September 2010

Our challenge is to keep the excitement and passion alive, alive through midterm season, through deadlines for assignments, reports, essays, and yes even through the exam period!

I have two approaches in mind for this year. FIRST, I suggest that each of you get involved in at least one extracurricular activity … Many of you will want to apply all that you are learning about the environment to some real-world issue. Learn about the large number of environmental groups both on the downtown campus and at MAC. Find out what MESS is doing. Start our own project! The MSE is here to help facilitate such initiatives.

SECOND, get to know other students who share similar interests. As last year, I have been hosting a series of get-togethers so I can meet as many of you as possible, and more importantly, so that you can meet other students who are in the same Domain or program. I encourage you to come to one of these. If you haven't been able to attend one yet, I will be holding one EXTRA session at 5:45 pm on Thursday, October 14th, at the MSE downtown. Feel free to come by and meet me, and other MSE students!!! Friendships that you make at University often last for the rest of your life, and they also help you to deal with the stresses that are bound to arise!

How much you benefit from your time at the MSE and at McGill University depends a great deal on YOU. Get to know each of your professors – not just as someone standing at the front of a classroom, but as a person. Take advantage of opportunities to hear special talks on all sorts of topics by internationally recognized experts. Watch for opportunities to travel, to apply for scholarships and awards, to do internships or to get part-time jobs. And learn from each other, too. The experiences you have over the coming few years can profoundly influence where you go in the future, your worldviews, and how you integrate knowledge and action. We are here to help, but ultimately choices and responsibilities are yours!

I noticed the trees on Mount Royal are starting to change into their autumn colours, so I guess the seasons still seem to be working all right. Surprising, because I almost didn't expect the summer to end.

But it's definitely over, and I'm spending more time indoors. It's not so bad--I get to treat myself to warm tea, warm clothes, and a cozy couch. But that doesn't mean I don't have to get outside. As this year's McGill School of Environment Journalist, I'll be doing a lot of running around. My job is to interview speakers, update the blog on the MSE website, and cover environment-related events. And there's plenty to cover on campus--from Farmer's Market to Santropol Roulant's expanded Edible Campus to new student initiatives. In addition, the MSE is hosting plenty of speakers this year, like Sally Bingham, who spoke on religion and the environment this Tuesday, and Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian Journalist, who will be speaking on the geopolitical implications of climate change on October 21st. I'm excited to be doing this throughout the year, it's a great opportunity to keep students, staff, and alumni informed about what's going on.

If you're new to the School of Environment, then welcome! You're in the best interdisciplinary faculty at McGill (in my opinion). There's a lot to learn, but it's also a lot of fun, and there's some great people to meet. You should also try to attend as many events as possible: they're great ways to learn things you don't generally learn in ENV 200, and especially not in ENV 203. If you're organizing an event or looking for some coverage of your group or project, then you should definitely contact me. I'm open to anything, and I'll put an article on the environment blog as soon as possible.

If you're looking to get involved with environmental groups on campus, there's plenty of them to choose from. On the Downtown campus you can help Farmer's Market set up every Wednesday morning right by the crossroads, or help Santropol harvest their last vegetables Tuesday at 10:30am or Wednesday at 5pm, right outside of Burnside. The McGill Environment Student Society can also give you some good ideas and organizes some good events. Gorilla Composting is active on both the Downtown and Macdonald campuses, so give them a shout (http://gorilla.mcgill.ca/home.php). The Macdonald Campus Student Society has more information about clubs that focus on environmental issues, like MAC Sustainable Projects or the MAC Agroecology group. If you have a project that you would like funding for, it's not too late to apply for it, via the new Sustainability Projects Fund (https://www.mcgill.ca/sustainability/projectfund/).

I hope that you, new and returning students of the MSE get more from your university experience than lectures and long hours in the library. This doesn't just mean getting involved, it also means: enjoy yourselves.

Have a good year!

A "Thoreau Weekend" Retreat
ENVR 491, Section 002, CRN 10229, *winter term 201101

For 1st year students in the MSE, this is a one-credit course through which you will -
• meet other incoming students;
• share a variety of student experiences,perspectives and goals related to the environment;
• discuss the variety of options open to MSE students, in courses and career possibilities;
• reflect on issues such as environmental activism, political constraints, economic dimensions, individual versus collective values, the role of religion;
• enjoy a UNESCO Heritage site owned by McGill and offering students unique opportunities for outdoor explorations.

There will be some introductory reading required and a short essay, but most of the weekend will involve group activities that encourage mutual sharing of ideas and perspectives, enabling students to have a better understanding of the many opportunities and challenges involved in environmental studies.

DATES: Friday, October 29 – Sunday, October 31, 2010
LOCATION: Mont St-Hilaire, Gault Estate
TRANSPORTATION: bus from Roddick Gates, downtown Montreal
COST: $95 (added to student fees account)
Non-MSE first year students may also apply, however priority goes to MSE students.
REGISTRATION by ENVR491 Application Form : Deadline – Fri. October 8 by email: danielle.lefebvre [at] mcgill.ca (Danielle Lefebvre)

Max. enrolment: 15

*for registration purposes only

Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne (PhD in Geography, co-advised by Dr. Elena Bennett and Dr. Garry Peterson) recently led publication of an article worked on by both of our lab groups. The article asked why, if ecosystem services are declining, is human well-being continuing to increase. We examined evidence for and against four plausible hypotheses. This paper has been picked up quite a bit in the press. You can read more about it here:

And it has been picked up an presented in news stories and blogs:

Original blogs / editorials in:
Bioscience
Guardian
Grist
Resilience Alliance
Scientific American
The New Republic / NPR
Environmental News Network

Reprints of the original Bioscience press release.

Text in:
ScienceBlog
Eureka Alert
X-Journals
MedIndia

And also a reprint of the Leo Hickman Guardian text in World Changing

Cultivating Conservation with Children

The students knew the story: sixty or so years ago the Ugandan fishery was near collapse. Increased fishing pressure combined with rapid urbanization and industrialization placed immense pressure on the water habitat, driving down stocks of native tilapia to devastating levels. Nile perch (Lates niloticus), was consequently introduced to Lake Victoria and was heralded as the lake's saving grace—the fish could transform the fishery from one dominated by small, bony haplochromine cichlids to one of large and lucrative Nile perch. The ubiquitous fish did just this. In twenty years the system became unrecognizable. An ecosystem whose biomass was composed of 90% cichlids was eaten up until these endemic species represented less than one percent of the lake's biomass. The ecologists were horrified, but the fishery was booming. Without any predators and with a buffet of cichlids to consume, the Nile perch population exploded, supplying the country with millions of dollars in export revenues.

Today, the fishery is once again on the verge of collapse for all the same reasons as before: increased fishing pressure due to an increasing population and new fishing techniques compounded by overall environmental deterioration has placed the fishery in a precarious state. With an economy and millions of livelihoods dependent on this resource, the country has mobilized to remedy the situation. Collaborative organizations such as the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO) between the three co-owners of the lake, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, do research to catalogue and understand the changes that have occurred and predict future changes. The government of Uganda funds a plethora of projects with the National Fisheries Resources Research Institute (NaFIRRI), mandated to provide the research necessary to manage and conserve the aquatic resources of the country. However pragmatic these initiatives are, the transformation of this knowledge into conservation action seems to reside in the younger generation.

A new program called Aqua-Links, a collaboration between NaFIRRI and The Toronto Zoo shed light on the importance of education for conservation. The program connects Ugandan and Canadian students in order to start a dialogue about diversity and water conservation, with the Ugandan students focusing on East Africa's Great Lakes, especially Lake Victoria, and the Canadian students focusing on the North American great lakes. Conservation education is hinged on the idea that the conservation of our biological diversity is contingent on people's knowledge and understanding of this diversity. Or, in the words of one Ugandan senior two student involved with the program, "We have to know what is a part of us." As we are innately attuned to minute changes in the homeostasis of our bodies, we should also be in touch with our transforming environments.

The students participating in the Aqua-Links program in Uganda inspired me to think about the importance of education more. Not only did the students engage with the ecology and history we were teaching, but they asked questions that even the most senior educators, resource managers and politicians could not answer. They asked the very questions that most international environmental conferences and policy makers shy away from for fear of answers that will lower their popularity or because the answer seems entirely out of reach. Not only did they absorb the material presented to them, they understood the responsibility this knowledge held. They asked how, "as young people, we can be in the position to educate others about the environment and natural resources." They asked how they should "approach people in their villages when they seem so deaf." This generation knows the story, and if they do not, programs like Aqua-Links are hoping to tell it. Educational programs such as this one are tapping into our most valuable resource for conservation. Children should be at the center of conservation efforts: they understand the problems and are not yet afraid of the answers. How children should be incorporated into conservation efforts is a more difficult question, however, Aqua-Links has inspired a few Ugandan students as well as a slightly disenchanted and pessimistic McGill environment student. As young people, we can drum and dance too.

"Thank you to the government of Canada for the financial support provided through CIDA for the opportunity to work with this project."

If you want more information about this program feel free to contact me at sophia.kehler [at] mail.mcgill.ca (Sophie Kehler) .

Four secondary school students pretending to be fish beside the fish of Lake Victoria