envscisociety

This is a great way to organize your ideas. I wish I had found about this website when we were mapping our ideas.

Interesting links through the site

"profiles ten dialogue methods in depth, and another fifteen more briefly. The methods covered conceptually and in case studies include Deep Democracy, Open Space Technology, Scenario Planning, World Café, the Israeli-Palestinian School for Peace and many more."

A resource for anyone wanting to bring diverse stakeholders into discussion and resolution of an environmental issue

The idea arose in the second section that the cycle of soil erosion and restoration in the case from Oaxaca might continue into the future. I was skeptical about future restoration, but this article (from a village 200km away) shows that positive change can happen. It also speaks to the issue of how common resources can get managed.

Under what conditions do people sharing a common resource develop sustainable ways of cooperating? Vollan and Ostrom (Nobel eonomics prize winner) provide an overview of recent experiments with people involving the forests of Ethiopia. Many different factors affect the outcomes, e.g., group's distance to markets--do not expect a simple counter-picture to Hardin's simple model of the tragedy of the commons. P.S. You can get access to the full text by signing into Science magazine via the UMB library, but here's the summary of the article: Sustainably managing common natural resources, such as fisheries, water, and forests, is essential for our long-term survival. Many analysts have assumed, however, that people will maximize short-term self-benefits-for example, by cutting as much firewood as they can sell-and warned that this behavior will inevitably produce a "tragedy of the commons" (1), such as a stripped forest that no longer produces wood for anyone. But in laboratory simulations of such social dilemmas, the outcome is not always tragedy. Instead, a basic finding is that humans do not universally maximize short-term self-benefits, and can cooperate to produce shared, long-term benefits (2, 3). Similar findings have come from field studies of commonly managed resources (6-7). It has been challenging, however, to directly relate laboratory findings to resource conditions in the field, and identify the conditions that enhance cooperation. On page 961 of this issue, Rustagi et al. (8) help fill this gap. In an innovative study of Ethiopia's Oromo people, they use economic experiments and forest growth data to show that groups that had a higher proportion of "conditional cooperators" were more likely to invest in forest patrols aimed at enforcing firewood collection rules-and had more productive forests. They also show that other factors, including a group's distance to markets and the quality of its leadership, influenced the success of cooperati

The original text of Larry Summers' memo on underpolluted countries--"shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]" Summers went on to become treasury secretary under Clinton, Harvard U. president (until he was forced out), and chief economic advisor to Obama.

Globalization of the Global Warming movement

>I have found this great website on self organization. The site >allows citizen in all communities throughout the world to post >issues that needs to be fixed in their neighborhood. Residents and >government officials can log in and see what is going on with their >neighborhood and monitor the issues that are being fixed or those >that are neglected. > >I know there are a lot of students in class addressing the issue of >self organization. I that was a neat virtual environment where >people gather to point out issues and come out in the real world to >fix them. Out of 60 000 reports of problems that have been posted >thus far, they claimed that 45% has been resolved all through self >determination and public involvement

Lionfish threaten to wreak havoc on this ecologically sensitive marine system - a good look at what invasive species do to their new environment

An article from world-nuclear that discusses the environmental impacts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs and progress from disaster to make the areas what they are today. Weapons testing as a result of the incidents is also discussed.

A letter to the editor about the Chernobyl disaster and the creation of a wildlife preserve. Many topics are discussed including biomass energy from burning irradiated plant life, the cost of the project, etc.

An article about the prevalence of leukaemia in Europe after the Chernobyl accident and a more recent update on the study. Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bomb victims are also discussed in comparison.

An article discussing mutations in birds living in and around Chernobyl following the reactor explosion and subsequent radiation release.

An article detailing research collected concerning mutations in the loci of the brain in children born in the Chernobyl area after the accident and of a control group.

An article of the progress of the environment in Chernobyl and its current state after the reactor accident.

An article about disaster tourism, which can be related to the trips taken to the ghost city of Chernobyl that I have been studying.

Umass professor talking about education and climate change