NRESI Colloquium Series

Unable to make it in person?     Watch the colloquium at your desk!

For Elluminate information and link to the webcast:    

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Friday, March 12, 2010   Lecture Theatre 7-152     3:30 - 4:30 pm

Sybille Haeussler, Research Coordinator, Future Forest Ecosystem Scientific Council (FFESC) & Ecosystem Science & Management Program, UNBC

Complexity Affects the Resilience of Northern BC Ecosystems, Landscapes and Social-Ecological Networks

The Economist (Dec. 5, 2009) stated that “climate change is the hardest political problem the world has ever had to deal with”.  For ecologists, grappling effectively with the implications of climate change will require new approaches to our science that embrace complexity, interdisciplinarity and non-scientific world views.  The presentation will outline my own recent attempts to address this challenge by applying theory and analytical approaches from complex systems science to my own highly specialized empirical knowledge of the ecosystems, landscapes and social-ecological networks of northern BC.  I will use case studies from 30 years of fieldwork in forest and grassland ecosystems of northwest BC as well as some personal experiences as a “citizen scholar” involved in local community capacity-building in the Bulkley Valley to examine how ecological or social-ecological resilience is related to system complexity and to discuss how these relationships may affect responses to climate change.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010   Lecture Theatre 7-152     3:30 - 4:30 pm

Bram Noble, Ph.D, Dept. of Geography & Planning, University of Saskatchewan

Comfort monitoring?  Privatization & environmental assessment follow-up in Saskatchewan’s uranium mining industry

Occupying nearly one third of the surface area of the Saskatchewan Shield (100,000 km²), the Athabasca Basin is one of the world’s largest sources of uranium, contributing approxi­mately 22% to global supply.  The Basin is also home to three remote Aboriginal settlements and four small hamlets and communities.  Follow-up and monitoring of the impacts of uranium mining in the Athabasca Basin occurs under two frameworks — regulatory-based EIA and, more recently, privatized community-industry negotiated environmental agree­ments.  Negotiated agreements are becoming common-practice in the mining industry, with more than 120 agreements currently established nation-wide.  In principle, negotiated agreements are said to respond to many of the shortcomings of EIA by providing for improved follow-up of project impacts through, among other things, data provision, engaging stakeholders in monitoring and impact man0agement activities, and building capacity at the local level to deal with project-induced environmental change.  In practice, however, little is known about the efficacy of monitoring under negotiated agreements and the demonstrated value-added to project impact management.  This presentation will discuss follow-up practices in the Athabasca uranium mining industry, and examine whether and how monitoring under the negotiated agreement actually contributes to improved project impact management.  Results will show that follow-up under the agree­ment is best described as “comfort monitoring”.  Although such monitoring does improve community-industry relations and enhance corporate image, it does little to support effects-based management.  If monitoring under negotiated agreements is to be credible over the long term, there is a need to ensure that monitoring results are useful for, and integrated with, regulatory-based monitoring and project impact management practices.

Thursday, March 25, 2010   Lecture Theatre 6-205     4:00 pm

Dr. Robert Gifford, Professor, Dept. of Psychology, University of Victoria

(Co-sponsored by Psychology and PICS)

Changing Climate Change Behaviour: Individual-level Barriers and Solutions

NRESi Seminar Schedule can be found at: www.unbc.ca/nres/seminar/