work has led to a broader intellectual project to examine the institutional diversity and evolution of water markets, working with a network of partners across the world, to understand whether and under which conditions, different resource users and communities can “use markets without being abused by them”. We also spoke about the critiques of some predominant market based approaches to natural resource governance such as cap-and-trade systems and more free market environmentalism. . We touched upon some of his more recent work on informal water markets, and his growing interest in collective action across the rural-urban divide, which led to the development of a global database on rural-urban water conflict and cooperation that he has developed along with some of his colleagues. Dustin also reflected upon his engagement with large international development organisations such as the World Bank, OECD and global conservation organisations. He stressed that these organisations are not monolithic entities. t They are composed of groups of people with varied perspectives, interests and expertise, including many who share a focus on political economy and informality. Yet, these organisations also face practical and political constraints, that can lead to panacea thinking and otherwise limit the range of institutions and interests considered. We ended with a note on the importance of developing and diversifying one’s mentoring networks, while forging our own academic and non-academic pathways and trajectories. Dustin is currently involved in a book project on “Uncommon Markets”, the details of which may be found here: https://www.aaas.org/news/aaas-leshner-fellow-dustin-garrick-launches-uncommon-markets-book-project
Dustin’s institutional website: https://uwaterloo.ca/environment-resources-and-sustainability/people-profiles/dustin-garrick
Some of the references we discuss in this interview are listed below:
- Neuman, Janet C., The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: The First Ten Years of the Oregon Water Trust. Nebraska Law Review, Vol. 83, pp. 432-484, 2004, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=985401
- Garrick, D. E. (2015). Water allocation in rivers under pressure: Water trading, transaction costs and transboundary governance in the Western US and Australia. Edward Elgar Publishing.
- Garrick, D., O’Donnell, E., Damania, R., Moore, S., Brozović, N., Iseman, T. 2019. Informal water markets in an urbanising world: some unanswered questions. © World Bank.
- Garrick, Dustin, Lucia De Stefano, Laura Turley, Isabel Jorgensen, Ismael Aguilar-Barajas, Barbara Schreiner, Renata de Souza Leão, Erin O’Donnell, and Avril Horne. 2019. “Dividing the Water, Sharing the Benefits: Lessons from Rural-to-Urban Water Reallocation.” World Bank, Washington, DC.
- Williamson, E.O. 1981 “The Economics of Organization: The Transaction Cost Approach.” American Journal of Sociology 87( 3): 548–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2778934.
- Marshall, G.R. 2005. Economics for Collaborative Environmental Management: Renegotiating the Commons. London: Earthscan Publications.
- Ostrom, E. 2009. Understanding institutional diversity. In Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton university press.
- North, D.C., 1991. Institutions, ideology, and economic performance. Cato Journal, 11: 477.
- Ostrom, E.E., Dietz, T.E., Dolšak, N.E., Stern, P.C., Stonich, S.E. and Weber, E.U., 2002. The drama of the commons. National Academy Press.
- Scott, J.C., 2008. Seeing like a state. In Seeing Like a State. Yale University Press.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Mike Albertus, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. They talk about Mike’s most recent book, Property Without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap. In the book, Mike is studying the results of agrarian reforms in Latin America, which are designed to redistribute land to rural peasants. Many of these reforms have left a “gap”, or a lack of formalization, defensibility, and alienability of these new rural land rights. Mike’s main thesis of the book is that this gap has persisted in large part because of strategic decisions by national governments to keep rural landowners dependent on the state for their livelihood. Mike and Michael discuss this thesis as well as several other related arguments in the book.
Mikes website: http://www.michaelalbertus.com/
References:
Albertus, M. 2021. Property without Rights: Origins and Consequences of the Property Rights Gap. Cambridge University Press.
This insight episode comes from full episode sixty-two, Michael and Stefan's conversation with Henrik Österblom.
Henrik is the Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and a Professor at the University of Stockholm in Sweden.
In this episode, Henrik talks with Michael and Stefan about his piece in One Earth, “Unsustainable Science,” which thinks about the idea that being busy is equivalent to doing well. The three look at the pressure produced by the treadmill of papers and funding in academia, and discuss how more productive and sustainable solutions can be created through slowing down and talking with one another, rather than competing for the same end goals.
Henrik's SRC page: https://www.stockholmresilience.org/meet-our-team/staff/2008-01-09-osterblom.html
Unsustainable Science: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322%2819%2930017-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS259033221930017X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
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This is the first episode of a new series of the podcast that we are calling "Science and Practice". In this series we will be interviewing guests who conduct applied work on environmental governance and conservation and who often act at the interface of such work and the scientific study of these topics.
In this episode, Michael talks with Nathan Bennett, an Independent Consultant who has worked with several national and international organizations including the Nature Conservancy, Parks Canada, Environment Canada, Comunidad y Biodiversidad in Mexico, and the Smithsonian Institute. Nathan is also the Chair of the People and the Oceans Specialist Group for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). During their conversation, Michael asks Nathan about his role in bridging academic and practice-based work and the role that policy panaceas can play in each of these spaces. In his response, Nathan describes a more diagnostic approach that considers the relative costs and benefits of different types of marine policies as an important alternative to panacea thinking. They conclude the conversation by talking about Nathan's work on the role of social science in conservation and the challenges and promise of doing interdisciplinary work for conservation.
Nathan's website: https://nathanbennett.ca/
References:
Bennett, N. J., R. Roth, S. C. Klain, K. Chan, P. Christie, D. A. Clark, G. Cullman, D. Curran, T. J. Durbin, G. Epstein, A. Greenberg, M. P. Nelson, J. Sandlos, R. Stedman, T. L. Teel, R. Thomas, D. Veríssimo, and C. Wyborn. 2017. Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation. Biological conservation 205:93–108.
Bennett, N. J., T. S. Whitty, E. Finkbeiner, J. Pittman, H. Bassett, S. Gelcich, and E. H. Allison. 2018. Environmental Stewardship: A Conceptual Review and Analytical Framework. Environmental management 61(4):597–614. Bennett, N. J., A. Calò, A. Di Franco, F. Niccolini, D. Marzo, I. Domina, C. Dimitriadis, F. Sobrado, M.-C. Santoni, E. Charbonnel, M. Trujillo, J. Garcia-Charton, L. Seddiki, V. Cappanera, J. Grbin, L. Kastelic, M. Milazzo, and P. Guidetti. 2020. Social equity and marine protected areas: Perceptions of small-scale fishermen in the Mediterranean Sea. Biological conservation 244:108531.
This insight episode comes from full episode 059, Michael's conversation with Brent Loken.
Brent is a Global Food Lead Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund.
In this episode, Brent talks with Michael about the importance of understanding how the conversion of land to agricultural-based uses and the other major environmental impacts of large-scale agriculture are intimately related to our ability to attain animal conservation and other environmental goals, as well as differing ideas of how best to use land and the politics surrounding these issues.
Brent's Information:
Website: https://www.worldwildlife.org/experts/brent-loken
Twitter: @brentloken
Email: brent.loken@wwf.org
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In this episode, Michael and Stefan speak with Dan Brockington, Professor and director of the Sheffield Institute for International Development at the University of Sheffield. They talk to Dan about his important work on protected areas, and in particular two books he has written on the subject: Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania, and Nature Unbound: Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas. They discuss the distinction between reality and (sometimes true) myths that help to sustain nature reserves through their representation, and help to provide “brand value” for conservation. Relatedly, they discussed the relationships between conservation, capitalism, and celebrity.
Dan’s website: https://danbrockington.com/
References:
Brockington, D. 2002. Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game Reserve, Tanzania. Indiana University Press.
Brockington, D., Duffy, R., and Igoe, J. 2008. Nature Unbound: Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas. Routledge.
Brockington, D. 2009. Celebrity and the Environment: Fame, Wealth and Power in Conservation. Bloomsbury Publishing.
In this episode, Michael speaks with one of his intellectual heroes, Dr. Steve Lansing. Steve is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and the Vienna Complexity Hub, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, and a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Steve and Michael talk about Steve’s work with the Balinese Subak irrigation communities, including his understanding of their water use and management practices that are mediated by their water-based religion. Steve also describes the effects that green revolution techniques and technologies had on the Subaks, how local actors responded to this disturbances to their traditions, and what role Steve himself played in these responses. Finally, Steve talks about his more recent work in Bali, which includes an experiment to examine whether the Subak farmers can save water by flooding their paddies less, and thereby reduce methane emissions while also producing more rice.
Steve’s website: http://www.slansing.org/
References:
Lansing, J. S. 2012. Perfect order: Recognizing complexity in Bali. Princeton University Press.
Lansing, S. 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. Princeton University Press.
Lansing, J. S., N. N. Chung, L. Y. Chew, and G. S. Jacobs. 2021. Averting evolutionary suicide from the tragedy of the commons. International journal of the commons 15(1):414.
This insight episode comes from full episode 052, Michael and Stefan's conversation with Jessica Gephart.
Jessica is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at American University. Her research focuses on feedbacks between globalized food systems and the environment.
In this episode, Jessica talks with Michael and Stefan about how the different ways that seafood catch and commodities are reported leads to discrepancies in trade data numbers, and the complexity of untangling the different trade pathways to get a clearer picture of global seafood trade.
Jessica's website: http://www.jessicagephart.com
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In this episode, Michael speaks with Kaitlin Cordes, an international lawyer and researcher who focuses on human rights and sustainable development. Most recently, Kaitlin spent eight years developing and leading the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment's work on land, agriculture, food systems, and human rights. Prior to that, she worked at Human Rights Watch and as an Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. Kaitlin and Michael talk about Kaitlin’s work at the Center on Sustainable Investment, which included projects focused on land tenure and human rights as well as coffee commodity chains. The conversation concludes with a discussion about Kaitlin’s latest project, 31 days of climate action. This is a project focused on the personal, incremental, and intentional ways that each of us can confront the challenge of climate change and the psychological toll that it can take on us.
Websites:
Kaitlin’s website: https://www.kaitlincordes.com/
31 days of climate action: https://www.31daysofclimateaction.com/
Apps that Kaitlin mentions:
Climate Action Now
Earth Hero
References:
Giridharadas, A. 2018. Winners take all: the elite charade of changing the world. Alfred A. Knopf.
Lewis, M. 2014. Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. W. W. Norton & Company.
Nicholas, K. 2021. Under the sky we make: How to be human in a warming world. GP Putnam’s Sons.
Thaler, R. H., and C. R. Sunstein. 2009. Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Penguin.
In this episode, Michael speaks with Jean Wiener, the founder and director of the Foundation for the Protection of Marine Biodiversity, or FOPROBIM. Jean and his organization have worked for decades on marine conservation in Haiti, where Jean has played a critical role in helping to establish a group of marine protected areas. In 2015, Jean was awarded the Goldman Environmental prize in recognition for his work. Jean talks with Michael about his career path and his work to develop marine conservation in Haiti, both formally and from the bottom up. They discuss the challenges that Jean has confronted and continues to deal with under often difficult social and political conditions, and what he hopes for in the future.
FOPROBIM website: https://www.foprobim.org/
Link to Jean’s Goldman prize award: https://www.goldmanprize.org/recipient/jean-wiener/
Video about Jean’s work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFSGdGvpQ4U
In this IJC episode, Frank van Laerhoven has a conversation with Jim Sinner.
Together with Marc Tadaki, Edward Challies, Margaret Kilvington, Paratene Tane, and Christina Robb, Jim co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Crafting Collective Management Institutions in Messy Real-World Settings: A Call for Action Research.
The article deals with how we can give guidance to prospective, or would-be institutional crafters and collective management enablers. And in order to address that question the researchers apply an explicit action research approach with commoners not as subjects or respondents but as co-researchers.
In the conversation we discuss some of the codes of conduct for commons researchers that are based on Jim’s research, such the need to get alongside people on the ground, to engage with social identities, and to put social justice at the center of what we do.
Jim’s work aligns with other work that we have published in the International Journal of the Commons, work that engages with critical institutionalism, for example. If this topic interests you, you may want to check out the following titles, also:
- Cleaver, F., & De Koning, J. (2015). Furthering critical institutionalism. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
- Funder, M., & Marani, M. (2015). Local bureaucrats as bricoleurs. The everyday implementation practices of county environment officers in rural Kenya. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
- Ingram, V., Ros-Tonen, M., & Dietz, T. (2015). A fine mess: Bricolaged forest governance in Cameroon. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
- Jones, S. (2015). Bridging political economy analysis and critical institutionalism: an approach to help analyse institutional change for rural water services. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
- Marin, A., & Bjørklund, I. (2015). A tragedy of errors? Institutional dynamics and land tenure in Finnmark, Norway. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
- Saunders, F. (2014). The promise of common pool resource theory and the reality of commons projects. International Journal of the Commons, 8(2).
- Van der Kooij, S., Zwarteveen, M., & Kuper, M. (2015). The material of the social: the mutual shaping of institutions by irrigation technology and society in Seguia Khrichfa, Morocco. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
- Verzijl, A., & Dominguez, C. (2015). The powers of water-user associations: on multiplicity, fluidity, and durability in the Peruvian Andes. International Journal of the Commons, 9(1).
This insight episode comes from full episode 051, Michael's conversation with Beatriz Dos Santos Dias.
Beatriz is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Beatriz was part of the Modelling and Stock Assessment of Prince William Sound Herring in the Gulf of Alaska, and she is currently exploring the effects of regime shifts in the Gulf of Alaska Marine food webs.
In this episode, Beatriz talks with Michael about models, specifically their value in informing policy, and the importance of a historical perspective in ecological research.
Beatriz's website: https://www.biadias.com/home
In Common website: https://www.incommonpodcast.org
Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InCommonPod
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/incommonpodcast
In this episode, Hita spoke with Aditya Ramesh, Presidential Fellow of Environmental History at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. They spoke about disease ecologies, the epistemes of disease, and its links with urban planning. In the process they also discussed the changing ideas of what constitutes an archive and what that means for upcoming scholars who engage with environmental history.
Aditya’s website: https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/aditya.ramesh.html
In this episode Michael speaks with Dr. Noa Kekuewa Lincoln, a professor in the department of tropical plant and soil sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Noa’s specialty areas include biogeochemistry, ethnography, and archaeology of traditional farming methods. Noa tells Michael about his work on Hawaiian farming systems and the Hawaiian concept of Kuleana as a combination of both a right to and respect for the environment. Noa also talks about the intrinsic power of stories and the importance of interdisciplinary work in enabling us to tell compelling stories about our relationship with the environment.
References and resource:
Another interview with Noa on Science Friday: https://www.sciencefriday.com/person/noa-kekuewa-lincoln/
Lincoln, N. K., Rossen, J., Vitousek, P., Kahoonei, J., Shapiro, D., Kalawe, K., Pai, M., Marshall, K., & Meheula, K. (2018). Restoration of ‘Āina Malo‘o on Hawai‘i Island: Expanding Biocultural Relationships. Sustainability: Science Practice and Policy, 10(11), 3985. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10113985
Lincoln, N. K., & Ardoin, N. M. (2016). Cultivating values: environmental values and sense of place as correlates of sustainable agricultural practices. Agriculture and Human Values, 33(2), 389–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-015-9613-z
Frank van Laerhoven is speaking with Maurice Paulissen.
Is it a historian? Is it an ecologist? No, it is a landscape historian! Maurice is one of the many commons scholars that cannot be easily categorized by means of a disciplinary label. He is also an exponent of a long tradition within our domain of researchers for whom “going to the field” means “going to an archive” and that manage to reconstruct commons governance 500 or more years back.
Maurice co-authored an IJC publication entitled ‘Dire Necessity or Mere Opportunity? Recurrent Peat Commercialisation from Raised Bog Commons in the Early Modern Low Countries’ together with Roy van Beek, Serge Nekrassoff, Edward Huijbens, and Theo Spek.
The episode starts with an half-hearted attempt to pin down Maurice in terms of academic disciplines (an attempt that partly fails). It then continues with a reflection on the article that served as an excuse for the conversation. That article contests the simplistic notion that in early modern Europe, shared resource management solutions offered by markets or governments were not sufficiently reliable, and therefore fell into the lap of autonomous communities. It is convincingly shown that markets (both local and regional), governments (at various levels, in various forms) and more or less autonomous communities play competing and complementary roles in the governance of peat land – roles that vary over time and place. The conversation ends with a reflection on whether a study of commons governance 500 years ago can be useful for commoners, today.
For more analyses of historical commons, also check out the following IJC titles:
- Laborda-Pemán, M., & De Moor, T. (2016). History and the commons: a necessary conversation. International Journal of the Commons, 10(2).
- Farjam, M., De Moor, T., van Weeren, R., Forsman, A., Dehkordi, M. A. E., Ghorbani, A., & Bravo, G. (2020). Shared patterns in long-term dynamics of commons as institutions for collective action. International Journal of the Commons, 14(1).
- Takahashi, T., Matsushita, K., Yoshida, Y., & Senda, T. (2019). Impacts of 150 years of modernization policies on the management of common forests in Japan: a statistical analysis of micro census data. International Journal of the Commons, 13(2).
- Echegaray, E. P. (2011). Communities and sustainability in medieval and early modern Aragon, 1200-1600. International Journal of the Commons, 5(2).
- Chanda, S., Patnaik, A., & Chatterjee, S. C. (2021). The Courtesan Project and the Tawa’ifs’ Cultural Commons. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1).
- Castro, Á. C. (2021). Early Medieval Commons? Or How the History of Early Medieval Europe Could Benefit from a Necessary Conversation: The Case From NW Iberia. International Journal of the Commons, 15(1).
In this episode, Stefan interviews Achim Schlüter. Achim is a Professor of Social Systems & Ecological Economics at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany. He is also the Social Science Department leader and head of the Institutional and Behavioral Economics working group at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT). He has interests in processes of institutional development and change, privatization and what influences human behavior, where he has focused attention on coastal systems, specifically in Indonesia, Peru and Senegal, among others.
In the episode, Stefan and Achim discuss his career path focused on privatization processes and commons governance including his dual focus on behavioral experiments and qualitative institutional analysis. Later, collaboration challenges in science are explored, and challenges of doing research away from your home country.
Achim’s institutional webpage
https://www.leibniz-zmt.de/en/marine-tropics-research/who-we-are/achim-schlueter-en.html
Achim’s Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=L5ONyegAAAAJ&hl=de
In Common webpage
https://www.incommonpodcast.org/
This insight episode is from full episode 048, Stefan's conversation with Irina Rafliana.
Irina is a science communication officer at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), and is also currently a PhD candidate at the German Development Institute in Bonn, Germany, where her research is focused on disaster sociology.
In this episode, Irina discusses the importance of language with Stefan in allowing for innovation and research to occur.
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI): http://lipi.go.id/
In Common website: https://www.incommonpodcast.org
Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InCommonPod
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/incommonpodcast
In this episode, Michael speaks with Simon Levin, professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Simon is a giant in the field of ecology, and in the last several decades his work has extended to the study of the social-ecological systems, cooperation, and the governance of the commons. His work in this area includes the book Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons, which is a great introduction to Simon’s ideas on society and ecology for non-experts. Simon talks with Michael about his views on the commons as well as a range of topics including climate change, the COVID pandemic, biological and cultural evolution, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Simon’s website: https://slevin.princeton.edu/
References:
Levin, S. 1999. Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons. Perseus Books.
This insight episode is from full episode eight, Michael and Stefan's conversation with Helen Rozwadowski.
Helen is a professor of History and founder of the Maritime Studies program at the University of Connecticut, and has written multiple books on the history of the ocean.
In this episode, Helen discusses the idea of the ocean as a mirror, reflecting our personal biases and ideas back to us. She also discusses the importance of understanding the past in informing the present, and how history can influence current research.
Helen's website: https://history.uconn.edu/faculty-by-name/helen-m-rozwadowski/
In Common website: https://www.incommonpodcast.org
Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InCommonPod
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In this episode Hita spoke with Prof. Mahesh Rangarajan, Vice Chancellor of Krea University, India and a Professor of History and Environmental Studies at the University. They discussed what it means to be a historian, the importance of intellectual exchange and cooperation across different stages of career, and the environmental history of large charismatic mammals in south Asia. Some non-English words that occur through the episode include:
- Padyatra: A journey undertaken by foot, usually with some social purpose behind it
- Pindaris: Thugs or bandits as referred to in colonial literature
- Valmiki Ramayana: An epic poem of India, revolving around the story of Rama and Sita, and composed by a sage named Valmiki
- Apharan: Kidnap
- Haathi mere saathi: (Translation: My friend, the elephant) a yesteryear Bollywood movie revolving around the friendship between an elephant and its human
- Junagadh, Bhavnagar, Baroda: Erstwhile princely states of India
- Yuvraj: Younger prince, not the heir apparent
- Bengalis: People from the eastern Indian state of Bengal
- Ghee: clarified butter
- Ser: Obsolete unit of dry volume of India, often considered equivalent to a litre
Mahesh’s institutional website: https://krea.edu.in/mahesh-rangarajan-phd/
References mentioned in the interview:
- Keen, Maurice. 2000. The outlaws of medieval legend. 3rd edition. Routledge.
- Simon Schama on libraries: https://talking-about-books.com/2016/07/06/simon-schama-on-the-london-library-financial-times/
- Trauttman, Thomas R. 2015. Elephants and kings: an environmental history. University of Chicago Press.
- Elvin, Mark. 2006. The retreat of the elephants: an environmental history of China. Yale University Press.
- Chaudhuri, Nirad Singh. 1951. Autobiography of an unknown Indian. Macmillan
- Demuth, Bathsheba. 2020. Floating coast: an environmental history of the Bering Strait. WW Norton.
- Corbett, Jim. 1948. The man-eating tiger of Rudraprayag. Rupa Publications
- Sankhala, Kailash. 1971. The story of the Indian tiger. Collins.
- Guha, Ramachandra. 1989. The unquiet woods: ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya. University of California Press.
- Rangarajan, M. 2013. Animals with rich histories: the case of the lions of Gir Forest, Gujarat, India. History and Theory 52:4 (109-127).
This insight episode is from episode 041, Michael's interview with Chris Weible.
Chris is a professor at the school of public affairs at the University of Colorado, Denver, as well as the director of his school's PhD program, and a co-director with Tanya Heikkila of the Workshop on Policy Process Research (WOPPR).
In this insight episode, Chris talks with Michael about the evolution of the field of policy processes, and the importance of studying the policy process to better understand society and people better.
Chris' website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/people/faculty/christopher-weible
WOPRR website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/research-and-impact/workshop-on-policy-process-research
In Common Website: www.incommonpodcast.org
Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InCommonPod
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In this episode, Michael speaks with Hallie Eakin, a professor in the School of Sustainability, College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. They discuss Hallie’s research on social adaptation and vulnerability in Mexico, Latin America, and the American Southwest.
Hallie’s website: https://sustainability-innovation.asu.edu/person/hallie-eakin/
Website for the megadapt project: http://megadapt.weebly.com/
References
Eakin, Hallie, et al. 2016. “Adapting to Risk and Perpetuating Poverty: Household’s Strategies for Managing Flood Risk and Water Scarcity in Mexico City.” Environmental Science & Policy 66 (December): 324–33.
Book that Michael mentions on academic norms: Berg, Maggie, and Barbara K. Seeber. 2016. The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. University of Toronto Press.
Book by James Ferguson that Michael mentions: Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: ’development', Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.
This insight episode is from episode 041, Michael and Courtney's interview with Cassandra Brooks.
Cassandra is an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Prior to joining CU Boulder, Cassandra was a core member of The Last Ocean, a grand-scale media project focused on the Ross Sea, and her efforts helped lead to the adoption of the world's largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea, Antarctica.
In this insight episode, Cassandra talks with Michael and Courtney about her work to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean, and the complicated nature of international geopolitics.
Cassandra's homepage: https://www.colorado.edu/envs/cassandra-brooks
A recent paper by Cassandra and colleagues on the policy development process in the Antarctic:
Brooks, C.M., L.B. Crowder, H. Österblom, and A. L. Strong. 2020. Reaching consensus for conserving the global commons: The case of the Ross, Sea, Antarctica. Conservation Letters 13(1):289.
In Common Website: www.incommonpodcast.org
Connect with us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/InCommonPod
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/incommonpodcast
In this episode, Michael talks with Mark Moritz, professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University. They discuss Mark’s work on “open” property regimes in pastoralist systems around the world, and in particular in Cameroon where Mark has conducted extensive fieldwork. Mark describes his interpretation of open property regimes as an adaptation to resource scarcity and variability in pastoralist systems. This is a unique type of property regime that is less about imposing constraints than it is guaranteeing access, working in tandem with the well-known mobility of many pastoralists.
Mark’s website: https://anthropology.osu.edu/people/moritz.42
References
Moritz, M. (2016). Open property regimes. International Journal of the Commons, 10(2), 688.
Moritz, M., et al. 2018. Emergent Sustainability in Open Property Regimes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 115 (51): 12859–67.
This insight episode is from episode 002, Michael and Stefan's interview with Emma McKinley.
Emma is a Research Fellow at Cardiff University and co-founder of the Marine Social Science Network.
In this insight episode, Emma talks with Michael and Stefan about the creation of the Marine Social Science Network and the growing pains of facilitating greater interdisciplinary work.
The Marine Social Science Network
www.marsocsci.net
In Common Website
www.incommonpodcast.org
Connect with us on Twitter
https://twitter.com/InCommonPod
Support us on Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/incommonpodcast
In this episode, Michael spoke with Daniel Decaro, associate professor at the University of Louisville with a joint appointment in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Daniel has conducted experimental research on the effects of participation and enforcement on collective-action. Based on this work, he has developed the concept of participatory fit. This represents the idea that there is cultural variation in how people perceive their basic needs of autonomy and procedural justice being met through a participatory process, and therefore mechanisms of participatory governance must adapt to fit with this variation. What is authentically participatory for one person may not be for another. Daniel and Michael also talked about the relationship that participation has to collective-action and enforcement, based on a finding from DeCaro et al. (2015) that the effects of participating and enforcement are synergistic, producing increased cooperation when combined with each other.
Daniel’s website: https://louisville.edu/psychology/d-decaro
References:
DeCaro, D., and M. Stokes. 2008. “Social‐psychological Principles of Community‐based Conservation and Conservancy Motivation: Attaining Goals within an Autonomy‐supportive Environment.” Conservation Biology: The Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.
DeCaro, Daniel A., and Michael K. Stokes. 2013. “Public Participation and Institutional Fit: A Social-Psychological Perspective.” Ecology and Society 18 (4).
DeCaro, D. A., M. A. Janssen, and A. Lee. 2015. “Synergistic Effects of Voting and Enforcement on Internalized Motivation to Cooperate in a Resource Dilemma.” Judgment and Decision Making.
DeCaro, Daniel A., Marco A. Janssen, and Allen Lee. 2021. “Motivational Foundations of Communication, Voluntary Cooperation, and Self-Governance in a Common-Pool Resource Dilemma.” Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, no. 100016 (July): 100016.
In this end-of-the-year episode, Courtney, Mike, Michael and Stefan sat down to recap the year, talking about their favorite reads and favorite listens, fieldwork done and not done, and interesting work done on non-traditional commons.
References:
Chambers, J. M., et al. (2021). Six modes of co-production for sustainability. Nature Sustainability, 4(11), 983–996.
Christakis, N. A. (2019). Blueprint: The evolutionary origins of a good society. Hachette UK.
Epstein, D. (2019). Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Penguin Random House.
Freeth, R., and Caniglia, G. (2020). Learning to collaborate while collaborating: advancing interdisciplinary sustainability research. Sustainability Science, 15(1), 247–261.
Gorski, P. S. (2013). “What is Critical Realism? And Why Should You Care?” Contemporary Sociology, 42(5), 658–670.
Gottlieb, L. (2019). Maybe you should talk to someone. Manjul Publishing.
Kearns, F. (2021). Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Effective Engagement. Island Press.
Mott, J. (2021). Hell of a Book: A Novel. Penguin.
York, A. M., et al. (2021). Integrating institutional approaches and decision science to address climate change: a multi-level collective action research agenda. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 52, 19–26.
Podcasts:
Sam Harris:
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/270-what-have-we-learned-from-the-pandemic
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/269-deep-time
Esther Perel: https://www.estherperel.com/podcast
Wall Street Journal about uBiome: https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/what-went-wrong-at-ubiome-part-1/8b0717aa-1c66-4524-b47f-0cd3a399fcae
In this episode, Divya spoke with Aparajita Datta, a senior scientist at the Nature Conservation Foundation, a non-governmental research organization based in Bangalore, India. Aparajita is known for her work on community-based hornbill conservation in the northeastern part of India. Her main research interests include plant-animal interactions in rainforests, understanding anthropogenic effects on wildlife, and engaging with the tribal communities in conservation. In this episode, she shares her experience of trying to carry out inclusive conservation and the roles that partnerships with multiple stakeholders play in the process. Aparajita’s work is a bit unusual; she is one of those rare scholars who have been striving to translate her research on the ground. But conducting action-oriented research comes at a cost, and it is evident from Aparajita’s narrative as she shares her experience of getting emotionally attached to the tribal community she has been working with, while facing skepticism from some, and yet having the grit to keep persevering as she goes back and forth through the complex emotions of feeling both disheartened and inspired in her work. She now believes after 20 years, that doing research is more satisfying and easy than on-ground conservation, and that reconciliation between wildlife and people is not always possible.
Aparajita’s bio: https://www.ncf-india.org/author/646436/aparajita-datta
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/find-explorers/aparajita-datta
Selected References:
Borawake, N., Datta, A., & Naniwadekar, R. (2021). Tropical Forest Restoration in the Eastern Himalaya: Evaluating Early Survival and Growth of Native Tree Species. Ecological Restoration, 39(3), 52-63.
Sheth, C., Datta, A., and Parashuram, D. (2020). Persistent loss of biologically-rich tropical forests in the Indian Eastern Himalaya. Silva Fennica 54(3). https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.10373
Naniwadekar, R., Mishra, C., Isvaran, K., & Datta, A. (2021). Gardeners of the forest: hornbills govern the spatial distribution of large seeds. Journal of Avian Biology.
Datta, A., Naniwadekar, R., Rao, M., Sreenivasan, R., & Hiresavi, V. (2018). Hornbill Watch: A citizen science initiative for Indian hornbills. Indian Birds, 14(3), 65-70.
Teegalapalli, K., & Datta, A. (2016). Field to a forest: Patterns of forest recovery following shifting cultivation in the Eastern Himalaya. Forest Ecology and Management, 364, 173-182.
Rane, A., & Datta, A. (2015). Protecting a hornbill haven: a community-based conservation initiative in Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India. Malayan Nature Journal, 67(2), 203-218.
Datta, A. (2007). Protecting with people in Namdapha: threatened forests, forgotten people. In: Shahabuddin, G., Rangarajan, M. (Eds.), Making Conservation Work: securing biodiversity in this new century. Permanent Black, New Delhi. pp. 165 – 209.
In this episode, Michael spoke with Nejem Raheem. Nejem is an associate professor of economics at Emerson College. They talked about Nejem’s work on ecosystem services and how he applied this framework to the traditional acequia irrigation systems of New Mexico. They discussed several important challenges that this approach faces, such as the incommensurability of different values and the downplaying of reciprocal relationships that many humans have with the environment.
Nejem’s website: https://www.emerson.edu/faculty-staff-directory/nejem-raheem
References:
Raheem, N., S. Archambault, E. Arellano, M. Gonzales, D. Kopp, J. Rivera, S. Guldan, et al. 2015. “A Framework for Assessing Ecosystem Services in Acequia Irrigation Communities of the Upper Río Grande Watershed.” WIREs. Water 2 (5): 559–75. https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1091.
Raheem, Nejem, and Danielle Schwarzmann. 2021. “Making Ecosystem Services Flexible: Why a Whole New Framework Is a Bad Idea for Practitioners.” WIREs. Water 8 (6). https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1553.
Paper that Michael mentions on the “tribe of the Econ”:
Leijonhufvud, Axel. 1973. “Life among the Econ.” Economic Inquiry 11 (3): 327–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1973.tb01065.x.
Book by James Ferguson that Michael mentions
Ferguson, James. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine:’development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press.
In this episode, Hita and Nusrat Molla, were joined by Ramya Ravi, Ph.D scholar at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru. We reflected on the previous episodes of this series through the perspective of early career scholars, and spoke a bit about reading across disciplines, challenging established ecological or social principles in interdisciplinary research, as well as finding our tribes. We ended the episode with a small discussion on the emotional burden of caregiving coupled with the precarity of academia and how informal collaborations and mentoring can help one to deal with difficult circumstances.
Ramya’s website: https://www.atree.org/users/ramya-ravi
In this episode, Michael and Stefan spoke with Arun Agrawal, the Samuel Trask Dana Professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Arun has played an important role in the development of the Commons field and the study of the related subjects of conservation and development. They talked about Arun's path to an academic career, his thoughts about the history and current developments of the study of the Commons, and his thoughts on the categories and dichotomies that structure so much of our thinking in this field. They also talked about Arun's professional roles, including being editor-in-chief of World Development and the director of the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) program.
Arun's website: http://www.arunagrawal.org/
References:
Agrawal, Arun. 2005. Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Ferraro, Paul J., and Arun Agrawal. 2021. “Synthesizing Evidence in Sustainability Science through Harmonized Experiments: Community Monitoring in Common Pool Resources.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118 (29). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2106489118.
In this episode, Michael spoke with Courtney Carothers, a professor in the college of Fisheries and Oceans at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They discussed Courtney’s work on "catch share", or individual transferable quota policies in fisheries, indigenous fisheries management systems, and the negative impacts that catch shares have often had on indigenous fishers. Catch shares are a dominant panacea being employed by the U.S. government to manage our shared fisheries resources, and a important critique of them discussed during the interview is the ways in which they prioritize efficiency and profit, lead to rights consolidation, and alienate local users from their traditional livelihoods. Courtney framed this process as being a symptomatic component of the broader processes of forced integration and colonization that has occurred in the U.S. and Canada. They also talked about how collaborative relationships can be built for transdisciplinary work.
References:
Carothers, Courtney, and Catherine Chambers. 2012. “Fisheries Privatization and the Remaking of Fishery Systems.” Environment and Society 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2012.030104.
Donkersloot, Rachel, and Courtney Carothers. 2017. “Chapter 12 - Beyond Privatization: Rethinking Fisheries Stewardship and Conservation in the North Pacific.” In Conservation for the Anthropocene Ocean, edited by Phillip S. Levin and Melissa R. Poe, 253–70. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805375-1.00012-X.
Voo, Lee van der. 2016. The Fish Market: Inside the Big-Money Battle for the Ocean and Your Dinner Plate. St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
Media:
Talk by Dr. Leroy Little Bear on Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJSJ28eEUjI Talks and videos posted by Dr. Seth Macinko: http://sethmacinko.com/videos
Talk by Courtney that provides more depth on some of her ITQ research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_2qlfDngO4 Talk by Jessica Black, Courtney Carothers, and Janessa Esquible on Indigenizing Fisheries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=448tr90KUWQ
Planet Money episode that Michael mentions: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/11/04/454698093/episode-661-the-less-deadly-catch
Other links:
Survival denied report that Courtney mentions: http://allianceforajustsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Survival-Denied2.pdf
https://www.tamamta.org/
https://www.uaf.edu/ankn/publications/collective-works-of-angay/
https://oceans.ubc.ca/centre-for-indigenous-fisheries/
https://www.waysofknowingforum.ca/
In this episode, Stefan interviews Guido Caniglia.
Guido is the Scientific Director of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Austria. Guido’s work aims to shape epistemological and theoretical frameworks that contribute to ongoing scientific developments. Guido has worked in different scientific fields, from evolutionary-developmental biology to sustainability science and higher education for sustainable development. In his research, Guido studies how experimental and theoretical practices contribute to produce evidence and knowledge about complex phenomena of transformation, from evolutionary transitions in the history of life (e.g. the evolution of social behaviors) to purposeful transformations towards sustainability in our contemporary world (e.g. socio-ecological and socio-technical innovations).
Guido previously held a Marie-Curie post-doctoral fellowship in the Faculty of Sustainability at Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Florence (Italy) in 2010 while working in different academic communities mostly in Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United States. In January 2016 Guido obtained a second PhD, this time in Biology, from the Center for Biology and Society at Arizona State University (USA). From 2011 to January 2016 he also worked as Post-Doctoral researcher and project manager for the Global Classroom Project, a transnational partnership between Arizona State University and Leuphana University engaging in curriculum reform for higher education for sustainable development.
We talk about how to improve collaborative processes in science, and how to learn to collaborate while collaborating. We also discuss his perspectives on the types of knowledge needed to foster sustainability transformations, and how that knowledge would be best produced, also his perspectives on radical pluralism.
Guido’s Institute page
https://www.kli.ac.at/en/people/kli_team/view/244
KLI homepage
https://www.kli.ac.at/en
Guido’s Google Scholar profile
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=NQUM-sMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Freeth and Caniglia (2020) - Learning to collaborate while collaborating
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-019-00701-z
Caniglia, G., C. Luederitz, T. von Wirth, I. Fazey, B. Martín-López, K. Hondrila, A. König, H. von Wehrden, N. A. Schäpke, M. Laubichler, D. Lang, and D. J. Abson. 2020. A pluralistic and integrated approach to action-oriented knowledge for sustainability. Nature Sustainability.
Guido’s Twitter
https://twitter.com/guidocaniglia?lang=en
In this episode, Michael spoke with Derek Kauneckis, an associate professor at the Desert Research institute in Nevada. Derek spoke with Michael about his work on the waste commons as well as technological innovation, particularly with respect to water management. Throughout the program, Derek discussed the relevance of the commons literature in studying the complex, hyper-managed systems that he studies.
Derek's website: https://www.dri.edu/directory/derek-kauneckis/
In this episode, Hita, Maria and Dane were joined by Malini Ranganathan, the Faculty Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center and an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University. We talked about her journey towards interdisciplinary research, and then discussed how aspects of positionality--like gender and race--influences interdisciplinary research. We ended by hearing about her epic fails.
Malini’s website: https://www.maliniranga.com/
References
Caldeira TP. Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics, and politics in cities of the global south. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 2017;35(1):3-20. doi:10.1177/0263775816658479
Said, Edward W. Culture and imperialism. Vintage, 2012.
Fraser, Nancy. "What's critical about critical theory? The case of Habermas and gender." New German critique 35 (1985): 97-131.
In this episode Michael spoke with Hillary Angelo, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Hillary is an historical sociologist who focuses on the relationship between the environment and large-scale transformations in urban contexts. They discussed Hillary's recent book "How Green Became Good: Urbanized Nature and the Making of Cities and Citizens."
Hillary's website: http://www.hillaryangelo.com/
Video that Michael mentions in the conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txg-bPHZBV4&t=2698s
In this episode, Hita, Maria and Dane were joined by Georgina Cundill Kemp, Senior Program Specialist at the International Development Research Centre in Canada, and Praneeta Mudaliar, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Science at Ithaca College. We talked about their journeys towards interdisciplinary research, then discussed building interdisciplinary collaborations and the role of trust in collaborative research. We ended by hearing about their epic fails.
Georgina’s website: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YlMUPQIAAAAJ&hl
Praneeta’s website: https://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/pmudliar
In this episode, Hita, Maria and Dane were joined by Nanda Wijermans, a Researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. We talked about Nanda’s journey towards interdisciplinary research, and then discussed the unique opportunities and challenges of working in an interdisciplinary environment, and how to design effective interdisciplinary environments. We ended by hearing about an epic fail.
Nanda’s website: https://www.nandawijermans.nl/
Dane’s website:
https://sustainability.asu.edu/person/dane-whittaker/
In this episode of the Navigating Interdisciplinarity series, Hita, Maria and Dane were joined by Vanesa Castán Broto, Professor of Climate Urbanism at the Urban Institute, The University of Sheffield; and Jennifer Vanos, Professor of Climate at Health at the School of Sustainability, Arizona State University. We talked about Jenni’s and Vanesa’s journey towards interdisciplinary research, and the idea of interdisciplinarity as an interplay of disciplinary institutions. We also touched upon balancing our passion for research with strategizing for career advancement, and ended with our guests sharing some of their epic fails in their academic journey.
Vanesa’s website: https://urbaninstitute.group.shef.ac.uk/who-we-are/prof-vanesa-castan-broto/
Jenni’s website:
https://sustainability.asu.edu/person/jennifer-vanos/
Dane’s website:
https://sustainability.asu.edu/person/dane-whittaker/
References:
Castán Broto, Vanesa, Maya Gislason, and Melf-Hinrich Ehlers. 2009. “Practising Interdisciplinarity in the Interplay between Disciplines: Experiences of Established Researchers.” Environmental Science & Policy 12 (7): 922–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2009.04.005.
Vanos, Jennifer K., Ariane Middel, Michelle N. Poletti, and Nancy J. Selover. 2018. “Evaluating the Impact of Solar Radiation on Pediatric Heat Balance within Enclosed, Hot Vehicles.” Temperature (Austin, Tex.) 5 (3): 276–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/23328940.2018.1468205.
We also spoke about these other books and lectures
- Bogaard, Paul, ed. Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead: Philosophical Presuppositions of Science, 1924-1925. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
- Kuhn, Thomas S. The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago press, 2012.
- Halberstam, Judith, and Jack Halberstam. The queer art of failure. Duke University Press, 2011.
- Vatn, Arild. Institutions and the Environment. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007.
This episode is the first of a six-episode miniseries we are hosting from the new Navigating Interdisciplinarity Podcast, produced by the Early Career Network of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC-ECN).
Series hosts: Hita Unnikrishnan and Maria Gerullis
Facilitators: Dane Whittaker and Nusrat Molla
In the Navigating Interdisciplinarity Series the hosts will discuss challenges faced and opportunities provided by engaging in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work, particularly from the perspective of early career researchers.
In this episode, Hita and Maria together with Dane Whittaker, PhD Student in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, were joined by Svenja Hippel, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Wuerzburg and Juan Nicolas Hernandez, an Earth Institute Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University. We talked about Svenja and Nico’s journey towards interdisciplinary research, and then discussed building your research profile for the job market and how to answer the question “where do I fit?” We ended by hearing about some epic fails.
Svenja’s website: https://sites.google.com/view/svenjahippel
Nico’s website: https://www.jnicoha.com/
Dane’s website: https://sustainability.asu.edu/person/dane-whittaker/
Papers
Hernandez-Aguilera, J.N., Anderson, W., Bridges, A.L. et al. Supporting interdisciplinary careers for sustainability. Nat Sustain 4, 374–375 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00679-y
Nicolas Hernandez-Aguilera. Coffee, hummus, and sustainability: What is the future of our careers? Supporting interdisciplinary career paths to solve sustainability crises. https://sustainabilitycommunity.springernature.com/posts/coffee-hummus-and-sustainability-what-is-the-future-of-our-careers-supporting-interdisciplinary-career-paths-to-solve-sustainability-crises?channel_id=behind-the-paper
In this episode, Stefan spoke with Graeme Cumming. Graeme is a Professor at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia and the Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Graeme has a wide range of interests centering around understanding spatial aspects of ecology and the relevance of scale in ecosystem and social-ecological system function and resilience. He is also interested in the applications of landscape ecology and complexity theory to conservation and the sustainable management of natural resources.
In the conversation, they discuss his extensive international experience, and the topics he has focused on throughout his career, including his upbringing in Zimbabwe. We discuss how theory is often lacking in applied research, and how building theory, particularly at the relevant scales, is an important challenge in his research program. We close the interview with his vision for examining what is beyond resilience, and the theoretical ideas he is interested in over the coming years.
Link to Post-Ostrom agenda paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1877343520300129
Link to scale mismatch on GBR paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220303511
University page
https://www.coralcoe.org.au/person/gscumming
Google Scholar page
www.incommonpodcast.org
Twitter: @incommonpod
In this episode Michael spoke with Sara Meerow, an assistant professor at the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. Sara is an interdisciplinary social-ecological systems scientist who focuses on urban geography and planning. Sara spoke with Michael about her work on the concept of urban resilience and on multifunctional green infrastructure projects, and the ways in which such projects often favor biophysical interventions to deal with stormwater-related sewage overflows, rather than broader environmental and social issues such as heat and pollution.
Sara's website: https://sgsup.asu.edu/sara-meerow
References:
Meerow, Sara, and Joshua P. Newell. 2019. “Urban Resilience for Whom, What, When, Where, and Why?” Urban Geography 40 (3): 309–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2016.1206395.
Meerow, Sara. 2020. “The Politics of Multifunctional Green Infrastructure Planning in New York City.” Cities 100 (May): 102621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102621.
In this episode, Divya and Michael interview Tomas Koontz and Praneeta Mudaliar. Tomas Koontz is a Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington. Praneeta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences at the Ithaca College. Tom was Divya's Ph.D. advisor, and Praneeta was her Ph.D. cohort, so doing this episode was also like a virtual reunion and served as an opportunity for Praneeta and Divya to reminisce and reflect on their journeys of navigating graduate school as international students in the United States, and Tom shared his experience of working with and mentoring international students.
Both Tom and Praneeta discussed their case studies on using polycentricity as a lens to study fisheries management in Lake Victoria (Praneeta) and collaborative governance of the socio-ecological systems in Puget Sound (Tom). Praneeta elaborated on how she used the concept of polycentricity to examine power dynamics in multi-level and multi-actor interactions in lake fisheries governance. Tom shared how the lens of polycentricity enabled him to examine multi-stakeholder collaboration in decision-making and collaborative governance among stakeholders across different scales. Together, both Tom and Praneeta reflected on ways science and scientific theories can inform practitioners in their decision-making process.
Praneeta's website: https://www.ithaca.edu/faculty/pmudliar
Tom's website: https://directory.tacoma.uw.edu/employee/koontz31
References:
-
Mudaliar, P. (2020). Polycentric to monocentric governance: Power dynamics in Lake Victoria's fisheries. Environmental Policy and Governance.
-
Mudaliar, P., & O'Brien, L. (2021). Crowding-out lower-level authorities: Interactions and transformations of higher and lower-level authorities in Kenya's polycentric fisheries. Environmental Science & Policy, 118, 27-35.
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Koontz, T. M. (2021). Science and scale mismatch: Horizontal and vertical information sharing in the Puget Sound polycentric governance system. Journal of Environmental Management, 290, 112600.
-
Koontz, T. M. (2019). Cooperation in polycentric governance systems. Governing complexity: Analyzing and applying polycentricity, 115-132.
In this episode, Michael chatted with Eduardo Brondizio, a professor of anthropology at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Eduardo spoke to Michael about his research on land use and land cover change in the Brazilian amazon over several decades, as well as his work as the editor-in-chief of two major academic journals: Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability and Global Environmental Change. They also talked about Eduardo's identity as an interdisciplinary anthropologist.
Eduardo's website: https://anthropology.indiana.edu/about/faculty/brondizio-eduardo.html
In this Commoning episode, Courtney speaks to Edella Schlager, Tomás Olivier, and Ruth Meinzen Dick on the Water Commons. Edella, Tomás and Ruth were part of the organizing team for the IASC 2021 Virtual Water Commons conference held in May. Edella Schlager is the Director of the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. Tomás Olivier is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration in the School of Public Administration at Florida Atlantic University. Finally, Ruth Meinzen Dick is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. In this conversation, we run the gamut on water commons, discussing Ruth, Tomás and Edella's take on the state of water commons research, core canonical topics, such as collective action in governance of water that remains of top relevance today, and new directions, such as the need for greater theorizing on complexity and coordination around collective action in water commons. We also get some insights from the field, drawing on Edella and Tomás research linking institutions and behavior in the New York City watershed, Tomás insights from work in Argentina and Ruth's recent work on irrigation games for social learning in India. You can find more about the Water commons Conference and other IASC events on their website: https://iasc-commons.org/ Here are a couple of the publications that we reference in the conversation: Ruth Meinzen-Dick's paper on property rights and collective action in irrigation : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377414000894 Edella Schlager and Tomás Olivier's paper on integrating institutional analysis and behavior: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/psj.12429?casa_token=qby9ACV3S74AAAAA:XyZjtK25Sat87uRHnJ3Uctwl3wVNrFLdN50vCAlkwgWlkCGg2IDCouQ8yp3C3UH_vxYREuUAkG0I For more information about our guests, you can check out their webpages: Ruth Meinzen-Dick: https://www.ifpri.org/profile/ruth-meinzen-dick Tomás Olivier: https://www.fau.edu/artsandletters/public-administration/people/olivier/ Edella Schlager: https://sgpp.arizona.edu/people/edella-schlager
In this episode Michael is joined by a guest host, Karen Bieluch, a colleague of his at Dartmouth College. Karen led a conversation with her friend and colleague, Bridie McGreavy. Bridie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine, Orono. During the interview, Karen asked Bridie about her work studying the shellfish fisheries in Maine, with a focus on the ways in which communication affects collaborative freshwater conversation efforts.
Bridie's website: https://bmcgreavy.org/
Also check out: The Mudflat, a collaborative website of the Maine Shellfish Learning Network
Michael and Courtney interviewed Nicola Ulibarri, an assistant professor in the department of urban planning and public policy at the University of California, Irvine. We talked about Nicola's work on collaborative governance and water management plans in the Central valley of California, where Nicola has been studying the ability of a variety of such plans to address climate change and social equity. We also highlighted one of the best figures we've seen depicting a groundwater-based social-ecological system! This is from the first reference listed below.
Nicola's website: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/ulibarri/
References mentioned:
Ulibarri, Nicola, and Nataly Escobedo Garcia. 2020. “Comparing Complexity in Watershed Governance: The Case of California.” WATER 12 (3): 766.
Ulibarri, Nicola, Nataly Escobedo Garcia, Rebecca L. Nelson, Amanda E. Cravens, and Ryan J. McCarty. 2021. “Assessing the Feasibility of Managed Aquifer Recharge in California.” Water Resources Research 57 (3).
In this episode, Michael is joined by a new co-host of the podcast, Divya Gupta, to interview Forrest Fleischman, their friend and colleague currently working as a professor of forest resources at the University of Minnesota. Forrest talked to Michael and Divya about the two years he spent in India studying forest governance, his examination of joint forest management programs there, and his discovery that such projects seem to have often focused more on simplified metrics around tree planting and plantations than engaging with local communities. He also discussed his empirical examination of the policy known as forest landscape restoration, a supposedly transformative approach that generates win-wins for all involved. Forrest has become an important voice in this space, raising doubts about the ability of projects oriented primarily around tree plantings to solve local to global environmental issues.
Forrest's website: https://forestry.umn.edu/people/forrest-fleischman
References:
Fleischman, F. 2014. Why do Foresters Plant Trees? Testing Theories of Bureaucratic Decision-Making in Central India. World Development 62: 62-74. Fleischman, F. et al. 2018. Pitfalls of Tree Planting Show Why We Need People-Centered Natural Climate Solutions. BioScience 70(11): 947–950. Veldman, J.W. et al. 2019. Comment on The global tree restoration potential. Science 366 (6463).
Maria Claudia Lopez and Frank van Laerhoven are speaking with Beril Ocaklı.
Beril co-authored a recent contribution to the International Journal of the Commons titled ‘Shades of Conflict in Kyrgyzstan: National Actor Perceptions and Behaviour in Mining’ with her colleagues Tobias Krueger and Jörg Niewöhner.
The episode starts with the proper pronunciation of Beril’s name, and wraps up with reflections on the importance of diversity in approaching the commons and commons scholarship. In between, the discussion gears around the article – the prequel, its message, and the sequel.
Beril Ocaklı is a doctoral researcher at IRI THESys. She holds a BA in International Economics from the Corvinus University of Budapest (2006) and a MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE) (2007). She has a track record of leading international transdisciplinary cooperation projects on behalf of the German Federal Government, EU and other multinational organizations in resource governance in Eurasia.
- To find more details on Beril and her work, her profile page at IRI THESys is a good place to start;
- To get a taste of some of Beril’s unsalted opinions we suggest you look her up on Twitter;
- To hear Beril talk some more about the topic of gold mining in Kyrgyzstan go to The Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT) Podcast Talk March 2021 and the Voices on Central Asia for her recent interview on politics of gold mining.
www.incommonpodcast.org
Stefan Partelow speaks with Elke Kellner and Andreas Thiel on topics related to polycentricity, linked to the upcoming International Association for the Study of the Commons virtual conference on Polycentricity May 17-19, 2021. You can find more information about the conference and other IASC events on their website iasc-commons.org/.
Polycentricity conference:
https://2021polycentricity.iasc-commons.org/
Elke Kellner is a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research in Switzerland.
https://www.wsl.ch/en/employees/kellner.html
Andreas Thiel is a professor of International Agricultural Policy and Environmental Governance at the University of Kassel in Germany.
https://www.uni-kassel.de/fb11agrar/fachgebiete-/-einrichtungen/internationale-agrarpolitik-und-umweltgovernance/team/prof-dr-andreas-thiel
www.incommonpodcast.org
In today’s episode, Courtney and Stefan are speaking with Kimberley Peters.
Kim is a Professor Marine Governance at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB), a research organisation in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and University of Oldenburg (UOL), in Germany.
As a human geographer, she is interested in the social, cultural and political workings of the world around us. Her research group seeks to explore how governance does not just happen anywhere, but somewhere, and is shaped by spatial processes. Her work investigates how the geography of what we seek to govern, or do govern, is shaped by location, the character and qualities of place and relations with surrounding spaces.
In the episode, she reflects on how geography has dealt with and is influenced by its historical legacy, and how much of the current perspectives in human geography are critical because of that history. We also discuss her relationship to teaching and her students, working in an interdisciplinary institute, leaving your disciplinary comfort zone, and the research topics she is currently pursuing.
Kim has provided a list of references below regarding the history of geography for further information, as she notes that her perspectives are only one of many and not fully comprehensive. She encourages listeners to read the pieces below:
For a good overview of the history and 'turns' of geography see: Cresswell T (2013) Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. Wiley Blackwell: Oxford
On geography's relation with colonial and imperial practice: Driver F (1993) Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Wiley Blackwell: Oxford.
On geography's relation with 20th Century German geopolitics: Klinke, I., & Bassin, M. (2018). Introduction: Lebensraum and its discontents. Journal of Historical Geography, 61, 53-58.
On closing Geography departments: Sacks B (2015) What happened to the American geography department? Geography Directions (online): https://blog.geographydirections.com/2015/04/08/what-happened-to-the-american-geography-department/
On decolonialism and geography: Esson, J., Noxolo, P., Baxter, R., Daley, P., & Byron, M. (2017). The 2017 RGS‐IBG chair's theme: Decolonising geographical knowledges, or reproducing coloniality?. Area, 49(3), 384-388
https://kimberleypeters.com/
Your Human Geography Dissertation:
https://study.sagepub.com/yourhumangeography
Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity:
https://hifmb.de/
Kim's Twitter
https://twitter.com/drkimpeters?lang=en
In today’s commoning episode we are talking about the Urban Commons in advance of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) virtual conference on this topic, which is happening May 6-8: https://2021urban.iasc-commons.org/
Michael spoke with three of the organizers of this conference: Hita Unnikrishnan from the University of Sheffield, Rimjhim Aggarwal from Arizona State University, and Harini Nagendra from Azim Premji University.
In today’s commoning episode we are talking about topics related to commoning and the Anthropocene, in advance of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) virtual conference on Commoning the Anthropocene. To do this, Stefan Partelow is talking with two organizers of the conference, Therese Lindahl and Jean-Denis Mathias, about the topics and organization of the conference as well as their own research, and of course interdisciplinarity and science cooperation.
https://2021anthropocene.iasc-commons.org/
Therese Lindahl is the program director for behavior, economics, and nature and the Beijer institute of ecological economics in Stockholm Sweden. She conducts research on collective action problems around shared natural resources, and investigates how local resource users perceive and respond to the increasingly challenging resource conditions that they are confronted with.
https://beijer.kva.se/people-beijer/therese-lindahl/
https://beijer.kva.se/programmes/ben/
Jean-Denis Mathias is research director at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and is part of the Complex System lab.
He has a background in physics and mechanics of material, and his current research deals with the dynamical modeling of social-ecological systems such as agent-based models and differential equations. Specifically, this work aims to understand the sustainable management and transitions of these systems for short-term and long-term benefits.
www.incommonpodcast.org
In this episode Michael spoke with Natalie Ban, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Natalie spoke with Michael about her work with coastal indigenous communities in British Columbia, and the importance she places on engaging with her local partners in the right way, without imposing her own research questions or hypotheses, looking for windows of opportunity for her work, and trying to make sure that her work has local value. Natalie also described a distinction between two fundamentally different ways of viewing natural resource use: one that views use as extractive and detrimental, and the other which combines use with stewardship, as the indigenous communities that Natalie works with do.
Natalie's website: https://natalieban.wordpress.com/
Relevant articles by Natalie:
Ban, N. C., E. Wilson, and D. Neasloss. 2020. Historical and contemporary indigenous marine conservation strategies in the North Pacific. Conservation biology: the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology 34(1):5–14.
Ban, N., E. Wilson, and D. Neasloss. 2019. Strong historical and ongoing indigenous marine governance in the northeast Pacific Ocean: a case study of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation. Ecology and Society 24(4):10. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11091-240410
Frank van Laerhoven and Stefan Partelow are speaking with Karen Bradshaw. Karen was a recent guest editor in a special issue of the International Journal of the Commons titled ‘Overlapping Resources and Mismatched Property Rights’ with her colleagues Billy Christmas and Dean Lueck. The special issue features 9 articles including and editorial led by guest editors.
https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.5334/ijc.1070/
Karen Bradshaw is a Professor at Arizona State University in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, and holds a joint position as a Senior Sustainability Scientist in Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation. She researches governance of natural resources, with an emphasis on emerging regulatory approaches including certification regimes, public-private partnerships, and collaborative settlements. She is an expert on wildfire law and has also written about land development and forest management.
Karen's University page:
https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/2188921
https://twitter.com/km_bradshaw/
In Common Podcast
www.incommonpodcast.org
https://twitter.com/incommonpod?lang=en
In this episode Michael spoke with Marta Berbes, a professor at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. During their conversation, Marta discussed her work on ecosystem service provision in several agricultural communities in Costa Rica and the importance of asking who gets what services, and why? Michael also asked Marta about her emphasis on participatory action research and her more recent work in South Phoenix on resilience and youth perspectives on green space.
Marta's website: https://sustainability-innovation.asu.edu/person/marta-berbes/
Marta's paper on ecosystem services in Costa Rica:
Berbés-Blázquez, M., M. J. Bunch, P. R. Mulvihill, G. D. Peterson, and B. van Wendel de Joode. 2017. Understanding how access shapes the transformation of ecosystem services to human well-being with an example from Costa Rica. Ecosystem Services 28:320–327.
Paper from Jesse Ribot and Nancy Peluso describing the theory of access that Marta mentions:
Ribot, J. C., and N. L. Peluso. 2009. A theory of access. Rural sociology 68(2):153–181
This insight episode is taken from full episode 058, Stefan's conversation with Anna-Katharina Hornidge.
Anna is the Director of the German Development Institute in Bonn, Germany, one of the leading research institutions and think tanks for global development and international cooperation worldwide. She is also a Professor of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Bonn.
Anna refers to herself as a Development and Knowledge Sociologist with a focus on natural resource governance and sense-making, the social construction of knowledges and 'realities', as well as cultures of knowledge production and sharing. She is also an advocate of transformative science to advance inter- and transdisciplinary science cooperation.
In the clip, we explore Anna’s views on social constructivism, how it contrasts with other science perspectives, and how it is useful for understanding challenges at the science-policy interface.
Anna’s homepage
https://www.die-gdi.de/en/anna-katharina-hornidge/
Anna’s twitter
https://twitter.com/AnnaK_Hornidge
German Development Institute twitter
In Common Podcast
www.incommonpodcast.org
In this episode, Courtney speaks with Luis Alexis Rodríguez-Cruz, a PhD candidate in Food Systems at the University of Vermont. They discuss Luis' unexpected path to his research on Puerto Ricans farmer adaptation and food security following Hurricane Maria. Courtney and Luis also talk about Luis' efforts in science communication, sharing his research in Puerto Rico and beyond. Finally, they discuss a blog post Luis recently published on "How to not suffer (much) in graduate school" and his take-aways for taking care of yourself in academia. If you'd like to dig a little deeper into the content Luis discusses in this podcast, here are a few resources: Luis' blog post on "On Not Suffering (Much) in Graduate School: Part 2" can be found on Luis' blog here: https://luisalexis.com/2020/10/28/on-not-suffering-much-in-the-phd-part-2/ and can also be found on the In Common Podcast blog. Luis' recent, open access article in PLOS ONE on "Awareness of climate change's impacts and motivation to adapt are not enough to drive action: A look of Puerto Rican farmers after Hurricane Maria" can be found here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244512 Luis' piece in Science Working Life on staying connected to Puerto Rican politics and current events while studying in Vermont: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6456/946?_ga=2.123471695.530166458.1615833515-1952206471.1615833515 He also has a Spanish version of this piece on his blog here: https://luisalexis.com/2019/08/29/queria-involucrarme-en-las-protestas-del-verano-pero-me-encontraba-lejos-de-puerto-rico/ To learn about the Puerto Rico Science Policy Action Network that Luis is involved in: https://www.cienciapr.org/en/blogs/pr-span/about
In this episode Michael spoke with Josh Stoll, an assistant professor of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. Josh spoke with Michael about the trends in and relationship between wild catch fisheries and aquaculture in Maine. He also spoke about his professional identity, place attachment to Maine, and his oyster farm that he manages. Finally, they discussed the Local Catch Network that Josh co-founded to strengthen community-based fishing systems.
Links:
Josh's website: https://joshua-stoll.com/
Local catch website: https://localcatch.org/
References:
Stoll, J. S., H. M. Leslie, M. L. Britsch, and C. M. Cleaver. 2019. Evaluating aquaculture as a diversification strategy for Maine’s commercial fishing sector in the face of change. Marine Policy 107:103583.
Today’s insight episode is from episode 043, Stefan’s interview with Kennith Wallen.
Kenny is an Assistant Professor of Human Dimensions of Fish and Wildlife at the University of Idaho. His professorship is a joint position with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, so Kenny has one foot in academia and one in practice. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources; his M.S. at Oklahoma State University in Zoology; B.A. at Truman State University in Psychology.
In the clip, Kenny explains the need for a platform that can help us better find like-minded researchers with similar interests for collaborating. Kenny is helping to develop and online platform, called the Conservation Social Sciences Community Network, which is now online. On the site you can sign-up for free and find others to collaborate with around the world.
Conservation Social Sciences Community Network map:
https://arcg.is/1uG4m8
Sign-up:
https://arcg.is/10LivT
Kenny’s lab website
https://www.human-element-lab.com/
Kenny’s Google Scholar page
www.incommonpodcast.org
https://twitter.com/incommonpod?lang=en
https://www.instagram.com/incommonpod/?hl=en
Stefan and Michael interview Erik Thulin, Jessica Blythe and Caroline Ferguson on topics related to the upcoming Fisheries and Aquaculture Commons virtual conference hosted by the IASC on March 9-12. This is the second episode in a series covering this year’s thematic conferences from the International Association for the Study of the Commons.
Erik Thulin is the applied behavioral science lead at Rare, and is directing the agenda for Center for Behavior and the Environment. He focuses on bridging the academic-practice gap through collaborations with research partners and environmental practitioners.
Jessica Blythe is an Assistant Professor at the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre at Brock University in Canada. Trained as a human geographer, Jessica’s research explores how various groups of people experience social-ecological change and what explains their differential capacities to respond.
Caroline Ferguson is a fourth year PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University. Her current research investigates gender in Palau's sea cucumber fishery through an intersectional lens, as well as forced migration and climate adaptation in the Marshall Islands.
Conference website
https://2021fisheries.iasc-commons.org/
Erik Thulin
https://rare.org/person/erik-thulin/
https://behavior.rare.org/
https://twitter.com/EThulin
[Cooperative Behavior Adoption Guide]
https://behavior.rare.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Cooperative-Behavior-Adoption-Guide.pdf
Jessica Blythe
https://brocku.ca/esrc/jessica-blythe/
Caroline Ferguson
https://profiles.stanford.edu/caroline-ferguson
www.ceferguson.com
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.625389/abstract
This episode is the first of our new Journal series.
Here our team will interview authors who have published in the International Journal of the Commons (IJC), asking them about their specific published paper, its purpose and future directions. The interviews wont simply summarize the articles, but aim to add additional insight into the author's intentions and reflections.
We won’t be interviewing authors from every published piece, but are partnering with the journal editors to develop a selection process. In the future, our ambition is to work with other community oriented journals that embody the values we put forward with this podcast and platform, and to conduct interviews with a wider diversity of authors.
In this first episode, Stefan Partelow and Michael Cox interview the editors of the International Journal of the Commons (IJC) about a recent editorial reviewing the state of the field of commons research and lay out their vision for addressing some of the gaps and challenges in the journal and community going forward. The three editors are Frank van Laerhoven, Micael Schoon and Sergio Villamayor-Tomas.
The editorial is titled: “Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Ostrom’s Governing the Commons: Traditions and Trends in the Study of the Commons, Revisited”
Link to article:
https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.5334/ijc.1030/
In this episode, Michael spoke with two organizers of an upcoming virtual conference being held by the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). This conference is taking place February 24-26, and is the first in a series of virtual conferences being held by the IASC.
Conference website: https://2021space.iasc-commons.org/
IASC events website: https://iasc-commons.org/future-conferences/
In this episode, Michael spoke with Ramiro Berardo, a professor in the School of Environment & Natural Resources at the Ohio State University. Ramiro discussed with Michael his research on natural resource governance using social network analysis (SNA), the diversity of resources that are now available for scholars trying to learn SNA, and the more recent trend towards social-ecological network analysis. Michael also asked Ramiro to talk about the extensive effort he has put in to his online teaching during the pandemic.
Ramiro's website: http://www.ramiroberardo.net/
Papers that Michael and Ramiro discuss:
Berardo, R., & Scholz, J. T. (2010). Self‐organizing policy networks: Risk, partner selection, and cooperation in estuaries. American Journal of Political Science, 54(3), 632-649.
Berardo, R., & Lubell, M. (2016). Understanding what shapes a polycentric governance system. Public Administration Review, 76(5), 738-751.
Stefan and Michael interview Henrik Österblom.
Henrik is the Science Director of the Stockholm Resilience Center and a Professor at the University of Stockholm in Sweden.
He has a PhD in Marine Ecology from the Department of Systems Ecology at Stockholm University, and a Master’s Degree in Behavioural Ecology from the Department of Zoology at Uppsala University.
He is interested in marine ecosystems and ways to improve ocean stewardship. Starting as a seabird ecologist, with a particular interest in social interactions between alcids, he has worked on understanding how the Baltic Sea is managed, how international collaboration emerged to address non-compliance in Southern Ocean fisheries, and how transnational corporations shape the present and future ocean. Ongoing work is focusing on the role of science in society and the cultural evolution of global prosocial behavior. He has worked at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and as Special Advisor to the Swedish Government in the Secretariat for the Environmental Advisory Council.
Österblom has facilitated the Keystone Dialogues, a global co-production project including major private actors in global seafood, which has resulted in the establishment of the Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship (SeaBOS) initiative, aimed to transform global seafood towards more sustainable practices. This project is funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. He is also principal investigator of project New solutions to marine problems, aimed at accelerating marine ecosystem knowledge through the use of autonomous drones and artificial intelligence and funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.
Österblom is a member of the Expert Group for the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy and member of the IMBER Human Dimensions Working Group. He serves on the international advisory board of the South American Institute for Resilience and Sustainability Studies (SARAS²), as board member of Race for the Baltic, and as chairman of the SeaBOS Fundraising foundation. He is subject editor for Ecology and Society, and PLOS One.
Henrik’s SRC page
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/meet-our-team/staff/2008-01-09-osterblom.html
Seafood Business for Ocean Stewardship project
https://seabos.org/
Unsustainable science (extended pdf also includes a Spanish version of the paper): https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(19)30017-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS259033221930017X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
SARAS work on connecting science and art: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/issues/view.php?sf=112
The keystone actor analysis: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127533
Developing SeaBOS and its initial results:
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/34/9038
The “Ocean 100” analysis:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/3/eabc8041
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This ‘Insight’ clip is taken from full episode 026, Michael and Stefan’s conversation with Emily Darling and Georgina Gurney.
Emily is a Conservation Scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Georgina is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.
In the clip, they both reflect on lessons learned from a transdisciplinary social-ecological coral reef monitoring project conducted in multiple countries.
Emily’s website: http://www.emilysdarling.com/
Georgina’s website: https://www.coralcoe.org.au/person/georgina-gurney
New paper led by Georgina: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632071931420X
Smith Conservation Research Fellowship that Emily enrolled in: https://conbio.org/mini-sites/smith-fellows
SNAPP program website: https://snappartnership.net/
Data mermaid tool website: datamermaid.org
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This insight episode is taken from full episode 30, Stefan’s conversation with Ina Möller.
Ina Möller is a postdoctoral researcher in the environmental policy group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Ina completed her PhD in the Department of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden, where her thesis was titled The Emergent Politics of Geoengineering. She also has a Master degree in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University, and a Bachelor degree in Political Science and Public Administration.
She currently works together with Prof. Aarti Gupta on anticipation, governance and transparency in the politics of climate change. Her principal focus has been on the case of climate engineering, which describes large-scale interventions into natural systems that are envisioned to stabilize global temperatures. She continues to study the reaction of actors throughout society as the idea of engineering the climate becomes more normalized in climate science.
https://www.wur.nl/en/Persons/Ina-dr.-IM-Ina-Moller.htm
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ina_Moeller
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In this episode, Stefan interviews Joerg Niewoehner.
Joerg is a professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, where he is also the director of the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, with the acronym (IRI THESys). He holds a PhD in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia. In 2004, he joined the Institute of European Ethnology at Humboldt University in Berlin to develop a collaborative program between Social Anthropology and the Life Sciences. He now holds a chair in Social Anthropology of Human-Environment Relations. He conducts ethnographic research at the intersection of science and technology studies, social anthropology and environmental sciences focusing particularly on the qualities of urbanisation, social-ecological change, and metabolic and market dynamics. He also serves on the board of the Georg Simmel Center for Metropolitan Studies.
In episode, we discuss how reflecting on theory of science can help position scholars towards understanding interdisciplinary challenges. We also discuss the challenges with inter- and trans-discipliarity, along with his perspectives on the challenges and paths forward. We touch on how the structural organization of universities and institutes balance traditional disciplinary orientation and more innovative forms of academic organization to foster interdisciplinarity. Joerg also talk about his future research interests in long social-ecological research with a focus on qualitative and quality change using qualitative data. For this he is interested in pushing forward innovative ways to archive qualitative data in social groups as living knowledge and archives rather than traditional digital repositories.
https://www.iri-thesys.org/
https://www.iri-thesys.org/people/niewoehner
https://scholar.google.de/citations?hl=en&user=PGZ0pdcAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
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In this episode, Stefan interviews Emily Boyd, an in-person interview recorded back in January 2020.
Emily is Director of Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies and Professor in Sustainability Science. She is a leading social scientist with a background in international development, environment and climate change, with a focus on the interdisciplinary nexus of poverty, livelihoods and resilience in relation to global environmental change. Emily is currently leading work on undesirable resilience, politics of loss and damage and intersectionality in societal transitions, including on transformations under climate change.
Emily Boyd is also an author for the IPCC, IPBES, and UKCCRA and is an Earth System Governance Senior Fellow.
https://www.lucsus.lu.se/emily-boyd
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=CatOY9oAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
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In this episode Michael spoke with Brent Loken, a Global Food Lead Scientist at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Together they discussed Brent's realization that conservation ultimately needs to engage with how we meet peoples' needs, and that food is at the center of this. After describing the path he has taken leading up to his current position, Brent talked about his work at the WWF to promote a global transformation in our food system.
Brent's information:
Website: https://www.worldwildlife.org/experts/brent-loken
Twitter: @brentloken
Email: brent.loken@wwf.org
Link to a WWF project on Planet-based diets that Brent is involved in:
https://planetbaseddiets.panda.org/
This insight episode is from episode 006, Stefan’s interview with Sonya Graci.
Sonya Graci is an Associate Professor at the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Ryerson, University in Toronto, Ontario. She is also the Director of the Hospitality and Tourism Research Institute. Sonya has worked on numerous projects around the world related to sustainable tourism development and has focused her attention on community capacity building in Honduras, Indonesia, Canada, Fiji and China. She has a keen interest in working with Aboriginal communities in developing sustainable forms of tourism. She also has a passion for increasing sustainability in marine environments and has focused much of her research on sustainable tourism development in island states. Sonya is the author of two books and several journal articles and industry publications.
Sonya's links
https://www.ryerson.ca/tedrogersschool/hospitality-tourism-management/faculty-and-research/sonya-graci/
https://accommodatinggreen.com/
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=GVQ1fy8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
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In this episode, Stefan interviews Anna-Katharina Hornidge. Anna is the Director of the German Development Institute in Bonn, Germany, one of the leading research institutions and think tanks for global development and international cooperation worldwide. She is also a Professor of Global Sustainable Development at the University of Bonn.
Anne refers to herself as a Development and Knowledge Sociologist with a focus on natural resource governance and sense-making, the social construction of knowledges and 'realities', as well as cultures of knowledge production and sharing. She is also an advocate of transformative science to advance inter- and transdisciplinary science cooperation.
In the episode, Anna tells us about her career and path into science leadership through Southeast Asian Studies, sociology, development and environmental governance research. We then discuss how she draws on a constructivist perspective, and how this can be applied to understand how and why knowledge is produced within the science system, and the implications this had on funding structures, outcomes and development politics. Anna also gives her take on making interdisciplinary research work in practice, and the challenges with pushing forward a transformative science agenda.
Anna’s homepage
https://www.die-gdi.de/en/anna-katharina-hornidge/
Anna’s twitter
https://twitter.com/AnnaK_Hornidge
German Development Institute twitter
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In this episode we talked about our favorite books of 2020, as well as some we want to read in 2021. The books we discussed are listed below in alphabetical order by title:
All We Can Save by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson
Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Control of Nature by John McPhee
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth
The End of the Myth by Greg Grandin
Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams
Far-fetched Facts by Richard Rottenburg
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollen
Invisible women by Caroline Criado Perez
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler
Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
On the Backs of Tortoises by Elizabeth Hennessy
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
The Paradoxes of Transparency by Doug Wilson
Range by David Epstein
Seeing Like a State by James Scott
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
Unhinged by Daniel Carlat
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
In this episode, Courtney speaks with Bill Blomquist, a Professor of Political Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and a fellow at the Ostrom Workshop. We explore Bill's ground-breaking and decade-spanning research into California groundwater governance. We talk about Bill's work tracking the evolution of groundwater policy and institutions, the unique theoretical insights we can learn about natural resource governance from California's most recent groundwater experiment, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, and finally we end with some reflections on Bill's time working with the Ostrom Workshop.
If you'd like to dig a little deeper into the content Bill discusses in this podcast, here are a few resources:
The Commons Governance program at the Ostrom Workshop: https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/research/commons/index.html
The special issue of Society and Natural Resources on the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, featuring a few articles by Bill: https://t.co/66njZziLk6?amp=1
NSF-funded project led by Anita Milman at UMass Amherst on California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act that Bill is a collaborator on. This project focuses on inter-agency coordination and Bill mentions it in the discussion in this podcast on mandated-coordination-vs-local-autonomy: https://watergovernance.umasscreate.net/groundwater-sustainability/sgma/
This insight clip is from full episode 53, Michael and Courtney’s interview with Jacopo Baggio.
Jacopo is an assistant professor at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida.
In this insight clip, Jacopo answers a few questions related to the need for multiple methods and the challenges associated with social science research.
Jacopo's website:
In Common website
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Today’s ‘Insight’ episode is from full episode 22, Stefan’s interview with Liz Carlisle.
Liz's UCSB page
https://www.es.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/lizcarlisle
In this clip, Liz explains how her music career has influenced her ethnographic research, with lessons we can all learn about being present.
Liz Carlisle is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at University of California, Santa Barbara, where her work focuses on fostering a more just and sustainable food system. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard University, and she formerly served as Legislative Correspondent for Agriculture and Natural Resources in the Office of U.S. Senator Jon Tester. Recognized for her academic publishing with the Elsevier Atlas Award, which honors research with social impact, Liz has also written numerous pieces for general audience readers, in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. She is the author of two books about transition to sustainable farming: Lentil Underground (winner of the 2016 Montana Book Award) and Grain by Grain, coauthored with farmer Bob Quinn.
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This is the first episode of our new series titled ‘Commoning'. Stefan, Michael and Courtney are joined by Michael Schoon (ASU) to discuss the following questions:
What makes a good scientist?
How do we transparently communicate the limitations of our research, without undermining it’s perceived value for our peers, journals and the public?
Michael Schoon
https://sustainability.asu.edu/person/michael-schoon/
Similar to our Insight series, the ‘Commoning’ series will have its own numbering system for reference.
As we are aiming to expand the type of content we provide on the podcast, the Commoning series will provide informal discussions among our podcast team, and we will be inviting additional guests to join us. Topics for discussion on this series will be wide open. This may include current events, recent topics on research, teaching and practice, reflections on previous interviews, or simply, whatever comes up! We want to provide an episode series that is not focused specifically on a guest, but allows for an open conversation on a wide range of topics.
We are calling this the ‘Commoning’ series, as we believe the term embodies the core values we are trying to put forward with this podcast. Providing a space for open, fun, but also critical conversations for our listeners, to share ideas and knowledge that can contribute to our science community.
Today’s ‘Insight’ episode is from full episode 32, our interview with Meredith Niles.
Meredith is a multidisciplinary scientist working in socio-ecological and food systems. Currently she is an assistant professor in food systems and policy at the University of Vermont in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences.
In the clip, Courtney asks Meredith about her advocacy for open access publishing, why it is important, and resources for those looking for more information.
Meredith's website: www.meredithtniles.com
Resources on open science:
Sherpa Romeo: http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php
SPARC: https://sparcopen.org/
In this episode Michael and Stefan spoke with Xavier Basurto, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. We talked about the development of his career that led him to Duke, and a current project he is co-leading in collaboration with the FAO and WorldFish, a CGIAR research center, known as Illuminating Hidden Harvests. Based on a paper that Xavier recently co-authored, we also talked about the importance of pre- and post-harvest arrangements in fisheries, as well as the difference between the patron-client model and the cooperative model for resource management.
Xavier dedicated the interview to his two daughters, Sofia and Ghita.
Xavier's website: https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/xavierbasurto/?_ga=2.23995258.11664891.1606752433-415164452.1605284574
Hidden harvests project page: https://www.worldfishcenter.org/hidden-harvests
Xavier's paper that we discuss:
Basurto, Xavier, Abigail Bennett, Emilie Lindkvist, and Maja Schlüter. 2020. “Governing the Commons beyond Harvesting: An Empirical Illustration from Fishing.” PloS One 15 (4): e0231575. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231575.
This ‘Insight’ episode is from full episode 37, where Michael and Stefan interview Jessica Cockburn.
Jessica is a Lecturer in Environmental Science at Rhodes University in South Africa. Jessica identifies as a "pracademic" who often works with local partners to explore how actors across a variety of contexts interact to address sustainability challenges. Her work is highly collaborative. Among the groups she engages with is the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS): https://pecs-science.org/.
https://www.ru.ac.za/environmentalscience/staff/staffacademic/jessicacockburn/
In this clip, Jessica’s explains why she draws a critical realism approach, and how that is positioned between positivist and constructivist paradigms.
Jessica's personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/jesscockburn/home
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jess_cockburn
This insight episode is taken from episode 46, where Michael spoke with Jon Parker. John is a sociologist of science and a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) within its division of social and economic sciences.
John’s website and google scholar pages:
http://john-parker-wg6d.squarespace.com/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=euuurksAAAAJ&hl=en
In this episode we all spoke with Frank van Laerhoven, a professor at Utrecht University and co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of the Commons, a new partner of the In Common podcast. We talked to Frank about his time working for the Food and Agriculture Organization and his transition to academia. Frank discussed his concerns about both professional arenas and the gap between them. Are we really making a difference, and if not, how does this relate to the incentives that so many commons scholars study and also face? We asked Frank about his leadership of the journal and how some of these concerns can be addressed.
Frank's website: https://www.uu.nl/medewerkers/FSJvanLaerhoven
International Journal of the Commons: https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/
Thanks to all our guests and listeners, the Finding Sustainability Podcast has been, in our eyes, a large success. In order to provide a sustainable platform for the podcast going forward and to expand opportunities for new types of content, we will now become an official partner with the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) and the International Journal of the Commons (IJC). The new name our podcast will be In Common.
https://incommonpodcast.org/
https://iasc-commons.org/
https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/
The In Common podcast will explore the connections between humans, their environment and each other through stories told by scholars and practitioners. In-depth interviews and methods webinars explore interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work on commons governance, social-ecological resilience, and sustainability.
The title of the podcast is meant to evoke several ideas related to the sharing of resources. First, it reflects the idea of holding resources “In common” as it relates to actions of “commoning”, a process contrary to commons enclosures that we see around the world. We hope the podcast provides a shared space for open-access conversations that can help build community. Second, it is meant to emphasize the need to see what we have “in common”, in spite of the barriers across the disciplines and perspectives that we must incorporate in order to sustainably manage shared resources.
Following the Finding Sustainability Podcast, In Common will continue to have full episodes of long-form interviews, and Insight episodes containing highlights of these longer episodes. Additionally, the podcast will contain a series of Future Earth’s Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) video webinars describing different methods to analyze human-environment interactions. This series is run by Mike Schoon from Arizona State University. Our Blog, run by Graham Epstein, explores similar content but is not interview based. The blog provides an alternative space for sharing academic ideas, and will utilize online polls and surveys with our listeners and followers to discuss topics.
If you are already subscribed to the Finding Sustainability Podcast on your podcast player, you will continue to stay subscribed to the In Common podcast. Video webinars can be viewed on our website or directly on some podcast mobile apps such as Apple Podcasts, Overcast and Pocket Casts.
This insight episode is taken from episode 42 where Courtney and Michael talk with Joseph Ament, an ecological economist at the University of Vermont. In the full episode we discuss Joe’s research on money, common money misconceptions, the role of money right now during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this insight episode, we highlight Joe’s thoughts on shifting value towards sustainability in our economy and changing the goal of the monetary system to resiliency.
If you are interested to learn more about Joe’s work, here are a couple recent publications:
Paper by Joe on Ecological Monetary Theory: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/923
Article by Joe for Uneven Earth on the monetary system and the Green New Deal: http://unevenearth.org/2020/01/public-money-for-environmental-justice/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This insight episode is taken from episode 039, where Michael and I talk with Raul Pacheco-Vega.
Raul is a professor in the Public Administration Division of the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching, CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, CIDE, AC) based out of CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes, Mexico. In the full podcast (episode 039) we discussed his work on waste and waste pickers, wastewater, and bottled water as un-traditional commons. We also spoke about the importance of making care work and life support systems visible under the Covid pandemic. In this insight we highlight his thoughts on the value of ethnography as a methodology to understand those issues.
Raul's personal website:
http://www.raulpacheco.org/blog/
https://twitter.com/raulpacheco?lang=en
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode Michael and Stefan spoke with Mike Schoon, an associate professor in Arizona State University's School of Sustainability. They began by discussing Mike's previous career as an engineer and his PhD dissertation work on transboundary parks in Southern Africa, which he conducted while he was a PhD student at Indiana University, where he and Michael met as advisees of Lin Ostrom. They also talked about Mike's work on wildlife management in Arizona and the role he has played in the research communities on the Commons, as the co-Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of the Commons, and Resilience, where he also plays a significant leadership role.
In this episode Michael and Courtney spoke with Jacopo Baggio, an assistant professor at the School of of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida. Michael and Courtney spoke with Jacopo about his career path and his work examining the validity of Elinor Ostrom's design principles for long-lasting community-base resource management, as well as his more recent work exploring the role that cognitive diversity plays in the abilities of groups to produce shared public goods. A common theme throughout the conversation was the importance of adapting methods to research questions, rather than the other way 'round.
Jacopo's website: https://sciences.ucf.edu/politics/person/jacopo-baggio/
References for Jacopo's papers on cognitive diversity:
Baggio, J. A., Freeman, J., Coyle, T. R., Nguyen, T. T., Hancock, D., Elpers, K. E., ... & Pillow, D. (2019). The importance of cognitive diversity for sustaining the commons. Nature communications, 10(1), 1-11. Freeman, J., Baggio, J. A., & Coyle, T. R. (2020). Social and general intelligence improves collective action in a common pool resource system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(14), 7712-7718.
In this episode Michael and Stefan spoke with Jessica Gephart, an assistant professor of environmental science at American University. Jessica's research focuses on the feedbacks between globalized food systems and the environment, with an emphasis on seafood systems. Jessica, Stefan and Michael spoke about work she has done in trying to improve our accounting of seafood trade flows in order to better understand just where our seafood is going to and coming from, and why this is important to understand from an environmental sustainability perspective. They also talked about more recent work that Jessica has been doing to examine the impacts of the COVID pandemic on the seafood sector, and her professional identity as an interdisciplinary scholar focusing on applied social-ecological challenges.
Jessica's website: http://www.jessicagephart.com/
Paper from PNAS that is discussed:
Gephart, Jessica A., Halley E. Froehlich, and Trevor A. Branch. 2019. “Opinion: To Create Sustainable Seafood Industries, the United States Needs a Better Accounting of Imports and Exports.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 116 (19): 9142–46.
Footnote: We want to highlight a correction to the following statistics from what is stated in the interview. 90% of aquaculture production is produced by 10 countries, while 45 species make up 90% of aquaculture production.
This insight episode is taken from full episode 036 of the podcast with Liana Chua.
Liana is a social anthropologist at Brunel University London with long-term ethnographic interests in Borneo, ethnic politics, development, more-than-human landscapes, visuality, and materiality. Her current research revolves around the social, political, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of the global nexus of orangutan conservation.
She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, her MPhil in Social Anthropological Analysis from the University of Cambridge, and her BA in Modern History from the University of Oxford.
Liana’s university page:
https://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/liana-chua
Liana’s Twitter:
https://twitter.com/liana_chua?lang=en
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode, Michael spoke with Beatriz Dos Santos Dias. Beatriz is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington. She is a part of the project Modelling and Stock Assessment of Prince William Sound Herring (in the Gulf of Alaska), and as part of her research, she is investigating the drivers of herring spawn timing to improve our knowledge about the population and its stock assessment models. Michael and Bia spoke about her experiences leading up to and including her PhD work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her current project.
Link to Bia's paper that is discussed, "Opening the tap: Increased riverine connectivity strengthens marine food web pathways":
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0217008
In this episode Michael spoke with David Gill, an assistant professor at Duke University's Marine lab within the Nicholas School of the Environment. David and Michael spoke about David's past experiences in the NGO sector, his postdoc experiences through the Smith Fellowship and at the National Social-Ecological Synthesis Center (SESYNC), and his more recent research at Duke on the heterogeneous impacts that marine conservation initiatives have on local groups.
David's website: https://nicholas.duke.edu/people/faculty/gill
Paper on conservation impacts that David and Michael discuss:
Gill, David A., Samantha H. Cheng, Louise Glew, Ernest Aigner, Nathan J. Bennett, and Michael B. Mascia. 2019. Social Synergies, Tradeoffs, and Equity in Marine Conservation Impacts. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 44:347-372.
In this episode the whole FS team spoke with another group of podcasters from the Coastal Routes project (https://coastalroutes.org/). Together, Phil Loring, Hannah Harrison and Emily De Sousa run the Coastal Routes Radio “Social FISHtancing” pocast about Fisheries and COVID-19. They also produce "Pubcasts": abridged and annotated versions of scientific publications read by the authors. Each group discussed how their project got started, their process for creating episodes, how their podcasting fits into their broader professional lives, and the impacts that the project has had on the team members. Check them out!
This insight clip is taken from episode 029, Stefan and Michael's interview with Steven Alexander.
Steven is a Science Advisor based at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and holds an appointment as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo. Steven began working at the science-policy interface as a Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellow. Prior to this he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow affiliated with both the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in the US and the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden. He calls himself an environmental social scientist, and his research focuses on community-based conservation and natural resource management, environmental governance, and the human dimensions of environmental change.
Steven’s Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=naPWaUwAAAAJ&hl=en
Steven’s twitter
https://twitter.com/salexander_11?lang=en
Steven’s ResearchGate profile
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Alexander2
Qualitative data sharing paper published in Nature Sustainability
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0434-8
Qualitative Data Sharing Resources:
https://www.sesync.org/for-you/cyberinfrastructure/research-and-tools/qualitative-data-initiative
Link to white paper from the Qualitative Data Initiative that was established at SESYNC:
https://www.sesync.org/qualitative-data-sharing-and-re-use-for-socio-environmental-systems-research-a-synthesis-of
Link to a webinar on qualitative data management as part of a broader Webinar series run by Data ONE
https://www.dataone.org/webinars/qualitative-data-management-interdisciplinary-research
Link to a webinar on social network analysis as part of a new series organized by Michael Schoon and the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society’s (PECS) Collaborative Governance and Management Working Group
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode, Stefan interviews Irina Rafliana.
Irina is a science communication officer at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), and is also currently a PhD candidate at the German Development Institute in Bonn, Germany. Irina’s research is focused on disaster sociology, where she is examining the social construction of knowledge and technology in the implementation of a tsunami warning system in Indonesia aided by German partners. Irina has extensive experience working within the Indonesian science system, but also internationally.
In the podcast we discuss disaster risk in Indonesia around earthquakes and tsunamis, and the challenges surrounding the implementation of a tsunami warning system. Irina is studying the sociology of this process, how knowledge is constructed among the individual and organization involved, as well as the challenges with communicating this knowledge with local communities in Indonesia.
Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI)
http://lipi.go.id/
Germany Development Institute, Bonn, Germany
https://www.die-gdi.de/en/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode Michael spoke with Jacqui Bauer. Jacqui is the founder and CEO of Rentlab (https://www.rentlab.org/), an organization that works with cities to address the "split incentive problem" created by dividing the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords with respect to rental property. Michael and Jacqui discussed this project and Jacqui's previous work that led up to it, particularly her position as the sustainability director for the city of Bloomington, Indiana. Not coincidentally, Bloomington is where Michael attended Indiana University for graduate school. They talked a bit about their time there, as well as about their thoughts on the public vs. private sectors and how academia relates to each.
Finally, since the topic of the best pizza (at least in Bloomington and maybe the world) didn't come up, here is the website for Mother Bear's pizza: https://motherbearspizza.com/
In this episode Michael spoke with John Parker. John is a sociologist of science and a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) within its division of social and economic sciences. John and Michael spoke about John's experience at the NSF and the importance of mentorship and accumulative advantage in science, which challenge the way we think about "who is good" in a field, and how we judge this as a forced decision. John also discussed his work on "coherent groups" such as the Resilience Alliance (https://www.resalliance.org/), which he has studied at length. Finally, John and Michael discussed the too-often invisible work done by many people to support the outcomes that a much smaller number of individuals receive credit for. The implications of this work are far-reaching for all scientists as we struggle with the challenges of self-reinforcing power and privilege, increasing inequalities, and the collective-action problems we face when we try to produce public goods.
John's website and google scholar pages:
http://john-parker-wg6d.squarespace.com/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=euuurksAAAAJ&hl=en
In this episode, Michael spoke with Phil Loring. Phil is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Guelph, as well as the Arrell Chair in Food, Policy and Society at the Arrell Food Institute, also at the University of Guelph. Michael and Phil discussed several projects that Phil is working on, including on upcoming book, Finding Our Niche, the importance of threshold concepts in sustainability studies, and Coastal Routes Radio, a collaborative podcast that Phil is leading along with others in his group. In a future episode of FS, we will speak again with Phil and the rest of the Coast Routes team!
Show notes:
Phil's website: http://www.conservationofchange.org/phil-loring
Twitter handle: @conservechange
Phil's paper on thresholds: https://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/facets-2019-0037
Coastal Routes radio website: https://coastalroutes.org/
You can find information on Phil's upcoming book here: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/finding-our-niche
This insight episode is taken from episode 028 of the podcast, Stefan and Michael's interview with Fiona Nunan.
Fiona Nunan is a Professor of Environment and Development within the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham in the UK.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gov/nunan-fiona.aspx#staffdetails
https://twitter.com/fionanunan?lang=en
Her interests and experience focus on natural resource governance and management in developing country settings, particularly within inland fisheries and coastal locations in East and Southern Africa, and on exploring the links between poverty and the environment.
She was appointed to Head of the department in 2014 and was previously the Director of Postgraduate Research. She leads on the new Environment, Sustainability and Politics pathway of the MSc program, and works closely with colleagues in the Political Science and International Studies Department.
Fiona’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=gjUJQYcAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Her first book was published in 2015 by Routledge, titled: 'Understanding Poverty and the Environment: Analytical Frameworks and Approaches'. The book makes an innovative contribution to literature on environment and development by bringing together a diverse range of analytical approaches and frameworks that can be used to study human-nature interactions.Her second book, which we discuss in detail in the podcast, was published at the beginning of this year 2020 by Routledge, titled “Governing Renewable Natural Resources: theories and frameworks”.
Link to book ‘Governing Renewable Resources’
https://www.routledge.com/Governing-Renewable-Natural-Resources-Theories-and-Frameworks-1st-Edition/Nunan/p/book/9780367146702
Link to book ‘Poverty and the Environment’
https://www.routledge.com/Understanding-Poverty-and-the-Environment-Analytical-frameworks-and-approaches/Nunan/p/book/9780415707596
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Michael spoke with Chris Weible, a professor at the school of public affairs, University of Colorado, Denver. Chris is also the director of his school's PhD program, and a co-director with Tanya Heikkila of the Workshop on Policy Process Research (WOPPR).
Chris is a leading figure on the field of policy studies, and Michael and Chris discussed the use of a popular policy process tool, the advocacy coalition framework, as well is Chris' developing interdisciplinary work on the role of emotions and interpretivist perspectives in policy process studies.
Chris' website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/programs/public-affairs-programs/phd-in-public-affairs/christopher-weible-ucd189
WOPPR website: https://publicaffairs.ucdenver.edu/research-and-impact/workshop-on-policy-process-research
Paper that Chris mentions towards the end of the interview: Durnová, A. P., and C. M. Weible. 2020. Tempest in a teapot? Toward new collaborations between mainstream policy process studies and interpretive policy studies. Policy sciences.
In this episode, Stefan Partelow interviews Kenny Wallen.
Kenny is an Assistant Professor of Human Dimensions of Fish and Wildlife at the University of Idaho. His professorship is a joint position with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, so Kenny has one foot in academia and one in practice. He received his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources; his M.S. at Oklahoma State University in Zoology; B.A. at Truman State University in Psychology.
https://www.human-element-lab.com/
Kenny’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=XT-t5bgAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Kenny’s university page
https://www.uidaho.edu/cnr/faculty/wallen
Research articles mentioned:
Wallen, K. E. & Romulo, C. L. Social norms: More details, please. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 114, E5283–E5284 (2017). https://www.pnas.org/content/114/27/E5283
Wallen, K. E. et al. Integrating team science into interdisciplinary graduate education: an exploration of the SESYNC Graduate Pursuit. J. Environ. Stud. Sci. 9, 218–233 (2019). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13412-019-00543-2
Wallen, K. E. Focusing on structure and process to integrate and mainstream the social sciences in conservation. Conserv. Biol. 31, 724–726 (2017). https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12871
In this episode, Courtney and Michael interview Joe Ament. Joe completed his PhD at the University of Vermont where he researched monetary theory and policy in the context of social and ecological equity. His work currently looks at public banking at the national and local levels as well as central banking policy for combating climate change and income inequality.
In this conversation with Joe, we go deep into the concept of money to think about common money misconceptions, the role of money right now during the COVID-19 pandemic and current economic crisis and finally why it's so critical to think about the monetary system to design a just and sustainable future.
If you are interested to learn more about Joe’s work, here are a couple recent publications:
Paper on Ecological Monetary Theory:
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/3/923
Uneven Earth Article on the monetary system and the Green New Deal:
http://unevenearth.org/2020/01/public-money-for-environmental-justice/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Michael and Courtney interview Cassandra Brooks, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. We talked about her path from rural New Hampshire to Maine and later on to California, and most of all her transdisciplinary involvement in the development of marine protection in the seas around Antarctica. Cassandra discussed her initial exposure to this space, what drew her to it, and how she and her colleagues have worked to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean.
Cassandra's website: https://www.colorado.edu/envs/cassandra-brooks
A recent paper by Cassandra and colleagues on the policy development process in the Antarctic:
Brooks, C. M., L. B. Crowder, H. Österblom, and A. L. Strong. 2020. Reaching consensus for conserving the global commons: The case of the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Conservation Letters 13(1):289.
Cassandra's famous youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNZu1uxNvlo
In this episode, Stefan Partelow interviews David Lam.
David is a PhD candidate at Leuphana University in Germany. His research focuses on the transferability and scalability of the transformational impact of sustainability initiatives. Before starting his PhD, David Lam studied Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University and worked for three years as a corporate responsibility consultant for companies, federal ministries, and NGOs.
https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/ietsr/staff/david-lam.html
In the podcast we talk about a few different papers (links below) comprising David’s PhD research and thesis. This includes how sustainability transformations are fostered by local actors, but also how understandings of sustainability differs between actors. We also discuss a recent paper led by David on applications processes in the sustainability transformations literature. David has also conducted a review of local and indigensous knowledge, which leads us to discussion on plurality and the challenges on integrating different types of knowledge in transdisciplinary research processes.
Lam, D.P.M., Martín-López, B., Wiek, A. et al. Scaling the impact of sustainability initiatives: a typology of amplification processes. Urban Transform 2, 3 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42854-020-00007-9
Lam, D., E. Hinz, D. Lang, M. Tengö, H. von Wehrden, and B. Martín-López. 2020. Indigenous and local knowledge in sustainability transformations research: a literature review. Ecology and Society 25(1):3. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11305-250103
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This insight episode is taken from episode 024, Stefan’s conversation with Barry Ness.
Barry Ness is an Associate Professor at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies in Sweden. He is also the Director of the local interaction platform in Skåne for the Mistra Urban Futures project, and the editor-in-chief of Challenges in Sustainability. His current research interests include inter- and transdisciplinary approaches for both comprehending and addressing complex sustainability challenges.
https://www.lucsus.lu.se/barry-ness
He is also a researcher and work package leader for the Globally and Locally-sustainable Food-Water-Energy Innovation in Urban Living Labs (GLOCULL) project, focusing on creating an urban living lab approach for the food-water-energy nexus. Barry is also a project researcher in LUCID project and the TRANSFORM project.
https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/glocull/
Much of Barry Ness' current research involves engagement with actors outside of academia. Currently, outreach efforts focus on how to improve the sustainability of craft beer production and consumption systems in southern Sweden, SustBeerLab, endorsed by Future Earth.
Barry’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=zRPHAlAAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Article on reflexivity mentioned in the podcast
https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art20/
Link to M.Sc. LUMES program
https://www.lumes.lu.se/
https://www.lucsus.lu.se/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Michael and Stefan speak with Raul Pacheco-Vega. Raul is a professor in the Public Administration Division of the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching, CIDE (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, CIDE, AC) based out of CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes, Mexico. We discussed his work on waste and waste pickers, wastewater, and bottled water as untraditional commons. We also spoke about the importance of making care work and life support systems visible, and his thoughts about fieldwork and ethnography under the spectre of the Covid pandemic.
Raul's personal website: http://www.raulpacheco.org/blog/
Paper on doubly engaged ethnography that Raul mentions:
Pacheco-Vega, R., and K. Parizeau. 2018. Doubly Engaged Ethnography: Opportunities and Challenges When Working With Vulnerable Communities. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 17(1):1609406918790653.
In this episode Michael spoke with Tiffany Morrison, a professor at the Arc Center of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, associated with James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. They discussed Tiffany's analysis of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, her thoughts on professional identity, the importance of critical case studies, and the value of polycentricity as an organizing governance concept.
Tiffany's website: https://www.coralcoe.org.au/person/tiffany-morrison
Youtube video on Tiffany's talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMA1-pFZ5q8
Tiffany's papers that are discussed in the interview:
Morrison, T. H. 2017. Evolving polycentric governance of the Great Barrier Reef. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114(15):E3013–E3021.
Morrison, T. H., N. Adger, J. Barnett, and K. Brown. 2020. Advancing coral reef governance into the Anthropocene. One Earth.
Mark Lubell's blog post on polycentricity that is mentioned: https://environmentalpolicy.ucdavis.edu/blog/polycentric-governance-concept-searching-theory
Michael and Stefan spoke with Jessica Cockburn, a Lecturer in Environmental Science at Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, South Africa. Jessica identifies as a "pracademic" who often works with local partners to explore how actors across a variety of contexts interact to address sustainability challenges. Her work is highly collaborative. Among the groups she engages with is the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS): https://pecs-science.org/.
Topics of the interview include:
The use of "critical realist" philosophy as a basis for engaged research.
The challenge of "pracademics": practical and ethical demands of conducting transdisciplinary research with local partners.
Empirical analysis of "patchy" watershed-scale governance among heterogeneous actor groups.
Jessica's personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/jesscockburn/home
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jess_cockburn
Jessica's paper that Michael mentioned:
Cockburn, Jessica, Georgina Cundill, Sheona Shackleton, Mathieu Rouget, Marijn Zwinkels, Susanna (ancia) Cornelius, Liz Metcalfe, and Dieter van den Broeck. 2019. “Collaborative Stewardship in Multifunctional Landscapes: Toward Relational, Pluralistic Approaches.” Ecology and Society 24 (4). https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11085-240432.
Tiny book title: A story of hope from a patchy place.
Michael and Stefan interview Liana Chua.
Liana is a social anthropologist at Brunel University London with long-term ethnographic interests in Borneo, ethnic politics, development, more-than-human landscapes, visuality, and materiality. Her current research revolves around the social, political, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of the global nexus of orangutan conservation.
Liana received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, her MPhil in Social Anthropological Analysis from the University of Cambridge, and her BA in Modern History from the University of Oxford.
Topics include:
- How social anthropology contributes to conservation research and practice
- The out-group homogeneity effect
- Boundary objects and being open to new ideas
- Tips for effective collaborative research
- The risk of interdisciplinarity
We frequently reference a recent paper led by Liana, published in the journal People and Nature, titled “Conservation and the social sciences: Beyond critique and co-optation. A case study from orangutan conservation”.
Link to paper Liana’s recent paper in the journal People and Nature:
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10072
Liana’s university page:
https://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/liana-chua
Liana’s Twitter:
https://twitter.com/liana_chua?lang=en
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode, Michael interviews a colleague of his from Dartmouth College, Carey Nadell. Carey is a professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth, and he studies the the evolution of cooperation and conflict among bacteria in the context of their complex communities. His research program shares the same fundamental framing as many commons scholars studying how communities of resource users can avoid the tragedy of the commons. Carey and Michael discuss the relationship between their own research programs based on this shared framing.
Both Michael and Carey are members of Dartmouth's interdisciplinary PhD program in Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society (EEES), which they also discuss.
Carey's website: http://nadell-lab.org/
In this episode, Stefan interviews Klara Winkler. Klara is a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University in Canada, where she is also the Deputy Science Director of the ResNet project, which aims to “To transform Canada's capacity to monitor, model, and manage its working landscapes and all the ecosystem services they provide for long-term shared health, prosperity and resilience for all Canadians.”
Klara is from Germany, where she earned her PhD from the University of Oldenburg. Her thesis was titled “Once more with feelings: Harnessing human-nature relationships for the governance of social-ecological systems”. She received a MSc from Lund University in Sweden, with a thesis titled, “More than wine: cultural ecosystem services in vineyard landscapes”.
In the podcast we discuss:
- The challenges and opportunities of further digitizing academia
- Reflexivity in research practice, including our own emissions
- The challenges of being far away from our objects of study
- Skype a Scientist initiative
Klara’s lab page
http://bennettlab.weebly.com/klara.html
ResNet project page
https://www.nsercresnet.ca/index.html
https://www.aaas.org/programs/center-public-engagement-science-and-technology/reflections/suddenly-find-yourself-needing
https://www.skypeascientist.com/
Klara’s Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6wI_zcIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode, Stefan interviews Henrik von Wehrden.
Henrik is the Dean of the Faculty of Sustainability at Leuphana University in Germany, where he also holds a professorship in quantitative methods in sustainability science.
Henrik was one of the first guests on the podcast, and you can hear our previous interview in episode 003, which gives a more general overview of his background and work.
In this episode we discuss:
- Henrik’s understanding of the COVID19 data, and how he used existing models to foresee its spread
- The usefulness of using mixed methods to understand the data
- The role of sustainability science
- How COVID19 may change academia
- What we can learn from this global challenge
Henrik’s university page
https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/institute-of-ecology/team/henrik-von-wehrden.html
Henrik’s lab page
https://henrikvonwehrden.leuphana.de/
Henrik's Google Scholar:
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=RmW1avAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode Michael is joined by Courtney Hammond Wagner to interview Meredith Niles. They spoke about Meredith's past life as a policy professional, her transition to the world of academia, her applied work on food systems and use of psychological theory. Also, Michael and Meredith shared their passion for open science resources!
Meredith's website: www.meredithtniles.com
Resources on open science:
Sherpa Romeo: http://sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php
SPARC: https://sparcopen.org/
This insight clip is taken from episode 004 of the podcast with Jeremy Caradonna.
Jeremy holds a PhD in the history of scientific, environmental, and political thought, and teaches Environmental Studies and Human Dimensions of Climate Change at the University of Victoria. He is also the author of the book ‘Sustainability: A history’, published by Oxford University Press in 2014.
In the podcast we discuss:
- Indigenous versus modern notions of sustainable societies
- The rise of sustainability thinking in Europe
- Early links between environmental degradation and human wellbeing
- The link between economic thought and sustainability
Jeremy's website
https://www.jeremycaradonna.com/
Link to Jeremy's book 'Sustainability: A history'
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sustainability-9780199372409?cc=de⟨=en&
Cool video summary of the book 'Sustainability: A history'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hho1h7OR6l8
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Michael Cox and Stefan Partelow interview Jose Luis Vivero-Pol.
Jose Luis is an engaged scholar associated with the Universities of Louvain, Cordoba, Edinburgh and the Spanish Right to Food Observatory. His research interests include food valuations (rights, commodity, public good, commons) and food systems in transition. In particular, how normative food narratives shape food policies, and collective arrangements in customary and contemporary food commons.
In the podcast we discuss the following topics:
- Current food narratives and policy implications
- The “food as a commons” framework
- Different schools of thought on commons
- Difference between water and food being framed as commons
- Influence of COVID19 on food systems
- What Ostrom’s school of thought can learn from reframing food as a commons
- Why interdisciplinarity is necessary but difficult to exercise
Jose’s Twitter
https://twitter.com/JoseLViveroPol?s=20
Jose’s articles, books and presentation referenced in the podcast:
https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Food-as-a-Commons/Vivero-Pol-Ferrando-Schutter-Mattei/p/book/9781138062627
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/3/442
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2947219
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332244503_Food_as_a_new_old_commons
https://peoplefoodandnature.org/blog/de-commodifying-food-the-last-frontier-in-the-civic-claim-of-the-commons/
https://biogov.uclouvain.be/staff/vivero/art_The%20idea%20of%20food%20as%20commons%20or%20commodity%20in%20academia.pdf
https://www.slideshare.net/joseluisviveropol/our-food-as-a-commons-reframing-the-food-narrative-for-a-fair-sustainable-transition
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This insight clip is taken from Michael Cox’s interview with Mark Lubell in episode 023 of the podcast. In the clip, Mark talks about the ecology of games theory and its link to the history of research on polycentric governance.
Mark is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis, where he is also the Director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior.
https://environmentalpolicy.ucdavis.edu/
https://environmentalpolicy.ucdavis.edu/people/lubell
Mark’s research focuses on human behavior and the role of governance institutions in solving collective action problems and facilitating cooperation. The collective action problems associated with environmental policy provide a laboratory for his research. Current projects include watershed management, environmental activism, agricultural best management practices, and institutional change in local governments. He also dabbles in experimental economics and simulation techniques to further explore collective action theory.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=MQiMFHIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This Insight clip is taken from episode 011 of the podcast with Krister Andersson.
Krister Andersson is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research focuses primarily on governmental reforms to address social and environmental problems in developing countries. He examines the politics of environmental governance and is interested in local institutional arrangements and the role they play in explaining policy outcomes.
Krister’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=PJ2c5_kAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
University webpage
https://www.colorado.edu/polisci/people/faculty/krister-andersson
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Ina Möller is a postdoctoral researcher in the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Ina completed her PhD in the Department of Political Science at Lund University in Sweden, where her thesis was titled The Emergent Politics of Geoengineering. She also has a Master degree in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science from Lund University, and a Bachelor degree in Political Science and Public Administration.
She currently works together with Prof. Aarti Gupta on anticipation, governance and transparency in the politics of climate change. Her principal focus has been on the case of climate engineering, which describes large-scale interventions into natural systems that are envisioned to stabilize global temperatures. She continues to study the reaction of actors throughout society as the idea of engineering the climate becomes more normalized in climate science.
Ina's university page
https://www.wur.nl/en/Persons/Ina-dr.-IM-Ina-Moller.htm
Ina’s ResearchGate page
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ina_Moeller
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Steven Alexander is a Science Advisor based at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and holds an appointment as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo. Steven began working at the science-policy interface as a Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellow. Prior to this he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow affiliated with both the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in the US and the Stockholm Resilience Centre in Sweden. He calls himself an environmental social scientist, and his research focuses on community-based conservation and natural resource management, environmental governance, and the human dimensions of environmental change.
Steven’s Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=naPWaUwAAAAJ&hl=en
Steven’s twitter
https://twitter.com/salexander_11?lang=en
Steven’s ResearchGate profile
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Alexander2
Qualitative data sharing paper published in Nature Sustainability
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0434-8
Qualitative Data Sharing Resources:
https://www.sesync.org/for-you/cyberinfrastructure/research-and-tools/qualitative-data-initiative
Link to white paper from the Qualitative Data Initiative that was established at SESYNC:
https://www.sesync.org/qualitative-data-sharing-and-re-use-for-socio-environmental-systems-research-a-synthesis-of
Link to a webinar on qualitative data management as part of a broader Webinar series run by Data ONE
https://www.dataone.org/webinars/qualitative-data-management-interdisciplinary-research
Link to a webinar on social network analysis as part of a new series organized by Michael Schoon and the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society’s (PECS) Collaborative Governance and Management Working Group
https://essnetwork.net/pecs-webinar
This Insight clip is taken from episode 009 of the podcast with Juan Camillo Cardenas.
Juan Camilo is a Professor of Economics at la Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. He is considered a leading expert in the field of experimental economics. His work is focused on the analysis and design of institutions (rules of the game) that promote cooperation among individuals and the solution of social dilemmas in the most fair, efficient, equitable, democratic and sustainable manners possible.
In the clip, Michael Cox is interviewing Juan Camilo on the role experimental economics games can play in teaching students.
Juan Camillo’s University page
https://economia.uniandes.edu.co/index.php?option=com_profesor&view=profesorp&profesor=9&Itemid=474
Jaun Camilo’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.com.co/citations?user=yfeFFpIAAAAJ&hl=en
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Fiona Nunan is a Professor of Environment and Development within the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham in the UK.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gov/nunan-fiona.aspx#staffdetails
https://twitter.com/fionanunan?lang=en
Her interests and experience focus on natural resource governance and management in developing country settings, particularly within inland fisheries and coastal locations in East and Southern Africa, and on exploring the links between poverty and the environment.
She was appointed to Head of the department in 2014 and was previously the Director of Postgraduate Research. She leads on the new Environment, Sustainability and Politics pathway of the MSc program, and works closely with colleagues in the Political Science and International Studies Department.
Fiona’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=gjUJQYcAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Her first book was published in 2015 by Routledge, titled: 'Understanding Poverty and the Environment: Analytical Frameworks and Approaches'. The book makes an innovative contribution to literature on environment and development by bringing together a diverse range of analytical approaches and frameworks that can be used to study human-nature interactions.Her second book, which we discuss in detail in the podcast, was published at the beginning of this year 2020 by Routledge, titled “Governing Renewable Natural Resources: theories and frameworks”.
Link to book ‘Governing Renewable Resources’
https://www.routledge.com/Governing-Renewable-Natural-Resources-Theories-and-Frameworks-1st-Edition/Nunan/p/book/9780367146702
Link to book ‘Poverty and the Environment’
https://www.routledge.com/Understanding-Poverty-and-the-Environment-Analytical-frameworks-and-approaches/Nunan/p/book/9780415707596
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
For this episode we spoke with Irene Perez Ibarra, a researcher at the AgriFood Institute of Aragon, housed within the University of Zaragoza, Spain. We chatted about her initial scientific curiosity, her trip to Arizona State University for a postdoc with Marco Janssen, her appreciation for "beautiful" (agent-based) models, the challenges of raising two young children, and ultimately her voyage back to Spain for her current position. All that's missing is a good tortilla.
In this episode we spoke with Emily Darling from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Georgina Gurney at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. They talked to us about a broadly comparative, social-ecological research project on fisheries governance they have been working on with support from the MacArthur Foundation. We discussed the challenges involved in the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects of the project, and how they addressed these together and with their project partners.
Show notes:
Emily's website: http://www.emilysdarling.com/
Georgina's website: https://www.coralcoe.org.au/person/georgina-gurney
New paper led by Georgina: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632071931420X
Smith Conservation Research Fellowship that Emily enrolled in: https://conbio.org/mini-sites/smith-fellows
SNAPP program website: https://snappartnership.net/
Data mermaid tool website: datamermaid.org
This is a unique episode of the podcast. We have the opportunity to share the audio from a recent webinar about the current state of commons and social-ecological systems databases. The webinar was facilitated by the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), and was hosted by their current President, Marco Janssen. The IASC is devoted to bringing together multi-disciplinary researchers, practitioners and policymakers for the purpose of improving governance and management, advancing understanding, and creating sustainable solutions for commons, common-pool resources, or any other form of shared resource.
https://iasc-commons.org/
The webinar includes numerous leading researchers, listed below. Together they discuss their experiences with databases, including the current state of their use, challenges for user engagement and comparative research as well as directions forward and advice for researchers.
Webinar participants include:
Marty Anderies - Professor, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
https://sustainability.asu.edu/person/john-anderies/
Ulrich Frey - Researcher, Institute of Engineering Thermodynamics, German Space Agency
https://www.dlr.de/tt/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-4074/6449_read-33700/
Sergio Villamayor Tomas - Research fellow, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain.
https://ictaweb.uab.cat/personal_detail.php?id=4066
Graham Epstein - Environmental social scientist, University of Waterloo.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=S4JEmxgAAAAJ&hl=en
Marco Janssen - Professor, School of Sustainability, Director of the Center for Behavior, Institutions, and the Environment, Arizona State University. Marco is also the current President of the IASC.
https://marcojanssen.info/
Links to the databases discussed in the podcast:
https://sesmad.dartmouth.edu/
https://ulrichfrey.eu/en/niis/
https://seslibrary.asu.edu/
https://gamesforsustainability.org/
http://www.forestlivelihoods.org/ifri-dataset/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This insight is taken from our full interview with María José Barragán in episode 018 of the podcast, where you can listen to the full interview.
Our ‘Insight’ episodes feature short interview segments taken from our previous regular interviews, highlighting noteworthy topics discussed.
María José is the Science Director of the Charles Darwin Foundation on the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. She oversees the organization's 20 marine and terrestrial research projects, and is helping to make many of them interdisciplinary and inclusive of local stakeholder needs and knowledge. In the episode she explains the multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary agenda setting processes guiding the Charles Darwin Foundation and their research activities on the Galapagos Islands.
https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/
María José received a PhD in Human Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada. Her undergraduate degree was in the Biological Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University, Ecuador, and Master’s degree from the Technical University of Munich, Germany (TUM) focusing on coastal marine ecosystems and marine protected areas (MPAs).
Her Ph.D. research was inspired by the interactive governance framework, and was applied to better understand the governability of MPAs (with a case study developed in the Galapagos Marine Reserve). After graduation she collaborated with research clusters of the Too Big To Ignore (TBTI) Global Research Partnership for Small-Scale Fisheries Research, conducting research and publishing on small-scale fisheries. Later on, she had a postdoctoral research position at the “Development and Knowledge Sociology” Working Group at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany. During that time, she conceptualized and co-developed new research agendas, by integrating the development and knowledge sociology approach into small-scale fisheries sustainability, fishing communities’ viability, food security from the marine perspective and marine resource governance.
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This insight episode is taken from episode 007 of the podcast, our conversation with Neal Haddaway. In the clip, Neal outlines the steps of a systematic literature review, talks about which databases to use, as well as the benefits and downsides to using Google Scholar as a search platform.
Neal Haddaway is a Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He works on various projects involving evidence synthesis in environmental and development topics. He has a PhD in conservation biology, and since 2012 Neal has been helping to establish and improve guidance for formalized systematic reviews and maps in environmental management and more recently in international development. Neal’s main research interest focuses on the provision of reliable evidence for policy and practice decision-making and increasing transparency in environmental management.
https://www.sei.org/people/neal-haddaway/
Neal’s Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=zABCBMMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Center for Environmental Evidence
www.environmentalevidence.org
Systematic review reporting standards
www.roses-reporting.com
Tool for estimating systematic review time requirements
www.predicter.org
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Barry Ness is an Associate Professor at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies in Sweden. He is also the Director of the local interaction platform in Skåne, Sweden for the Mistra Urban Futures project, and the editor-in-chief of Challenges in Sustainability. His current research interests include inter- and transdisciplinary approaches for both comprehending and addressing complex sustainability challenges. Much of Barry's current research involves engagement with actors outside of academia. Currently, outreach efforts focus on how to improve the sustainability of craft beer production and consumption systems in southern Sweden, SustBeerLab, endorsed by Future Earth.
https://www.lucsus.lu.se/barry-ness
He is also a researcher and work package leader for the Globally and Locally-sustainable Food-Water-Energy Innovation in Urban Living Labs (GLOCULL) project, focusing on creating an urban living lab approach for the food-water-energy nexus. Barry is also a project researcher in LUCID project and the TRANSFORM project.
https://jpi-urbaneurope.eu/project/glocull/
Barry’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=zRPHAlAAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Article on reflexivity mentioned in the podcast
https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art20/
Link to M.Sc. LUMES program
https://www.lumes.lu.se/
https://www.lucsus.lu.se/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This insight is taken from episode 020 of the podcast, where Michael and Stefan have a conversation with Courtney Hammond Wagner. Courtney is a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University, working on water governance in the Western United States. In the clip the three of us discuss challenges in academic working culture, including being a parent in academia, productivist mentality and self-evaluation.
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This past fall we spoke with Mark Lubell, a professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy and the co-director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior (CEPB) at the University of California, Davis. We spoke about Mark's interdisciplinary engagements at his institution, the value of doing used-based research, the ecology of games framework that he has pioneered, and how tools like this are needed to capture complex social interactions in real-world policy environments.
Mark's website: http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/lubell/
CEPB website: https://environmentalpolicy.ucdavis.edu/
Correction: In discussing the concept of polycentricity, Michael mentions Rebecca Gruby as being from the University of Colorado Boulder, but Dr. Gruby is a professor at Colorado State University (https://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/rebeccagruby/)
This insight is taken from episode 020 of the podcast, a conversation between Stefan, Michael and Courtney Hammond Wagner. Courtney is a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University, working on water governance in the Western United States. We discuss the challenge of using frameworks in science, with the example of Elinor Ostrom's social-ecological systems (SES) framework.
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Liz Carlisle is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at University of California, Santa Barbara, where her work focuses on fostering a more just and sustainable food system. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Berkeley and a B.A. in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard University, and she formerly served as Legislative Correspondent for Agriculture and Natural Resources in the Office of U.S. Senator Jon Tester. Recognized for her academic publishing with the Elsevier Atlas Award, which honors research with social impact, Liz has also written numerous pieces for general audience readers, in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, and Stanford Social Innovation Review. She is the author of two books about transition to sustainable farming: Lentil Underground (winner of the 2016 Montana Book Award) and Grain by Grain, coauthored with farmer Bob Quinn.
UCSB webpage
https://www.es.ucsb.edu/people/liz-carlisle
Personal website
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This insight clip is taken from episode 017 of the podcast with Harini Nagendra. Harini explains some of the challenges and bias of the science system between the global north and the global south.
Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University. Her recent book "Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future" (Oxford University Press India, 2016) examines the transformation of human-nature interactions in Bangalore from the 6th century CE to the present, addressing the implications of such change for the urban sustainability of fast-growing cities in the global South. The book was listed by the science journal Nature as one of the five best science picks of the week in its issue of July 28 2016.
https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/SitePages/harini-nagendra.aspx
Prof. Nagendra is an ecologist who uses methods from the natural and social sciences - satellite remote sensing, biodiversity studies, archival research, GIS, institutional analysis, and community interviews, to examine the sustainability of forests and cities in the global South. She completed her PhD from the Centre for Ecological Sciences in the Indian Institute of Science in 1998. Since then, she has conducted research and taught at multiple institutions, and was most recently a Hubert H Humphrey Distinguished Visiting Professor at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota in 2013. She is a recipient of numerous awards for her research, including a 2017 Web of Science 2017 India Research Excellence Award as the most cited Indian researcher in the category of Interdisciplinary Research; a 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award for her research and practice on issues of the urban commons, and a 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (with Elinor Ostrom).
Harini Nagendra has authored two books, and over 150 peer reviewed publications, including in Nature, Nature Sustainability and Science.
Harini’s two books:
Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future
https://www.amazon.com/Nature-City-Bengaluru-Present-Future/dp/0199465924
Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities
https://www.amazon.com/Cities-Canopies-Trees-Indian/dp/0670091219/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Cities+and+Canopies%3A+Trees+in+Indian+Cities&qid=1569093142&s=books&sr=1-1
She writes extensively on her research for the public via newspaper and magazine articles, science blogs, and has given a number of public talks for science communication. She also engages with international research on global environmental change, She is a Steering Committees member of the Future Earth Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society and a former Steering Committee Member of the Global Land Project, Diversitas and a Capacity Building Committee member of the Asia Pacific Network for Global Environmental Change. She has also been a Lead Author of the 5th IPCC Report - Working Group III.
Harini’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=GWyr-pgAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Link to her commentary piece in Nature 2018
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05210-0
Link to her recent article in Nature Sustainability
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0101-5?platform=hootsuite
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Kai Whiting is a researcher and lecturer in sustainability and Stoicism at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. His main research interests are how to better account for resource use and the practical application of Stoic philosophy to the challenges of the 21st century. He has a background in Environmental Engineering, but believes that without philosophy we will never understand the “why” we do what we do, which is why he combines both disciplines in his approach.
Kai’s website
https://stoickai.com/
Follow Kai on Twitter
https://twitter.com/kaiwhiting?lang=en
Kai’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=Cu-BwFcAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Text interview with Kai from the Daily Stoic
https://dailystoic.com/kai-whiting-interview/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This ‘Insight’ episode is taken from episode 010 of the podcast with Elena Finkbeiner. In this short segment, Elena discusses reflexivity in the scientific process and then explains the usefulness of games or behavioral economics experiments with fishers in Mexico.
Elena Finkbeiner is the Fisheries Science Program Manager at Conservation International’s Center for Oceans. She is interested in understanding and improving adaptive capacity and equality within and across fishing communities and integrating a human rights-based approach to fisheries governance. She has over a decade of experience working in small-scale fisheries along the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. Elena holds a degree from UC Santa Cruz, a master’s degree from Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment and a PhD from Stanford University.
Conservation International is a non-governmental organization (NGO) with over 30 years of experience, with a mission statement to empower societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, our global biodiversity, for the well-being of humanity.
Conservation International - Center for Oceans
https://www.conservation.org/about/center-for-oceans
Check out:
https://www.riseseafood.org/
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This ‘Insight’ episode is taken from episode 005 of the podcast with David Abson.
In this short segment, Dave discusses economic valuation of the ecosystem services concept, governance in ecosystem service frameworks and the challenge with operationalizing them.
Dave holds a Professorship for Sustainability Economics and Assessment at Leuphana University in Germany. Dave explains the path that led him to academia, and then we discuss his understanding of sustainability premised on justice. The concept of land sparing vs land sharing is discussed as well as the ecosystem services concept, including its operationalization and dimensions of governance. Dave also explains the leverage points concept, and its usefulness for sustainability science research. We touch on numerous other topics including open access publishing and how he thinks about interdisciplinarity.
Dave's University page
https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/centre-for-sustainability-management-csm/persons/david-abson.html
Dave's Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=gyyNJWMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this podcast, Michael and Stefan have a conversation with Courtney Hammond Wagner. Courtney is a postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford University. We discuss some of the challenges of navigating a career in academia, particularly as a young parent and changing rules and norms of the science system itself. We then get into Courtney’s research on water governance in California, and challenges for using frameworks in science, with the example of Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework.
As an environmental social scientist, Courtney’s research broadly aims to understand how we design incentives, rules and policies to collectively change behavior in water resource dilemmas to improve community well-being and ecological outcomes. At Water in the west, Courtney is working on two aspects of California’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) policy process: the mandated use of climate information in groundwater sustainability plans and the role of incentives in farmer groundwater use. This work builds on her previous SGMA research in Yolo County, California to identify the role of farmer social norms and fairness perceptions in the SGMA policy process.
Courtney received a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont where she studied policy design for declining water quality from agricultural nutrient runoff, and has a BA in Psychology from Dartmouth College.
https://waterinthewest.stanford.edu/about/people/courtney-hammond-wagner
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FAgQyXgAAAAJ&hl=en
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
This 'Insight' episode is a clip from episode 12 of the podcast with Larry Crowder. Insight episodes feature noteworthy and insightful clips from previous episodes.
Larry Crowder is a professor of Biology and Marine Conservation at the Hopkins Marine Station at Stanford University. He is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute of the Environment, and affiliated faculty at the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions. During our discussion Larry described how he began his career in ecology, his seminal work on sea turtle ecology and conservation, and his subsequent transition to a more interdisciplinary space where he has studied multiple marine conservation issues such as fisheries bycatch and governance.
Faculty website: https://crowderlab.stanford.edu/
On Larry's lab website we found this blog on marine conservation: https://crowderlab.stanford.edu/mcb
Google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Qjb5DnwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
In this episode we spoke with Margaret Palmer. Dr. Palmer is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the director of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (https://www.sesync.org/).
Much of our discussion focused on the inception and development of SESYNC over the past ten years. We dug a bit into the philosophies and practices at SESYNC, and the role that the science of teams plays in these. Additionally, we spoke about Dr. Palmer's fundamental work on stream ecology, how she came to be interested in this type of work, and how this led to an engagement with non-academic actors based on the challenges she observed in these systems.
Dr. Palmer's professional websites:
https://palmerlab.umd.edu/team/mpalmer/
https://www.sesync.org/users/mpalmer
Link to the video of Dr. Palmer on the Colbert Report that Michael mentions: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/6s93dq/the-colbert-report-coal-comfort---margaret-palmer
María José Barragán is the Science Director for the Charles Darwin Foundation on the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. She oversees the organization's 20 marine and terrestrial research projects, and is helping to make many of them interdisciplinary and inclusive of local stakeholder needs and knowledge.
https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/
María José received a PhD in Human Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada. Her undergraduate degree was in the Biological Sciences at the Pontifical Catholic University, Ecuador, and Master’s degree from the Technical University of Munich, Germany (TUM) focusing on coastal marine ecosystems and marine protected areas (MPAs).
Her PhD research was inspired by the interactive governance framework, and was applied to better understand the governability of MPAs (with a case study developed in the Galapagos Marine Reserve). After graduation she collaborated with research clusters of the Too Big To Ignore (TBTI) Global Research Partnership for Small-Scale Fisheries Research, conducting research and publishing on small-scale fisheries. Later on, she had a postdoctoral research position at the “Development and Knowledge Sociology” Working Group at the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany. During that time, she conceptualized and co-developed new research agendas, by integrating the development and knowledge sociology approach into small-scale fisheries sustainability, fishing communities’ viability, food security from the marine perspective and marine resource governance.
https://www.darwinfoundation.org/en/component/contact/contact/14-staff/118-maria-jose-barragan
Finding Sustainability Podcast
@find_sust_pod
https://twitter.com/find_sust_pod
Environmental Social Science Network
https://essnetwork.net/
https://twitter.com/ESS_Network
@ESS_Network
Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University. Her recent book "Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future" (Oxford University Press India, 2016) examines the transformation of human-nature interactions in Bangalore from the 6th century CE to the present, addressing the implications of such change for the urban sustainability of fast-growing cities in the global South. The book was listed by the science journal Nature as one of the five best science picks of the week in its issue of July 28 2016.
https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/SitePages/harini-nagendra.aspx
Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future
https://www.amazon.com/Nature-City-Bengaluru-Present-Future/dp/0199465924
Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities
https://www.amazon.com/Cities-Canopies-Trees-Indian/dp/0670091219/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Cities+and+Canopies%3A+Trees+in+Indian+Cities&qid=1569093142&s=books&sr=1-1
Prof. Nagendra is an ecologist who uses methods from the natural and social sciences - satellite remote sensing, biodiversity studies, archival research, GIS, institutional analysis, and community interviews, to examine the sustainability of forests and cities in the global South. She completed her PhD from the Centre for Ecological Sciences in the Indian Institute of Science in 1998. Since then, she has conducted research and taught at multiple institutions, and was most recently a Hubert H Humphrey Distinguished Visiting Professor at Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota in 2013. She is a recipient of numerous awards for her research, including a 2017 Web of Science 2017 India Research Excellence Award as the most cited Indian researcher in the category of Interdisciplinary Research; a 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award for her research and practice on issues of the urban commons, and a 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (with Elinor Ostrom).
Along with her two books, she has authored over 150 peer reviewed publications, including in journals such as Nature, Nature Sustainability and Science. She writes extensively on her research for the public via newspaper and magazine articles, science blogs, and has given a number of public talks for science communication. She also engages with international research on global environmental change, She is a Steering Committees member of the Future Earth Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society and a former Steering Committee Member of the Global Land Project, Diversitas and a Capacity Building Committee member of the Asia Pacific Network for Global Environmental Change. She has also been a Lead Author of the 5th IPCC Report - Working Group III.
Harini’s Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=GWyr-pgAAAAJ&hl=de&oi=ao
Link to her commentary piece in Nature 2018
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05210-0
Link to her recent article in Nature Sustainability
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0101-5?platform=hootsuite
This week we spoke with Nate Engle, a Senior Climate Change Specialist with the World Bank's Water Global Practice. We discussed his time in graduate school at the University of Michigan, the value of a PhD, his experience on the Hill as a AAAS fellow, and his move to the World Bank where he now supports programs on adaptation and resilience.
Here is the paper that Nate mentioned co-authoring with Mike Schoon and Chanda meek:
Robards, Martin D., Schoon, Michael L., Meek, Chanda L. and Engle, Nathan L. 2011. The Importance of Social Drivers in the Resilient Provision of Ecosystem Services. Global Environmental Change 21(2). Special Issue on The Politics and Policy of Carbon Capture and Storage: 522–529. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378010001172 And here is a website discussing the STRONG act, which came up during our discussion: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3724
J.T. Erbaugh is a postdoc in the EEES PhD program at Dartmouth (https://sites.dartmouth.edu/EEES/). We spoke about his PhD education with Arun Agrawal at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability (https://seas.umich.edu/), his time in the field studying agroforestry in Indonesia when he got "hooked", and his subsequent research studying forest policy and governance as an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist!
JT's information:
Personal website: http://www.erbaughresearch.com/en/home/
Google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=r_ZTFYIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Other stuff:
Here is the website for ICPSR, which both J.T. and Michael struggled to spell out: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/
Here is the website on registered reports that Michael mentioned: https://cos.io/rr/. You can hear more about these issues in our earlier interview with Neal Haddaway.
And finally, here is the full reference information for the article led by Oran Young:
Young, O.R., et al. 2006. A portfolio approach to analyzing complex human-environment interactions: Institutions and land change. Ecology and Society 11.
Kirsty Nash (@nasherk) is the founder of ‘aKIDemic Life’ (@akidemiclife), a platform providing resources empowering parents to navigate life and academia. Kirsty is passionate about developing aKIDemica Life, sparked by the help she received during her first year of motherhood. It was only due to the great help she received from both health professionals and colleagues that she got back on track and was able to return to research part time. aKIDemic Life is her way of paying forward the help she received at a very difficult time.
https://akidemiclife.com/
Kirsty is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Marine Socioecology in the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Tasmania, Australia. She is interested in the resilience of marine ecosystems and the functional and spatial ecology of fishes. Her research sits at the nexus between resilience theory and empiricism: she is particularly interested in testing the practical application of theory with empirical data and modelling.
https://www.utas.edu.au/profiles/staff/imas/kirsty-nash
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=o479EwYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Jeremy Pittman is an Assistant Professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Jeremy holds a Ph.D. in Social and Ecological Sustainability from the University of Waterloo, and an M.Sc. in Geography from the University of Regina. His research focuses on environmental policy, governance and social-ecological connectivity in rangelands, coastal areas and small-scale fisheries.
https://twitter.com/pittman17?lang=en
https://uwaterloo.ca/planning/people-profiles/jeremy-pittman
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=eB55IYYAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
In the podcast we discuss his work on Canadian rangelands, small-scale fisheries in Uruguay, organizing different academic tasks, challenges with research ethics such as site selection, giving back to communities, knowledge grabbing, open-access publishing, co-authorship and how to pick a journal. We also discuss strategies for how to read academic articles and time management with kids.
Larry Crowder is a professor of Biology and Marine Conservation at the Hopkins Marine Station at Stanford University. He is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute of the Environment, and affiliated faculty at the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions. During our discussion Larry described how he began his career in ecology, his seminal work on sea turtle ecology and conservation, and his subsequent transition to a more interdisciplinary space where he has studied multiple marine conservation issues such as fisheries bycatch and governance.
Faculty website: https://crowderlab.stanford.edu/
On Larry's lab website we found this blog on marine conservation: https://crowderlab.stanford.edu/mcb
Google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Qjb5DnwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Krister Andersson is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center of the Governance of Natural Resources at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Krister primarily studies forest governance and the effects of governmental reforms and local institutional arrangements on social and environmental outcomes. In our talk, Krister discusses his time at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), his involvement in the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research program, learning from Lin Ostrom, and what we need to do to address scientific challenges in the future.
Faculty website: https://www.colorado.edu/polisci/people/faculty/krister-andersson
Google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PJ2c5_kAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Elena Finkbeiner is the Fisheries Science Program Manager at Conservation International’s Center for Oceans. She wants to understand and improve adaptive capacity and equality within and across fishing communities and integrate a human rights-based approach to fisheries governance. She has over a decade of experience working in small-scale fisheries along the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. Elena holds a degree from UC Santa Cruz, a master’s degree from Duke University’s Nicholas School for the Environment and a PhD from Stanford University.
Conservation International is a non-governmental organization (NGO) with over 30 years of experience, with a mission statement to empower societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, our global biodiversity, for the well-being of humanity.
https://www.conservation.org/about/center-for-oceans
https://www.riseseafood.org/
Juan Camilo Cárdenas is a professor of economics a la Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. He is considered a leading expert in the field of experimental economics, applying field-based methods to explore how actors can resolve real-world social dilemmas. Much of his work involves the use of games to simulate these dilemmas.
Google scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yfeFFpIAAAAJ&hl=
Faculty website: https://economia.uniandes.edu.co/index.php?option=com_profesor&view=profesorp&profesor=9&Itemid=474
Helen Rozwadowski is an associate professor of History and founder the Maritime Studies program at the University of Connecticut. Her teaching includes environmental history, history of science, and public history, as well as interdisciplinary maritime studies courses.
Twitter @oceanhistories
https://history.uconn.edu/faculty-by-name/helen-m-rozwadowski/#
Helen is the author of numerous books about the history of the ocean, including her most recent book titled ‘Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans’. In the book she demonstrates that the human relationship with the ocean began in evolutionary time and has tightened dramatically since them, aims to provide a model for writing ocean history, and argues that ocean histories must examine and historicize the technologies and knowledges systems that enabled and accompanied human interactions with the sea.
http://fathomingtheocean.com/books/
Her book, Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea (2005), which reveals the simultaneous scientific and cultural discovery of the ocean’s depths in the mid nineteenth century, won the History of Science Society’s Davis Prize for best book directed to a wide public audience. She has written a history of 20th century marine science, The Sea Knows No Boundaries (2002), a history of 20th century marine sciences supporting international fisheries policy. She has co-edited three volumes that have helped establish the field of history of oceanography: Soundings and Crossings: Doing Science at Sea 1800-1970 (2017), The Machine in Neptune’s Garden: Perspectives on Technology and the Marine Environment (2004), and Extremes: Oceanography’s Adventures at the Poles (2007).
Helen has worked in the past both as a public historian and also in academia. She won the Ida and Henry Schuman Prize from the History of Science Society, was awarded the William E. & Mary B. Ritter Fellowship of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and has received grants and fellowships from the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, the UConn Humanities Institute, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Neal Haddaway is a Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) in Sweden. He works on various projects involving evidence synthesis in environmental and development topics, and has been with SEI since the start of 2016. Neal has a PhD in conservation biology, and since 2012 Neal has been helping to establish and improve guidance for formalized systematic reviews and maps in environmental management and more recently in international development.
Neal's SEI page: https://www.sei.org/people/neal-haddaway/ Other resources mentioned: www.environmentalevidence.org - Center for Environmental Evidence www.environmentalevidencejournal.org - Environmental Evidence Journal www.eshackathon.org - Evidence Synthesis Hackathon www.campbellcollaboration.org - Campbell Collaboration www.roses-reporting.com - Systematic review reporting standards www.predicter.org - Tool for estimating systematic review time requirements
Sonya Graci is an Associate Professor at the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Ryerson, University in Toronto, Ontario. She is also the Director of the Hospitality and Tourism Research Institute. Sonya has worked on numerous projects around the world related to sustainable tourism development and has focused her attention on community capacity building in Honduras, Indonesia, Canada, Fiji and China. She has a keen interest in working with Aboriginal communities in developing sustainable forms of tourism. She also has a passion for increasing sustainability in marine environments and has focused much of her research on sustainable tourism development in island states. Sonya is the author of two books and several journal articles and industry publications.
https://www.ryerson.ca/tedrogersschool/hospitality-tourism-management/faculty-and-research/sonya-graci/
https://accommodatinggreen.com/
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=GVQ1fy8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Stefan has a conversation with David Abson. Dave holds a Professorship for Sustainability Economics and Assessment at Leuphana University in Germany. Dave explains the path that led him to academia, and then we discuss his understanding of sustainability premised on justice. The concept of land sparing vs land sharing is discussed as well as the ecosystem services concept, including its operationalization and dimensions of governance. Dave also explains the leverage points concept, and its usefulness for sustainability science research. We touch on numerous other topics including open access publishing and how he thinks about interdisciplinarity.
Dave's University page
https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/centre-for-sustainability-management-csm/persons/david-abson.html
Dave's Google Scholar page
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=gyyNJWMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Jeremy Caradonna has a PhD in the history of scientific, environmental, and political thought, and teaches Environmental Studies and Human Dimensions of Climate Change at the University of Victoria. He is also the author of 'Sustainability: A history' published by Oxford University Press in 2014.
In the podcast, we discuss Jeremy's background as a historian and how it has shaped his thinking about sustainability. We go over the content of his book, and then he explains his thoughts about changing academia, and his career path, to be more impactful in the age increasing social and environmental change.
https://www.jeremycaradonna.com/
Henrik is the Dean of the Faculty of Sustainability at Leuphana University in Germany, where he also holds a professorship in Quantitative Methods in Sustainability Science.
Topics include meditation, philosophy, value of literature reviews, and organizing his working group.
Henrik's Google Scholar:
https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=RmW1avAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Stefan and Michael have a conversation with Dr. Emma McKinley about her research career and the Marine Social Science (MarSocSci) Network.
Emma is a Research Fellow at Cardiff University and co-founder of the Marine Social Science Network.
www.marsocsci.net
Stefan Partelow introduces the podcast and then interviews Michael Cox about his academic career. Stefan and Michael discuss why they are starting the podcast.