Switzer Fellows Forum

On January 11th, Dr. Shaye Wolf, Climate Science Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, presented a webinar to 27 participants on her work using the Endangered Species Act to protect species threatened by climate change.  Dr. Wolf’s presentation is now available for viewing.  Click on the link below to access the presentation in pdf format:

Presentation: The ESA and Species Threatened by Climate Change

We would like to thank everyone for participating on the call and for the round of questions and discussion at the end.  We encourage you to use this space as an opportunity to ask questions and continue any discussions. The increasing urgency of this subject matter at the local, state, federal and international levels prompts us to offer the opportunity for discussion and collaboration amongst all participants.  Thank you for your interest!

Erin Lloyd, Program Officer

Lissa Widoff, Executive Director

Several Switzer Fellows recently attended the Cancun Climate change conference, representing a diverse array of organizations and perspectives.  Here is a recent post from Rob Stavins, who as an environbmental economist from Harvard Kennedy School is a proponent of market-based instruments for environmental improvement and an ardent supporter and thorough analyst of strengths and weaknesses of climate agreements and their abilty to achieve lasting carbon emission and GHG reductions.  It would be great to share other resources here and especially hear from FEllows who attended Cancun.

 http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/analysis/stavins/?p=876

We are pleased to offer to Fellows a special video introducing the importance of developing a clear message for your audience!  Blue Practice’s Jessica Switzer and Tim Gnatek offer their experience in this 8-minute instructional video.  Click here for a link to the video on the private side of the Switzer website.  Access to this material is for Registered Switzer Network members only.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Switzer Foundation and one of the great outcomes of this 25 year history is the Network of over 470 Fellows whose work supports a broad range of environmental issues in public and private sectors. One of the themes we aim to explore this year, is how to better mobilize the Network, through the (hubs of) fellows in particular regions or issues, and create the connections (spokes) between them. In Network theory lexicon as applied to organizations and social change, we want to be an effective “Network weaver” for this talented group and help link our collective resources for positive change. To move our collective thinking in this direction, I highly recommend the new article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review entitled “Working Wikily” by Heather Grant, Diana Scearce and Gabriel Kasper. The article is attached here and available at http://www.ssireview.org/images/ads/2010SU_Features_Scearce_Kasper_Grant.pdf.  I am interested in your feedback on how new social media tools and network theory and can foster these new collaborations and a “networked” way of thinking.  Perhaps this is not so new anymore, but powerful nonetheless. I am interested in having you share your thoughts, so please take a look at this article and share any reflections you have.  Many thanks - looking forward to the discussion!

Lissa

 Working Wikily, SSIR Review Summer 2010

March 23, 2010:  Switzer Fellow Dr. Lara Hansen and her colleague, Dr. Jennifer Hoffman, both of EcoAdapt, presented their work on climate change adaptation and the challenges faced by practitioners and resource managers.  Drs. Hansen and Hoffman also presented a new tool they are developing to help the adaptation planning community, called the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE - Your online adaptation destination).  Both the powerpoint and the audio file are available on this website.  Click here.

The audio file and the powerpoint used in the February 16th webinar, Innovative Solutions to Climate Change: Green Jobs and Energy Efficiency, led by 2001 Switzer Fellow Jeremy Hays, Field Director for Green for All, are available here.  Thanks to all participants and, of course, to Jeremy, for an informative and interactive session!

Powerpoint - Green Jobs and Energy Efficiency

Hello Switzer Fellows and colleagues,

In this post we wish to share the powerpoint presentations and links that were shared by presenters and trainers at our well-attended first-ever Federal policy training held in DC January 21-22, 2010. This should allow for easy download of the power point presentations. Please post additional useful links as you find them. 

Here are the presentations!

Congressional Budget PPT

Policy Landscape in DC

Connecting With Policy Makers

Congress 101

Congress 102

Additional links from Patrick Clemins:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/ - My program’s homepage and portal to all kinds of R&D Budget information

http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/presentations/ - My slides

http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/presentations/aaasrd20100122.xls - The budget worksheet from the workshop

http://rules.house.gov/bills_details.aspx?NewsID=4520 - The ‘answers’ from the workshop - Division B - Tables on Page 331

http://ncseonline.org/affiliates/handbook/ - NCSE Environmental R&D Funding Tables by Agency and Program

Additional info from Nadine Lymn:

It was a fun afternoon and your group was very energizing, which always makes a tremendous difference!   Please do feel free to use my powerpoint presentations; they are not already posted elsewhere.  I know there was a lot of interest in gaining access to the expensive publications that Adrienne mentioned in her talk; the link to ESA’s free Policy News (the content of which is largely drawn from those subscriptions) should be in the handouts, but just in case, the link is:  http://www.esa.org/pao/policy_news.php

Folks can receive Policy News automatically by email, by sending an e-mail to listserv@listserv.umd.edu with the following in the body of the message: sub ESANEWS {your first and last name} It was a pleasure meeting you and the Fellows, thanks again for the opportunity.

Several Switzer Fellows attended the COP 15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December through their various organizations.  Some have contributed their experiences and thoughts on the proceedings.

JASON DELBORNE, Assistant Professor at the Colorado School of Mines, attended the conference under an NSF grant studying process and outcomes.  His blog entries are:

• The Wrong Way to Close ClimateGate; and
• World Wide Views on Global Warming.

DANIEL MORRIS, Research Associate in the Climate Policy Program at Resources for the Future in Washington, DC, wrote an article about his experience attending COP-15 with RFF.  See ‘Post-Holiday Post-Mortem: Surveying the Wreckage of COP-15′ attached.

Post-Holiday Post-Mortem: Surveying the Wreckage of COP-15

Here is the link for the conference call agenda that presented the work of three Switzer Fellows engaged in sustainable forestry domestically and internationally. Full bios of presnting Fellows Andrea Johnson, of Environmental Investigation Agendcy, Linda Kramme of Worrld Wildlife Fund (and formerly of Rainforest Action Network’s Smartwood PRogram) and Carina Bracer, of Forest Trends’ Katoomba Group.

Sustainable Forestry Conference call agenda

And here are links to online resources sent by Fellows who participated in the June 26th conference call.

From Karen Shapiro: an up-to-date evaluation of SFI vs. FSC certification: http://www.greenpressinitiative.org/documents/eemfullreport.pdf

From Linda Kramme:

Link to WWF’s Global Forest & Trade Network: www.gftn.panda.orgLink to the North America Forest & Trade Network: www.worldwildlife.org/naftnWWF Position Paper on Forest Certification: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_forest_certification_pp_oct07.pdf

WWF Forest Certification Assessment Guide: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/fcagfinal.pdfForest Stewardship Council – US: www.fscus.org(NOTE: check out “Document List” tab for FSC standards and good background information)Fact Sheets about FSC and comparisons with other certification systems:http://www.fscus.org/images/documents/FSC%20fact%20sheet%20why%20best.pdfhttp://www.fscus.org/images/documents/Fact%20Sheet%20FSC%20Benchmark%202007.pdf

http://www.greenpressinitiative.org/documents/CertificationComparison.pdf

Link to the Rainforest Alliance’s SmartWood certification program: www.smartwood.org

Link to Environmental Investigation Agency: www.eia.org

Thanks to all who participated in the June 26th conference call discussion! Special thanks go to Andrea Johnson, Linda Kramme and Carina Bracer, our presenters, as well as to Lissa Widoff, our moderator. There was a lot of great discussion and we want to keep the airwaves open for follow-up. Several folks offered to share references with the group. Web links and documents will be posted here for general accessibility.

We welcome participants (and other folks who are interested) to continue the discussion here on the blog, or via e-mail.

For those of you who could not dial in, the call was recorded and an MP3 file is available for download below. Be advised it takes a minute to download.

http://www.switzernetwork.org/docs/Conference call 6-26-08.mp3

And here is the link for the conference call agenda that presented the work of three Switzer Fellows engaged in sustainable forestry domestically and internationally. Full bios of presnting Fellows Andrea Johnson, of Environmental Investigation Agendcy, Linda Kramme of Worrld Wildlife Fund (and formerly of Rainforest Action Network’s Smartwood Program) and Carina Bracer, of Forest Trends’ Katoomba Group.

Sustainable Forestry - Tools for Sustainable Forestry Agenda