Over 15 years of ocean science and conservation online
The Nicholas School of the Environment is hosting the Flat Grok Video Contest. We are on an unsustainable course. While world populations and consumption grow, resources diminish and global warming threatens our way of life. In his blog The Green Grok, Dr. Bill Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, elucidates … Read More “Grok my Flock” »
A field vehicle can be just a means of shuttling gear or a home away from home. Most people think of a rough and tumble truck tackling aged logging roads, but depending on your needs and your discipline, something different might play the role. For instance, I work relatively close to home as all of my field sites are less than three hours away by highway and any sample collecting occurs on the water, generally in a borrowed boat (something this series will come to later).
The theme this month is design in nature. Last week we posted a video that discusses how we can use nature to design our cities. This week, Janine Benyus talks about using nature to inspire technology. I don’t have a bigger point to make this week. Biology is cool and we can learn a lot … Read More “Weekly dose of TED – Janine Benyus: Biomimicry in action” »
Last year, we wrote about the bizarre “save the light bulb” movement. The issue hasn’t gone away. Far Right politicians continue to actively resist energy efficiency. This Wednesday’s episode of the Colbert Report covered the light bulb “controversy”.
We as humans and especially here at SFS like to picture an ideal government and hope that as we learn more about science and political theory, government can take steps in that direction. By any measure, governance within the United States is far from meeting the theoretical ideal. Implementation and enforcement are often pointed at as more important factors than policy design in terms of effectiveness in meeting policy goals. But if we ever had the chance to change the design, here’s four principles that will help make sure we move in the right direction.
Addressing Scale: Appropriate information gathering
If scale is unified at the ecosystem level – bounded by hydrological and geophysical boundaries – then information about the system must also represent the ecosystem scale. Fisheries management, for example, requires information on all the potential factors that could affect stock size – habitat, water quality, fishing pressure, competition with other native and nonnative species, productivity of the food web, etc. Furthermore, the total fishery stock in an area would have to be considered together – total biomass of market species, for example. These types of measurements will delineate threats to conservation to a particular species versus threats to the health of the whole system.
Last week, I summarized shark conservation laws and policies from around the world. In the wake of recent successes, several shark conservation NGOs are hoping to get similar laws passed in the Bahamas. Guy Harvey is heavily involved in this project, and explained why protecting sharks in the Bahamas is so important:
“These magnificent animals have been admired for years by divers visiting The Bahamas and revered by people around the world as one of the great wonders of the ocean.”
A 900-mile coastline runs perpendicular to the border of Angola and Namibia. The cold water carried up from the antarctic by the Benguela Current meets the warm, dry air of the Namib Desert and the resulting depression forms a cold, dense fog that extends out into the sea. The currents and wind combine to produce a force pushing inexorably towards shore. These conditions led mariners to christen this seemingly desolate and inhospitable stretch of sand the Skeleton Coast.
Following our discussion of scale, management boundaries must match ecological processes which are now recognized to be dynamic and complex. This means that management must manage not for a known equilibrium, but a dialectic system full of uncertainty (Berkes 2008). Instead of attempting to predict from the instigation of a policy what the effects may be, governance should be structured to constantly evaluate the system and incorporate feedbacks. This process, known as adaptive management (also check out statements on the subject from the Resilience Alliance and US Department of Interior), provides for the co-evolution of the system and its governance to ensure that they remain an effective match.
Under adaptive management, episodes of disturbance are learning opportunities, not a signal of policy failure. Berkes (2008) describes this phenomenon: “’conservation’ is not a state of being. It is a response to a people’s perceptions about the state of their environment and its resources, and a willingness to modify their behaviors to adjust to new realities”. He goes on to say that disturbances are not only opportunities for learning, but that they are necessary for that learning to occur. Gunderson and Carpenter (2006) add that disturbance is necessary for transformational learning – the type of learning that allows for the emergence of novelty. Therefore, disturbances should be allowed to occur in order to foster community and governmental innovation.
In the last few months, the Middle East and North Africa have seen some of the most dramatic political changes since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled with an iron fist for more than 20 years, was overthrown. Shortly after, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had also been a brutal dictator for decades, stepped down in the wake of massive public protests. As of this writing, similar protests are taking place in Yemen, Oman, Morocco, Iran, Djibouti, Jordan and Libya (where government retaliation to the protests has been particularly brutal). If you’re a CNN junkie like I am, you’ve read all about how these revolutions will affect human rights, international relations, oil prices, and the influence of terrorism in the region. There has been relatively little mainstream media focus on how science will be affected, however.
Kate Orff, is not a biologist, she’s an architect. I love the idea of using natural systems to design human systems. The idea that construction should work with the landscape is not new, all you have to do is visit Falling Water to see that, but it’s an idea that hasn’t taken off like it … Read More “Weekly dose of TED: Reviving New York’s rivers with oysters!” »
