Ecosystem services

Kathryn Fuller Fellowships from WWF

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WWF-US is pleased to announce the availability of Kathryn Fuller Fellowships for 2010. For nearly 50 years WWF has committed to delivering science-based conservation results while incorporating the latest research and innovations into our work. As part of its commitment to advancing conservation through science, WWF established Kathryn Fuller Fellowships to support PhD students and postdoctoral researchers working on issues of exceptional importance and relevance to conservation in WWF-US priority places. This year, the Kathryn Fuller Science for Nature Fund will support doctoral and postdoctoral research in the following three areas.

Fuller Doctoral Fellows receive either $15,000 or $20,000 allocated over a period of up to 2 years to cover research expenses.

Fuller Postdoctoral Fellows receive $140,000 to cover a stipend and research expenses over a period of up to two years as well as $17,500 to cover indirect costs at the host institution over the two-year fellowship period.

Citizens of any nation may apply. Applicants for Fuller Doctoral Fellowships must be currently enrolled in a PhD program. WWF staff, directors, and their relatives as well as current Russell E. Train Fellows are ineligible to receive Fuller Fellowships.

Deadline for applications is January 31, 2010.

For more information on complete eligibility requirements, selection criteria, and how to apply, please visit the Fuller Fellowship webpage.

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Lessons from Diversitas

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The second Diversitas Open Science Conference was recently held in Capetown South Africa.  Eminent South African ecologist from Harry Biggs, writes What I learnt from the Diversitas Conference:

• Governance issues (esp. science-policy and science-management links) have become far more respectable in such fora, now filling much programme time. For instance, Anantha Duraiappah from Kenya gave a keynote entitled “Managing ecosystem services, institutions, property rights and scales”.

• Gretchen Daily (of ecosystem services and other fame) spoke of mainstreaming conservation “beyond parks, beyond charity, and beyond biodiversity”; while Pavan Sukhdev (a dynamic banker who has thrown his weight fully behind the Diversitas cause) spoke of getting beyond the point where biodiversity is now, merely a “luxury for the rich and a necessity for the poor”. He referred to the increasing use of the concept “ecological infrastructure” as conceptually similar to, say, constructed infrastructure in the traditional sense, and the imperative to invest in maintaining or rehabilitating this.

Daily and others are working on the following useful representation of the different processes we have to make work together if we are to succeed. The right-hand part was referred to by others as “the (traditional) science part” and the left-hand part as the part to which we have mostly given too little attention, in attempting to achieve our overall goals:

Much of the meeting was understandably about the difficult field of biodiversity targets. Daily suggested three types of targets:
BLUE – absolute ecosystem tipping points e.g. rates of climate change too fast
GREEN – societal choices about the desired state e.g. no more bird extinctions
RED – situations we must avoid e.g. imminent coral reef collapse (in my view some overlap with BLUE)

• Sukhdev and many others spoke about TEEB (The economics of ecosystem services and biodiversity), which, although young and developing, promises to make major impacts in our field. See www.teebweb.org.

Sukhdev pointed to sensible ways to deal complexity, feeling scientists often impeded progress because of what he called the “Popperian trap” of demanding ridiculous levels of proof sometimes even when it was absurd to do so, and when Rome was clearly burning. The ideas in the Precautionary Principle will have to be used, but in a more complexity-friendly way.

In my opinion we will as a community have to reconcile these needs, and not only use Mode 1 Science. Importantly, he reflected the invariable TEEB finding that returns on investment for just about all ecosystem services make for very profitable business, suggesting that one day soon these may really take off. My conclusion – perhaps we are poised for major changes in thinking. In additional, many speakers referred to “bundles” of related services as more realistic than looking at one service e.g. carbon sequestration, in isolation – in the same way that multi-species models or interventions often radically change outcomes when compared to single-species ones.

via Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

Inequality

World distribution of income

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In a new paper, Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income, Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin revisit previous work by Sala-i-Martin, and estimate that globally income has substantially increased, reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty, and become more equally distributed (among individuals globally) over the past decades.

World distirbution of income 1970-2006 (Pinkovskiy & Sala-i-Martin 2009)

World distribution of income 1970-2006 (Pinkovskiy & Sala-i-Martin 2009). Red lines show 2006 and 1980 $1 day/income level.

In the paper they explain changes in income distribution:

In 1970, the WDI was trimodal (Fig. 19). There was a mode between the two $1/day lines, corresponding to the mode of the East Asian distribution (which, in turn, corresponds to the mode of the Chinese distribution which, in turn, corresponds to the mode of the Chinese rural distribution). The second mode is at about $1,000 and corresponds to the mode of South Asia which, in turn is slightly to the right of the mode of India. Finally, there is a third mode at around $5,000, which is somewhere between the mode of the USSR and that of the OECD. Note that a substantial fraction of the distribution lies to the left of the poverty lines, and that substantial fractions of the East Asia, South Asian, and African distributions lie to the left of the poverty lines. In 1970, $1/day poverty was large.

Figure 19: World Distribution of Income by Region, 1970

Figure 19: World Distribution of Income by Region, 1970

By 2006 things have changed dramatically (Fig. 20). First, note that the three modes disappeared. Instead, we have one mega-mode at an annual income of around $3,300, which roughly corresponds to the mode of East Asia and South Asia. To the right of the mode there is quite a substantial “shoulder” marked by the roughly 1 billion rich citizens of the OECD. At the other extreme, there is a thick tail at the bottom of the distribution marked by Sub-Saharan Africa. The fraction of the overall distribution to the left of the poverty lines has been reduced dramatically relative to 1970. Interestingly, most of the distribution to the left of the poverty line in 2006 is from Africa.

Figure 20: World Distribution of Income by Region, 2006

Figure 20: World Distribution of Income by Region, 2006

Inequality

Inequality and Societal Problems: a review of the Spirit Level

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the-spirit-levelThe Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by well known public health researchers Robert Wilkinson and Kate Pickett is reviewed by political scientist David Runciman in the London Review of Books article How messy it all is:

The argument of this fascinating and deeply provoking book is easy to summarise: among rich countries, the more unequal ones do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator you can imagine. They do worse even if they are richer overall, so that per capita GDP turns out to be much less significant for general wellbeing than the size of the gap between the richest and poorest 20 per cent of the population (the basic measure of inequality the authors use). The evidence that Wilkinson and Pickett supply to make their case is overwhelming. Whether the test is life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity levels, crime rates, literacy scores, even the amount of rubbish that gets recycled, the more equal the society the better the performance invariably is. In graph after graph measuring various welfare functions, the authors show that the best predictor of how countries will rank is not the differences in wealth between them (which would result in the US coming top, with the Scandinavian countries and the UK not too far behind, and poorer European nations like Greece and Portugal bringing up the rear) but the differences in wealth within them (so the US, as the most unequal society, comes last on many measures, followed by Portugal and the UK, both places where the gap between rich and poor is relatively large, with Spain and Greece somewhere in the middle, and the Scandinavian countries invariably out in front, along with Japan). Just as significantly, this pattern holds inside the US as well, where states with high levels of income inequality also tend to have the greatest social problems. It is true that some of the most unequal American states are also among the poorest (Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia), so you might expect things to go worse there. But some unequal states are also rich (California), whereas some fairly equal ones are also quite poor (Utah). Only a few (New Hampshire, Wyoming) score well on both counts. What the graphs show are the unequal states tending to cluster together regardless of income, so that California usually finds itself alongside Mississippi scoring badly, while New Hampshire and Utah both do consistently well. Income inequality, not income per se, appears to be the key. As a result, the authors are able to draw a clear conclusion: ‘The evidence shows that even small decreases in inequality, already a reality in some rich market democracies, make a very important difference to the quality of life.’ Achieving these decreases should be the central goal of our politics, precisely because we can be confident that it works. This is absolutely not, they insist, a ‘utopian dream’.

Why then, given all this – the concise argument, the weight of the evidence, the unmistakable practical purpose of the authors – does the book still feel oddly utopian? Part of the problem, I think, is that the argument is not as straightforward as its authors would like. Despite their obvious sense of conviction, and maybe even because of it, they fudge the central issue at crucial moments, whereas at others, perhaps in order to compensate, they overstate their case, which only makes things worse. To start with the fudge. Is the basic claim here that in more equal societies almost everyone does better, or is it simply that everyone does better on average? …

Robert Wilkinson and Kate Pickett also have a review article Income Inequality and Social Dysfunction in the Annual Review of Sociology (2009 35:493-511) that examines the support for various hypotheses of the relationship between inequality and social dysfunction.

General, Reorganization

Resilience as an operating system for sustainability in the anthropocene

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Chris Turner, author of Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, writing in the Walrus about the Anthropocene and the coral reef crisis in his long article Age of Breathing Underwater:

I first heard tell of “resilience” — not as a simple descriptive term but as the cornerstone of an entire ecological philosophy — just a couple of days before I met Charlie Veron on the pages of Melbourne’s most respected newspaper. I was onstage for the opening session of the Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures in an auditorium at the University of Ballarat at the time. The evening had begun with a literal lament — a grieving folk song performed by an aboriginal musician. I’d then presented a slide show of what I considered to be the rough contours of an Anthropocene map of hope, after which a gentleman I’d just met, a research fellow at Australia’s prestigious Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation named Brian Walker, placed my work in the broader context of resilience theory.

I had to follow Veron all the way to the edge of the abyss his research had uncovered before I could come back around to resilience. The concept, it turns out, emerged from the research of a Canadian-born academic named Buzz Holling at the University of Florida, and has since been expanded by a global research network called the Resilience Alliance. “Ecosystem resilience” — this in the Resilience Alliance website’s definition — “is the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing into a qualitatively different state that is controlled by a different set of processes. A resilient ecosystem can withstand shocks and rebuild itself when necessary.” It’s a concept I encountered repeatedly in my conversations with reef researchers.

…This points to the broader implications of the resilience concept — the stuff Brian Walker likes to talk about. He and his colleagues in the Resilience Alliance often refer to their field of study as “social-ecological resilience,” suggesting that people are as essential to the process as reefs or any other ecosystem, and that real resilience is created in the complex, unpredictable interplay between systems. “With resilience,” Walker told me, “not only do we acknowledge uncertainty, but we kind of embrace uncertainty. And we try to say that the minute you get too certain, as if you know what the answer is, you’re likely to come unstuck. You need slack in the system. You need to have the messiness that enables self-organization in the system in ways that are not predictable. The best goal is to try to build a general resilience. Things like having strong connectivity, but also some modularity in the system so it’s not all highly connected everywhere. And lots of diversity.”

Resilience, then, embraces change as the natural state of being on earth. It values adaptation over stasis, diffuse systems over centralized ones, loosely interconnected webs over strict hierarchies. If the Anthropocene is the ecological base condition of twenty-first-century life and sustainability is the goal, or bottom line, of a human society within that chaotic ecology, then resilience might be best understood as the operating system Paul Hawken was on about — one with an architecture that encourages sustainability in this rapidly changing epoch.

This new operating system will, by necessity, be comfortable with loss. There is, after all, much to be gained from epochal, transformative change. In the midst of chaos and devastation on the scale of a world war, for example, we might discover how to breathe underwater.

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University Waterloo’s new Centre for Ecosystem Resilience and Adaptation

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Canada’s University of Waterloo is launching a new transdisciplinary Centre for Ecosystem Resilience and Adaptation

The new transdisciplinary centre will focus on conservation and restoration, protected areas and adaptation of humans and other organisms. Ecosystems, with their wealth of biological diversity, provide essential sources of food, materials and natural spaces for people.

The centre’s researchers, drawn from the natural, physical, mathematical and social sciences, aim to help decision-makers develop better policy and governance to buffer ecosystems against unwanted and unprecedented change. Their innovative ecological work to date has resulted in advanced ecological modelling, new conservation and restoration policies for parks and protected areas, and multiple approaches for integrated management of invasive species. The researchers are based at Waterloo and at other universities and organizations.

In the future, the researchers will focus on:

* how ecosystems respond in the face of changes created by human activities,

* how organisms within ecosystems adapt to change,

* when, and how, people should actively assist ecosystems in order to boost resilience, and

* how human activities should change in order to improve ecosystem resilience.

Researchers will investigate new approaches to prevent and repair damaged ecosystems in order to maintain or restore resilience. Also, they will probe the role of protected areas in facilitating ecosystem resilience and adaptation, along with the capacity for ecosystem components to adapt to changes in the environment.

Work at the centre complements the diploma in ecological restoration and rehabilitation offered by Waterloo’s faculty of environment. The diploma provides students with specific knowledge and opportunities to work on real-world projects.

General

On Innovation

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80's icon McGyver, probably the most well-known innovator ever.

80's icon McGyver, probably the most well-known innovator. Ever.

Why is everybody suddenly talking about innovation? For example, only 4 articles on the topics “sustainability” and “innovation” where published in 1997. Ten years later, the figure is 100 (Source: Social Science Citation Index). But what is ‘innovation’ really, and why does it matter? In this recent blog post, you can listen to Resilience Alliance member Frances Westley, as she explores the role of social innovation. You can also listen to Rebecca Hanlin (Open University, UK) as she elaborates the need for innovations in health. Political scientist Jan-Peter Voss (CTS, Berlin) explains in a Skype-interview, how innovations cascade across levels in governance. Enjoy!

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New academic positions in International Development at Univ. of E. Anglia

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Tim Daw writes:

I wanted to highlight the following job opportunity at my department in UEA. It’s an exciting time for us as we’re hiring up to 4 new faculty. Although I never considered myself an academic in ‘International Development‘, I’ve found the school atmosphere a stimulating place to explore interdisciplinary angles of natural resource management and learn from/work with economists, anthropologists etc. We also have links with good people at the renowned School of Environment.

Following success in the RAE2008, the School of International Development (www.uea.ac.uk/dev) is investing in one or more of six research strengths:- business, accountability, regulation and development; behavioural/experimental economics; climate and environmental change; health economics, social epidemiology and health policy; livelihoods, migration and social protection; and social identities, wellbeing and social justice. We aim to appoint top academics drawn from economists, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and political and environmental scientists. The six research fields are advisory, applicants with an internationally recognised profile working in other subject areas related to development studies are welcome to apply.

Up to four posts may be available from 1st December 2009 on a full-time indefinite basis. The School expects at least one post to support postgraduate research training at a strategic level and one post to be filled by an economist. For lecturer level you must have an honours degree and a PhD, or equivalent level of qualifications, in relevant subject area, or be nearing completion with submission and award of PhD within 3 months of commencing in post. For senior lecturer/reader level you must have a PhD or equivalent level of qualification. For all posts you must have high quality publications commensurate with your stage of career and be able to satisfy all the essential criteria in the person specification.

Closing date: 12 noon on 12 October 2009.

More information can be found here

http://www.uea.ac.uk/hr/jobs/acad/atr837.htm