Finding Sustainability Podcast

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 M

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=e

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

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_p

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,

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

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

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 wor

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 h

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-Sca

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

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.

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/profi

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.