International Conservation & Development

Fellow Story

McElwee in New York Times on passing of Vietnamese environmentalist

In the early 1960s, a young ornithologist successfully persuaded Vietnam’s top leaders, including its founding president, Ho Chi Minh, to designate a tract of land near the capital as the country’s first national park.
February 13, 2017
Fellow Story

Donald J. Trump, Shooting the Ecological Messenger

Fellow Daniel Orenstein writes that scientists, educators and researchers have to become leaders, both advancing the state of knowledge about global climate and the impacts of human activities, and strengthening the ecological literacy of youth. Education will be key in pushing back the damage that the Trump presidency is already causing, he says.
January 27, 2017
Fellow Story

Merritt wins fellowship to document mercury and silver mining history in Spain and Mexico

Karen Merritt, public health educator, street photographer and SEA Semester alumna (W-98), has been selected to receive this year’s Armin E. Elsaesser Fellowship award. Karen plans to use the award to investigate and document the “invisible history” of 16th and 17th century mercury and silver mining in Spain and Mexico, which she describes as one of the “longest continuous maritime transport endeavors in history.” ...
December 21, 2016
Fellow Story

Jones quantifies implications of Trump presidency for the climate

In several interviews with prominent media outlets, Climate Interactive’s Andrew Jones and MIT’s Prof. John Sterman elaborated the potential effect of president-elect Trump pulling out of the Paris climate agreement.
November 21, 2016
Fellow Story

Sims Gallagher quoted in CS Monitor on global climate fund

A new world of global climate action is coming into view here in Morocco – a world without US leadership on the issue. The test now is whether global cooperation can proceed and grow at a time when America – in recent years a leader in the push to reduce carbon emissions – has a president-elect who opposes the very concept of climate response.
November 15, 2016
Fellow Story

Feral animals are running amok on Australia’s islands – here’s how to stop them

Australia has some 8,300 islands, many of them home to threatened species. But humans have introduced rodents and predators such as feral cats and foxes to many of these islands, devastating native wildlife and changing entire island ecosystems. Removing invasive mammals has proven to be a very effective tool for protecting island species, Fellows Chris Wilcox and Erin McCreless discovered.
November 14, 2016
Fellow Story

Pendleton publishes on coral reefs and people in high-CO2 world

Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere put shallow, warm-water coral reef ecosystems, and the people who depend upon them at risk from two key global environmental stresses: 1) elevated sea surface temperature that can cause coral bleaching and related mortality, and 2) ocean acidification. These rising CO2 levels may affect most of the world’s coral reefs and the populations which depend on them by 2050, according to this study in the journal PLOS ONE.
November 1, 2016
Fellow Story

Green Finance: The Next Frontier for U.S.-China Climate Cooperation

As the United States and China put new policies in place to achieve their national targets and fulfill their domestic and international commitments, both countries confront a common challenge: mobilizing sufficient investment at home to meet domestic energy, climate, and environmental protection goals, while at the same time steering outbound investments toward sustainable projects in other nations that support, rather than undermine, those nations’ climate targets.
October 31, 2016
Fellow Story

Hansen speaks on climate action at Marine World Heritage managers conference

Climate change is a global problem, but it wears many faces, causing flooding in some areas and drought in others, record high temperatures one year, and cold the next. In the ocean, we are already seeing coral bleaching, increased acidity, rising seas, and changes to the food web. While many climate solutions—like the Paris climate agreement—require international cooperation, there is huge potential too for local programs to make a difference.
October 12, 2016
Fellow Story

Krupnik publishes on potential for sustainable crop intensification through surface water irrigation in Bangladesh

Changing dietary preferences and population growth in South Asia have resulted in increasing demand for wheat and maize, along side high and sustained demand for rice. In the highly productive northwestern Indo-Gangetic Plains of South Asia, farmers utilize groundwater irrigation to assure that at least two of these crops are sequenced on the same field within the same year. Such double cropping has had a significant and positive influence on regional agricultural productivity. But in the risk-prone and food insecure lower Eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains (EIGP), cropping is less intensive.
October 1, 2016