May 31, 2016 - The IIASA visit allowed me to travel onwards from Europe (at own expense, .... highly productive and media-savvy palaeoecologist and blogger ...
Trip report - official travel to Vienna and USA to develop partnerships and project collaborations for the SANBI Biodiversity Futures Program Phoebe Barnard
Background/ summary
SANBI co-financed (with the NRF-organized and IIASA-funded SASAC program) a highly productive research/ training visit to Vienna and the USA, 23 April-13 May 2016.
IIASA is the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis at Laxenburg Palace outside Vienna, and is the world’s top concentration of quantitative systems analysis modelers, statisticians and thinkers – a kind of United Nations of complex problem-solvers. Through South Africa’s membership of IIASA (via NRF), we have an extraordinary opportunity to lever collaboration and high-level modelling skills for the Biodiversity Futures Program and other complex SANBI issues.
The IIASA visit allowed me to travel onwards from Europe (at own expense, as I was going there for a family reunion) to the USA to discuss new partnerships with SANBI on environmental futures, climate change and sustainability.
Through meetings with senior management, I have developed very positive partnerships for SANBI with IIASA, the University of Maine at Orono (both the Climate Change Institute and the Mitchell
Center for Sustainability Solutions, at the latter of which I gave a monthly seminar), and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University.
The trip was low budget for SANBI and extremely productive. Thank you.
The IIASA visit – Laxenburg Palace, near Vienna, Austria, 23-30 April 2016 (http://www.iiasa.ac.at/) The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, IIASA, is an international scientific institute doing advanced research into critical issues of global environmental, economic, technological, and social change of the 21st century. Initially founded to promote East-West scientific and technological collaboration during the Cold War, it now addresses complex global challenges. It is famous worldwide as a science/policy research institute. IIASA is independent and funded by research funding agencies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.
In December 2015 I had arranged that SANBI participate, through the new Biodiversity Futures Program, in IIASA’s NRF-organized South African program, SASAC (the Southern African Systems Analysis Centre) in order to access high-level skills and partnership cofinancing. SASAC organized this visit in April 2016 http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/education/sayssp/160425-SASACvisit.html for SASAC-associated PhD students and their supervisors to IIASA, in order to gain systems analysis insights and to foster collaborations. As a result of this visit, I established firm collaborations with three extremely strong IIASA groups: o Advanced Systems Analysis Program, ASA http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/AdvancedSystemsAnalysis/O verview.html, headed by Dr Elena Rovenskaya and deputy Dr Matthias Jonas o Risk and Resilience Program, RISK http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/RISK/RISK-home.html, headed by Dr Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer and deputy Dr Reinhard Mechler o Ecosystems Services and Management Program, ESM http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/EcosystemsServicesandMan agement/Overview--Objectives.en.html, headed by Dr Michael Obersteiner and deputy Dr Florian Kraxner. From 25-29 April I held meetings with Dr Matthias Jonas (ASA) and his team, including numerous postdocs and PhD students in the ASA Program; Dr Wei Liu, postdoc scholar (RISK), and Dr Florian Kraxner, Dr Stephan Pietsch, Dr Sylvain Leduc, and Dr Aline Mosnier (ESM). From this, we agreed to submit a SANBI-ASA-RISK bilateral research mobility grant application to fund our collaboration. (This was submitted via Austria’s and South Africa’s national research bodies on 31 May.) My SASAC-supported PhD student Mukundi Mukundamago joined the trip, working to develop a proposal on the project “Biodiversity and ecosystem impacts of foreign direct investments in largescale infrastructure projects – the case of the China-Africa Infrastructure Plans”. During the trip, earlier misgivings that the SASAC team and I had identified in Mukundi’s abilities and performance as a PhD student were confirmed, and the SASAC and NRF leadership teams and I took the difficult decision to withdraw her from the program. A new PhD student, Lavinia Perumal (also one of my 3 original SASAC applicants) is likely to join the China-Africa project later this year, and is submitting her MSc thesis at Rhodes University this week. An IIASA-SANBI MoU is a likely necessity for later this year.
The USA meetings I went to New England, USA on a private family visit as my mother turned 92 and my brother 65. It was a good opportunity to meet potential partners in the USA for the Biodiversity Futures and Climate Change Bioadaptation Programs. University of Maine at Orono – Senator George Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions (http://umaine.edu/mitchellcenter/) On 2 May 2016 I travelled by car to Orono, Maine to meet with the director (Dr David Hart) of the Mitchell Center. Hart and his staff had organized that I give a seminar on our work at SANBI (http://umaine.edu/mitchellcenter/seminars/).
My talk “A world upside down: charting climate & biodiversity futures in Africa and the global South,” reflected on different ecological conditions and paradigms in the southern hemisphere, how this affects our ability to handle urgent North-South problems in times of rapid environmental change, how South Africa and Namibia (and other African countries) have taken the opportunity of independence to chart their future more mindfully than many countries in the North, and how we use academic and citizen science to solve sustainability problems. I spent a further hour with staff and students at the Center, including former Society for Conservation Biology President Mac Hunter, discussing mutual interests in environmental futures, sustainability, citizen science and African biodiversity issues. If subsequent scientific exchange proves necessary, we can develop a SANBI/Mitchell Center MoU, but this is not immediately needed.
University of Maine at Orono – Climate Change Institute (CCI) (http://climatechange.umaine.edu/) The UMO CCI is a surprisingly big and well-funded multidisciplinary research institute, focusing on climate futures and rapid environmental change. On 5 May I met Prof Paul Mayewski, director of the CCI, and Assoc Prof Jacquelyn Gill at Paul’s office.
Paul is a highly respected glaciologist and had just come from winning a medal in Vienna for global leadership of the next generation of scientists. His group has developed a widely used software tool for time-series and climate anomaly analysis called “Climate Reanalyzer” (see pic and http://climatechange.umaine.edu/insights/climate-reanalyzer). They are very active in helping frame global, national and regional environmental futures (and palaeohistories) through their research. Jacquelyn is a young, highly productive and media-savvy palaeoecologist and blogger about earth history, extinction, biodiversity loss and the meaning of Quaternary science for 21st century global change challenges. We agreed to try to find modest funds to start an exchange program between our postdocs and PhD students to work on climate change and biodiversity futures and palaeoclimates where this seemed to have value to both institutes. Once this process is underway, we should develop a simple SANBI/CCI MoU.
Bowdoin College – Environmental Studies Program (http://www.bowdoin.edu/academics/index.shtml) Bowdoin is a small but highly ranked interdisciplinary liberal arts university in the vicinity of my family’s home in Maine, which has a surprisingly good array of scientists in environmental futures, earth and climate
scientists. It trains students up to honours level and is an important producer of influential graduates (http://www.bowdoin.edu/about/index.shtml).
On 3 and 4 May I met with Profs Nathaniel Wheelwright (head of department of biological sciences) and Matthew Klingle (incoming director of the Environmental Studies Program) about collaboration. Nat Wheelwright, much like me, is an ornithologist turned conservation biologist and global change biologist interested in environmental futures, who has done significant field ecology training with students in tropical environments in order to cultivate what I call “ecological wisdom and sound environmental decision-making skills.” Matt Klingle is an environmental historian and public policy specialist with wide transdisciplinary interests. Both are very interested in exposing their students to global South research issues in a way that could contribute to South Africa. We discussed the possibility of learning mechanisms with SANBI staff and students and UCT students (likely involving UCT’s Environmental and Geographical Sciences Department, Dr Peter Johnston, and African Climate and Development Initiative, Prof Mark New), in which Bowdoin and South African students jointly undertake problem-solving and data-handling exercises which contribute to SANBI’s Biodiversity Futures and Climate Change Bioadaptation work and UCT’s related climate research and teaching.
Pardee Center for Study of the Longer Range Future – Boston University (http://www.bu.edu/pardee/) The Pardee Center is an influential, independent environmental and societal futures and scenarios institute in Boston. I met with Center Director Prof Anthony Janetos and Associate Director Cynthia Barakatt by Skype on 4 May, after it transpired that a physical meeting on 9 May (when I’d be in Boston) wouldn’t be possible.
Janetos and Barakatt were extremely interested in the possibility of working with SANBI on environmental futures focusing on biodiversity, ecosystems and climate change. Janetos is (like me) a former behavioural and evolutionary ecologist who works on global change issues and is particularly interested in how societal choices affect biodiversity and ecosystems. They have a Summer Fellows Program (http://www.bu.edu/pardee/community/2016-pardeesummer-fellows/) which can potentially be used to second senior postgraduate-level researchers to SANBI for short periods to work with the Biodiversity Futures and Climate Bioadaptation Programs. A simple draft SANBI/Pardee MoU should be drawn up sometime soon to facilitate this.
Phoebe’s funding overview Major costs for the trip of airfare, accommodation and most travel were met by IIASA/SASAC/NRF and my own family (through private family visit). SANBI agreed to cover 2 days of S&T for the travel and meetings outlined at University of Orono, above, plus fuel costs if necessary (yes) and a night at a motel if necessary (no). I took 3 days of family leave (3, 4 and 6 May) although I held 3 meetings on these days.
I will submit a small reimbursement claim for the above via Gail by 10 June. Thanks for your support – I hope you agree that this was a very cost-effective trip for SANBI.
