Finding Sustainability Podcast

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 transformations https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021002016   Josie'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 Balasubramanya, 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 Administration, 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.