The Nelson Institute Blog

The Applied Masters committee met Monday to continue discussions around an accelerated, professional degree structure within the Institute. Parallel developments by the Core Course committee align nicely with the work of the Applied Masters committee–both groups highlight the importance of knowledge management and people management skills.

The Applied Masters committee expressed interest in soliciting feedback from students in regards to expectations of the applied masters program. Though faculty have regularly brainstormed the concepts and skills that such a graduate degree should teach, rarely have these same faculty enlisted the input of students. In this vein, the committee will hold a listening session with students on Tuesday, November 7th, from 4 to 5pm in the Environmental Studies library, Science Hall.

For more information on Monday’s meeting, please consult the meeting minutes.

The Business and Environment committee met on October 20th to keep several balls rolling–the committee is developing the 2nd “Progressive Ideas Forum” while also raising funds and interest in both a Center for Business and Environment and a certificate program.

Please read the attached minutes to learn more of the collaborations between the Business school and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Dear Nelson Institute Community–

For those of you unable to attend the October 16^th Faculty Governance Council, we focused on a number of key strategic issues for the Nelson Institute. The work of three adhoc committees (created after last year’s Faculty Retreat) focused on program redesign was presented. The strategic intent behind the work of all three committees was to strengthen a transdisciplinary competency approach across all Nelson Institute programs, as a way of distinguishing and branding our programs and preparing our students for the demands of future employment. In addition there was discussion of creating an Applied/Professional Masters track, and of elaborating the Land (Environment and Resources) PhD, to allow for thematic focus courses in areas of faculty interest. The three program committees will be voting on these changes in the coming weeks.

Secondly, the committee who met over the summer to consider a PVL for a new, Nelson Institute position presented a description. There was some debate, which will be continued in the next Governance meeting, about whether to use the funds for this position or for a research incubator to support promising group projects in either research or teaching.

Lastly, the subject of the Undergraduate Major was discussed. A decision has been made by CALS to move forward with an Undergraduate Major in Environmental Science. Pete Nowak polled Nelson Faculty about this possibility and most expressed dismay at the process if not the content of this initiative. We will follow up with discussions with CALS.

Meanwhile, many of you will have heard that the Land Tenure Center, through the Nelson Institute, has received a TRANSLINK grant. As part of a consortium which is headed by Wildlife Conservation Society, these funds will help us to develop a Summer Institute for training conservation workers and community development/land use agents on the ground in such places as Bolivia, Philippines and Uganda, to work effectively together and to manage system wide change. This is an exciting opportunity for Nelson Institute faculty and students to work with external partners in developing innovative training and applied research. Steve Sanderson, CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society spoke as the first Gaylord Nelson Retrospective Lecture series speaker Thursday, October 26^th and expressed among other things his enthusiasm with working with the Nelson Institute Faculty on this opportunity.

Another opportunity which is currently brewing is a chance to help to shape a funded think tank on climate change in Tromso, Norway. Regent Tom Loftus, former ambassador to Norway, was recently approached by the Norwegian government to develop an Institute on climate change. Funds have been made available for this initiative (22 million Euros), and Loftus expressed an interest in working with Nelson Institute faculty in developing a vision for the scope and reach of this Institute. CCR has of course offered to get involved. Others who are interested should contact us in the near future. I will be going next week to Sweden to talk to Carl Folke about possible collaboration between the Nelson Institute and the newly funded MISTRA initiative Folke is leading. I will take a side trip to Tromso to speak directly to people there. I will be absent from November 1-9. Please contact Lewis Gilbert (gilbert2@wisc.edu) or send me an email if you have any concerns which need my attention.

Warm Regards,

Frances

(A collaborative series by David Zaks, Chad Monfreda, and Hassan Masum.)

Today, we measure our economic assets in great detail…but we don’t systematically measure the ecosystem services upon which our economy (and ultimately all human activity) depends. This post is the first in a series that will look at what it would take to move to a world that recognizes that the way we manage ecosystem services should be as fundamental to the economy as central banking is today. Why is this important? Because what gets measured also gets managed and valued. We can talk about the value of forests and a clean atmosphere in general terms, and even spend the time and effort to change a few peoples’ behavior. But only when such assets are measured and accounted for will the global economy’s “default system behavior” have the feedback mechanisms needed to minimize use of and damage to natural resources. At the same time, we won’t be uncritically enthusiastic. There’s some real momentum gathering behind these ideas, so it’s important not only that they be carried out, but that they be carried out well. Over the coming months, we plan to look at ecosystem services from several points of view: Biophysical: what goods and services does the Earth, functioning as a system, provide to societal development and maintenance? Economic: how are ecosystem services translated to monetary values? Ethics and well-being: money is a means to an end; what more can we learn by considering measures of human well-being, along with culture and ethics? Communicating: how can these ideas be made simple and compelling? Policymakers and Investors: what tools and practices would be required to bring ecosystem services into everyday governmental and financial decision-making? what experiments are already on the ground? Our goal is to look at the entire pipeline from basic science to valuation to implementation in the real world, summarize the best thinking in each area, and suggest key issues and initiatives. During the course of our research, reading, and conversations, many questions have come up. Here’s a sample of open issues that we hope to tackle:

• There have been a number of attempts to put a monetary value on global ecosystem services, ranging from $250 billion for boreal forest services to the now-famous $33 trillion global ecoservice valuation by Costanza et al. Given the magnitude of these figures in comparison to global GDP, and that what a dollar can buy or motivate itself changes over time, what meaning do such figures have? Are there alternate valuation metrics that would be more meaningful?
• Future wealth is usually discounted to the present day, so that a given financial or natural resource 50 years from now counts for far less in today’s decision-making. Does this really make sense? If not, what alternate frameworks allow reasonable planning?
• When we talk about costs and benefits, how are they spatially and temporally distributed? Who are the winners and losers?
• Money doesn’t translate directly into human well-being or happiness - $1000 for a subsistence farmer goes much further than the same amount for a well-off professional. Should “value” therefore be rescaled into a more direct human benefit calculation? If so, how?
• To tackle tough problems, it can be helpful to solve simpler cases first. At what scale can we accurately value resources - a forest, a wetland, a rare species of bird? Can valuation of ecosystem components be decomposed in this way? What about resources like oil or metals?
• For pollutants, valuing sinks is important - e.g. the atmosphere, biosphere, and oceans for absorbing carbon. Can sinks be valued in the same way as resources or services?
• In ecosystem service valuation, how can we value the cost-benefit of uncertain yet high-impact events? (e.g. worst-case climate change scenarios)
• In the best case, what tools could we imagine investors or policymakers using in 20 years? What opportunities and benefits might arise?
• What different strategies are available to implement market-based approaches for ecosystem goods and services valuation in developing countries? Developed countries?

We plan to write roughly one post a month until the series is done. Meanwhile, feedback from students and faculty on the general series idea would be welcome. Do you have suggestions or pointers? What would you most like to read about? Do you know of other efforts with which this series could be linked?

Hi All-

The Worldchanging book launches next week! Be sure to pick up your copy today!

Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century is poised to be the Whole Earth Catalog for this millennium. Written by leading new thinkers who believe that the means for building a better future lie all around us, the book is 600 pages of innovative ideas for creating a bright green future, with explorations by emerging experts on topics from consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry; non-toxic homes to refugee shelters; microfinance to effective philanthropy; socially responsible investing to starting a green business; citizen media to human rights; ecological economics to climate change, this is the most comprehensive, cutting-edge overview to date of what’s possible in the near future — if we decide to make it so. This book will challenge readers to personally redefine the conversation about the future.

Bill McKibben says that “it’s a compendium of everything a younger generation of environmental activists has to offer: creativity, digital dexterity, networking ability, an Internet-era optimism about the future, and a deep concern about not only green issues but related questions of human rights, poverty, and social justice.” Laurie David has called it “The seminal resource guide for anyone concerned about today and the future,” and Earth Day founder Denis Hayes says, “Worldchanging might well be the most complete, compelling articulation of the possible look and feel and actual operation of a sustainable society ever written.”

Join the tour
We’ll be visiting 12 cities throughout North America between Nov. 1 - Dec. 14. Come to the event in your city!
See our list of tour dates at www.worldchanging.com/tour

We are having a *HUGE* book launch party in Chicago at the Shedd Aquarium on November 12 (6:30-9:30). For those who want to make a day of it, I am planning for a group to go see the Massive Change exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art during the day, then to the book launch in the evening…contact me for more info.

Buy the book
Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, by Alex Steffen, Al Gore (Foreword) and Bruce Sterling (Introduction)
Available coast-to-coast and on the Net. Nov. 1st
Order it today at Amazon!


_____________________________________________
David Zaks
Research Assistant
Center for Sustainability & the Global Environment (SAGE)

[And for a review of the book, visit the Resilience Science Blog --Andy]

The Water Resources Management (WRM) Program Committee met on September 15th.

WRM Program Committee Meeting Minutes: 9/15/06

For more information on the two practicums, please click on the links below:

• UW-Madison Arboretum
• New Orleans

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the WRM Program Chair, Linda Graham

Cal DeWitt, one of the Nelson Institute’s core faculty members, was recently interviewed by the Grist.

The Soul of DeWitt: An interview with environmental scientist and evangelical leader Calvin DeWitt

The fifth annual Wisconsin Book Festival is a five-day celebration in and around downtown Madison this week, October 18-22, including the events described below among many others. Visit their website for a Full schedule of events, including events on science, nature, and the environment.

A program of the Wisconsin Humanities Council, it is the state’s largest literary festival, with approximately 10,000 annual attendees, and one of the largest in the nation. Designed to delight booklovers of all walks, tastes, and ages, the Festival features readings, lectures, book discussions, writing workshops, live interviews, children’s events, and more.

Biography of Landscape
Saturday, October 21 4:00 - 5:20 PM
Venue: Wisconsin Historical Society-Library Mall

Presenter(s): Nick Lichter, Laurie Hovell McMillin, Marcia Bjornerud

Landscapes can scarcely be understood apart from the stories we tell of them. Three authors place themselves in the landscape, then look outward to discover the stories that the land and people tell of themselves. Laurie Hovell McMillin’s memoir, Buried Indians: Digging Up the Past in a Midwestern Town, explores a struggle over the authenticity of Indian mounds above her hometown of Trempealeau, WI, illuminating that conflict through the stories local people tell of it. Nick Lichter canoed the Mississippi in 1991, stopping and researching the river’s history in communities along the way. The Road of Souls recounts stories of places, their names, and his own journey through history and the river’s landscapes. When a geologist listens to the stories the earth can tell, the quietest landscape may speak of violence and cataclysm. Marcia Bjornerud weds science and storytelling to give voice to the planet’s formation and the delicate balance through which life is maintained or threatened.

Bookseller: Wisconsin Historical Society
Category(s): Nature, Nonfiction, Wisconsin Ties

---

Environmentalism & Sense of Place
Saturday, October 21 5:30 - 6:50 PM
Venue: Wisconsin Historical Society-Library MallPresenter(s): Lynne Heasley, John Hildebrand, Gregory Summers

Conflicts over the way people live, work, and make changes in the environments that we share are inevitable: economics, cultural assumptions, legal issues, and forces of nature all factor in.

In A Thousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley, Lynne Heasley explores a region of Wisconsin where soil erosion led to environmental disaster in the 1930s, and thence to government flood control efforts that forced families to give up farms for a dam project that was ultimately scrapped.

Gregory Summers examines conflicts on the other side of the state, in the Fox River Valley, where the clash between the environmental effects of using natural resources and the interest in nature in its own right began more than fifty years ago when citizens began to question the effects of the paper industry on the river in their backyard.

John Hildebrand’s Northern Front: New and Selected Essays takes the reader from the Midwest to Alaska, from Hmong immigrants and their neighbors who come into conflict over hunting grounds, to a battle between indigenous plants and invasive species. These stories reveal intricate tensions between people about places and between people and the natural world itself.

Bookseller: Wisconsin Historical Society
Category(s): Nature, Nonfiction, Wisconsin Ties

David Zaks and Chad Monfreda are graduate students at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) within the Nelson Institute. They are contributors to Worldchanging.com, where they discuss tools, models and ideas for building a bright green future. Their published columns include an interview with Laurie David at her recent UW-Madison lecture, Madison’s own Nano Cafe, thoughts on setting the ecological agenda, and citizen access to environmental decision-making. Visit David’s Worldchanging archive page for a complete list. We are happy to welcome them to our corner of the blogosphere!

The climate change debate is over and a discussion about solutions long overdue. The time has come to Focus the Nation. Thankfully, a 1-day interdisciplinary, non-partisan discussion on “Stabilizing the Climate in the 21st Century” will take place on January 31st, 2008 in the U.S.

The timing of the event is meant to coincide with the start of the political primaries, giving candidates a chance to contribute to the climate change dialogue. The organizers stress that it will be a catalyzing event, helping turn the national conversation about global warming from fatalism towards constructive engagement with the challenge of our generation.

“Working from a base in educational institutions, Focus the Nation is also incorporating participation by religious, civic , and business organizations. Focus the Nation has the potential to organize thousands of institutions and millions of participants across the country, and focus national attention around a serious discussion of climate stabilization.”

Focus the Nation is the brainchild of economics Professor Eban Goodstein of Lewis and Clark College. Dr. Goodstein has tirelessly toured the U.S. to garner support. A few months ago he visited our hometown of Madison, WI. You can hear and see what he had to say online. A Powerpoint of the presentation is also available for download. (We make a brief cameo in the video at 12:35). Like Worldchanging, Focus the Nation is walking the talk by offsetting its travel-related emissions through the Clif Bar Cool Tags program.

Not since the first Earth Day in 1970 has a simultaneous campaign like this been undertaken. It’s true that the event is U.S. centric but for good reason. The U.S. has been so slow to jump on the climate change bandwagon not because its citizens don’t care but because they’ve been misled. Education is integral to bringing a little clarity to the discussion. Focus the Nation’s emphasis on grassroots education could provide a model for other places too.

There are 15 months to go, and over 70 institutions have already signed on. UW-Madison isn’t yet one of them, but we promise to get it on board. Are you ready to do your part to Focus the Nation?

You can get started here:

Find Focus

Build a Focus the Nation event

The Research Committee’s last meeting addressed opportunities in two areas: large, collaborative proposals and a new workshop offering around “writing for proposals.”

The group identified several ways to coordinate research activities within the Nelson Institute and to enhance graduate student training.

Read the meeting minutes for more information.