environmental Archives | Research & Innovation

Talk explores emerging central themes in Latin America

muellerm — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Alex Latta, associate Fellow of the Centre for Research on Latin America & the Caribbean (CERLAC), will talk about the emerging central themes in the recently released collection, Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles.

The event will take place Wednesday, Nov. 7 from 1:30 to 3pm, at 280A 91��ɫ Lanes, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend the event.

Alex Latta

Latta, who co-edited the collection with Hannah Wittman, will draw on the contributions to the book, as well as related literature and his own research, to explore the ways nature becomes constituted as a resource, an object of knowledge, a target of governance and a focus for political struggle in Latin America.

He will look at how human political subjectivities are simultaneously implied, activated, contested and reinvented in these constitutive moments, spaces and processes. Beyond a concern for the rights and responsibilities of “environmental citizens”, the talk will reach for a conception of citizenship that is fundamentally relational across dynamic assemblages of human and non-human elements.

Latta is a professor in the Department of Global Studies and the Balsillie School of International affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. His research considers the politics of water, energy and environmental justice in Latin America, with a recent focus on conflicts over hydroelectric development in Chile.

For more information, e-mail cerlac@yorku.ca or visit the CERLAC website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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Changing water chemistry leaves plankton defenseless

muellerm — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine that the players on your favourite football team were smaller than their opponents, and had to play without helmets or pads. Left defenseless, they would become easy prey for other teams. Similarly, changes in Canadian lake water chemistry have left small water organisms known as plankton vulnerable to their predators, which may pose a serious environmental threat, according to a new study.

Why do plankton matter? 91��ɫ biology Professor Norman Yan, the study’s senior author, says these tiny creatures are critical to our survival. “Without plankton, humans would be quite hungry and perhaps even dead. Much of the world's photosynthesis, the basis of all of our food, comes from the ocean's plankton. The oxygen in every other breath we take is a product of phytoplankton photosynthesis,” says Yan.

Norman Yan

Yan together with the study's lead author Howard Riessen, a professor of biology at SUNY College at Buffalo studied the effect of changes in water chemistry on plankton prey defenses. Specifically, they examined how lower calcium concentrations affect Daphnia (water flea) exoskeleton development. These low calcium levels are caused by loss of calcium from forest soils, a consequence of decades of acid rain and multiple cycles of logging and forest growth. The results are published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Daphnia pulex

“At low calcium levels the organisms grow slower and cannot build their armour,” says Riessen. “Without suitable armour, they are vulnerable to ambush by predators,” he says.

“Calcium is a critical element for Daphnia and many other crustaceans,” Riessen says. “Daphnia build their exoskeletons, which include some defensive spines, with calcium to protect themselves from predators. Where calcium levels are low, the Daphnia have softer, smaller, exoskeletons with fewer defensive spines, making them an easy snack.”

This phenomenon of reduced calcium is also playing out on a much larger scale in the world’s oceans, notes Yan. “Increases in ocean acidity are complicating calcium acquisition by marine life, which is an under-reported effect of global carbon dioxide emissions. Thus marine plankton may also find themselves more vulnerable to predators,” he says.

Howard Riessen

The public is used to stories about changes in water chemistry that lead to large-scale fish kills, says Riessen. “These changes are more insidious. Daphnia might not be a household name, but they are food for fish, and they help keep our lakes clean. Changing the balance between Daphnia and their predators marks a major change in lake systems.”

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Panel to examine peace-building and the environment in the Middle East

fmaquito — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Is peace-building through environmental cooperation possible in the Middle East? Panellists will discuss this next week at an Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS) Speakers’ Series event.

The Environmental Cooperation and Israel-Palestinian Peace event will take place March 15 at 1pm at 280A 91��ɫ Lanes, Keele campus.

Environmental cooperation has been much-lauded as a force of peace in the Middle East and has been leveraged in support of Track I peacemaking processes between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It has been pursued as a practice of peace-building, valued for its ability to foster partnership-building, cooperation, identity change and sustainability. Still, the Israel-Palestinian conflict persists, even manifesting through cooperative environmental relations.

�ʲ��Ա��ٲ�� (right), an international development, peace-building and dialogue researcher-practitioner, and Stuart Schoenfeld (left), chair of the Department of Sociology at 91��ɫ’s Glendon College, will present and discuss the issue. Drawing on their direct experience of working with practitioners, governments and stakeholders in the Middle East, they will critically examine assumptions and practices of environmental cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians. Abitbol and Schoenfeld co-chaired the AVOW initiative (Adaptive Visions of Water in the Middle East), hosted at IRIS from 2007-2009.

Abitbol specializes in hydropolitical issues, with a particular interest in Israeli-Palestinian relations. A Chevening Scholar and associate Fellow at IRIS, he is pursuing a PhD in peace studies at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, while teaching university courses at the nexus of environment and peace. As a consultant, he recently conducted the Conflict and Peace Effects Study of the Israel-Palestinian Authority-Jordan-World Bank "Red Sea Dead Sea Conveyance" initiative.

Schoenfeld's research on regional environmentalism in the Middle East began in the late 1990s. A network of Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians began to work towards a common understanding of issues of water, energy, waste, transportation, consumption, biodiversity and sustainable development, and to fashion a way of turning that common understanding into one of the elements for peace and human security in the region.

The project continues to investigate this network and other regional frameworks. The project has produced publications on transboundary environmental networks, environmental peace building, approaches to regional environmental governance and the role of empathy in environmental peace-building.

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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#Legalhistory: law students argue first case via Twitter

fmaquito — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Students from 91��ɫ’s Osgoode Hall Law School will make their case in increments of 140 characters or less, in what’s billed as the world’s first Twitter moot court ().

On Tuesday, Feb. 21, five teams from law schools across Canada will argue a moot court case entirely on the popular social media platform. The event, hosted by West Coast Environmental Law, begins at 1pm EST; its hashtag is #twtmoot.

“One hundred and forty characters is a great way to focus legal arguments and ideas,” says Osgoode Dean Lorne Sossin, himself an avid tweeter (). “This is a novel and timely initiative. Congratulations to West Coast Environmental Law for initiating the project and good luck to the mooters, especially Team Osgoode. We’ll be following this groundbreaking moot with great interest,” he says.

The public is invited to participate by following @twtmoot, watching the action on the Twitter Moot list () or on its (no account required), and posting with the #twtmoot hashtag – comments, discussion and heckling welcome!

Teams of two students from law schools at Dalhousie University, University of Ottawa, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria and 91��ɫ will argue a mock appeal of a recent precedent-setting environmental case, West Moberly First Nations vs. British Columbia. The case raises issues related to the survival of an endangered caribou herd threatened by coal mining and ongoing industrial development.

Osgoode students Nikki Petersen and Emelia Baack will represent the West Moberly First Nations in the appeal; they will argue that the nation’s treaty right to hunt should extend to protecting a particular herd of caribou from coal mining impacts.

Petersen hopes the social media aspect will help connect people who are passionate about issues stemming from the case.

“Twitter is a great way to let many people share their views. I see the moot as a spark to get a discussion going about environmental law issues in Canada. The response to Team Osgoode has been very positive,” she says.

The Twitter Moot will be presided over by a panel of three judges: William Deverell, Omar Ha-Redeye, and Kathleen Mahoney.

For more information about the Twitter Moot and how to participate, . Team Osgoode is sponsored by Saxe Law Office.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Professor Colin Coates to dig into data on international commodity trading

fmaquito — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

A 91��ɫ research team will comb through digitized 19th-century documents to trace the environmental and economic consequences of international commodity trading during the 19th century.

Led by Professor Colin Coates (left), Canada Research Chair in Canadian Cultural Landscapes and professor of Canadian Studies at Glendon College, the project is expected to cast light on the impacts of an earlier period of economic “globalization” as a way of better understanding the challenges of current practices. It is one of eight projects across Canada that has been granted funding in the 2011 Digging into Data Challenge.

Fourteen teams representing Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States have been awarded grants to investigate how computational techniques can be applied to “big data” to change the nature of humanities and social sciences research. Each team represents collaborations among scholars, scientists and librarians from leading universities worldwide.

Coates, who is also the director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at 91��ɫ, is one of the principal investigators on the project titled Trading Consequences, which received $125,000 in funding. The project will examine the economic and environmental consequences of commodity trading during the 19th century and employs information extraction techniques to study large corpora of digitized documents from the 19th century. This innovative digital resource will allow historians to discover novel patterns and to explore new hypotheses through structured query and a variety of visualization tools.

"Our team of environmental historians is excited to be partners with the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews in the Trading Consequences project. Canadian economic development has historically been defined by commodity flows, and it is important to understand the environmental impacts of this commerce in the past, just as it is today. The focus on Canadian data will test the techniques created through this collaborative project for mapping the scope and impact of international trade in the 19th century," said Coates.

“91��ɫ is proud to receive recognition in the 2011 Digging into Data Challenge,” said Robert Haché, 91��ɫ’s vice-president research & innovation. “These important research projects advance knowledge as researchers work collaboratively and internationally to find new ways to analyze, search for and store data using digital and electronic technologies.”

“The Digging into Data Challenge is an international initiative that enables Canadian researchers to take advantage of the huge digital resources now available and to develop close partnerships with overseas universities,” said Chad Gaffield, president of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). “These exciting projects cross both disciplines and national borders; they lead to new insights into human thought and behaviour.”

The successful cohort of projects received a total of nearly $5 million in funding from eight international research funding agencies. SSHRC’s contribution of $869,117 will support Canadian researchers from eight of the fourteen teams.

For more information, visit the ��ɱ��ٱ�.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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