Tag: Samuel Mann

Categories
computing design psychology

Designing for people

Some technologists want to create a seamless future…I ‘m not one of those, I think it’s useful that parts are nubby – some parts leave room for error or space for adjustment, some room for learning behaviour.

Han Pham with Samuel Mann [ 1:04:29 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Han Pham is Future Cities Experience Strategist, at the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities.

HanPham

Talking points:

If you only ask users about your product, they’ll only tell you about your product – we need to be able to step away from the screen.

Before we bring in our life-changing solution, we have to realise that people survive without it – this can be uplifting and challenging together.

We’re designing for how people behave, at an individual level but also considering what does this mean at the community level?

Sometimes you want to make it invisible, sometimes you want to see detail

Sometimes you ask people about the future, and they think about the future as inevitable and they think about it as this glossy surface thing that’s going to come their way whether they like it or not, and it’s not very porous – there’s not a lot of transparency. People are frightened by this – there’s a sense of helplessness.

We are not just designing things, we’re designing how people learn. If we can create frameworks for how they understand something – with frameworks that are sticky and that work for them – builds an expectation of how things should work. We can make use of that learning window so products and services can change how people think.

Users don’t necessarily want to carry an identity card that says ‘I’m a sustainable person’…they are them

Incremental changes can be a sea-change.

Sometimes a sea-change is finding a pattern of behaviour that not only the lead adopters are going to adopt

(are you an activist) Yes, I say to technology companies, people have a place.

Categories
agriculture geography

Cultural sustainability on the farm

Rob Burton

There’s a real problem for sustainability when you start using all of the resources – you have no capacity if something goes wrong – because then if it goes wrong it goes very wrong.

Rob Burton [ 55:26 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dr Rob Burton is a senior researcher from the Centre for Rural Research (Bygdeforskning) in Trondhiem, Norway. Rob’s work has focused on exploring the role culture and identity play in determining farming behaviours – particularly as they relate to agri-environmental activity.

Rob is part of an EU COST programme looking at the concept of cultural sustainability with a focus on the influence of farming culture on the adoption of agri-environmental schemes.

We talk about policy and sustainability frameworks as related to agricultural areas in Europe and New Zealand (spoiler: NZ is not outstanding in the field).

When you need reliable farm equipment, landoll tillage, for all types of jobs, there’s only one company in Australia to choose. Geronimo Farm Equipment can help customers in Australia and worldwide to get the high-quality equipment and products they need.

Talking pointing

As I was sitting there watching the glacier melt, I suddenly realised I didn’t want to spend my life sitting watching glaciers melt when the real cause of the problem is actually people

(In terms of policies for agriculture that look beyond production) NZ not just has a long way to go, but is going rapidly in the wrong direction.

Norway does the opposite of population-based funding, if an area doesn’t have enough population, they fund it better…to try to keep a regional distribution of population.

(In regards to environmental policies around farming, have we got something fundamentally wrong?) Yes, I think you have. While many farmers are really good, you don’t need too many to ruin it for the rest. I think there needs to be more of an element of compulsion for breaching environmental standards. The industry is trying, and many farmers are trying, but there’s the bad ones that somewhere along the lines you’re going to have to pull up.

Also the fast tracking of development for dairy is probably wrong. Particularly its expansion into regions that are dry and depend increasingly on irrigation – that creates difficulties, farmers have to borrow a hell of a lot of money to set up a dairy farm and really the environment is the last thing they want to worry about when they just have to make the business profitable. This will resolve itself in the future once the investment and growth development stops and farmers spend a bit of time getting the capital back and they can invest in things like the environment. But if you want it now, this is a problem I can’t see being resolved.

There’s a real problem for sustainability when you start using all of the resources – you have no capacity if something goes wrong – because then if it goes wrong it goes very wrong. And this effectively what we do by relying on economics to drive the development of agriculture – which of course is going to maximise the use of every drop of water that’s out there which is fine except…you’re losing sheep and beef farms and if we have a period extreme drought through climate change then we’re in trouble.

(Beyond post-productive farmer self-identity) When people do studies of farmers, they generally find that farmers are very pro-environment and then when they look at the farmer behaviours they don’t seem to match up. A lot of researchers in the past have concluded that the farmers are just liars – they don’t think this about the environment at all. Our point is about multiple identities, it’s about hierarchies of identities. You have an identity as an environmentalist that you can apply sometimes, and you can care greatly about the environment – but it is like going into a supermarket, you want to do the right thing in terms of purchasing organics and so on, but your first priority is feeding your family with the money you have in your pocket. In general, production remains the first priority for farmers – it doesn’t mean that when they talk about the environment and don’t act that way that it is hypocritical , it is just that they don’t prioritise it very often or as often as they should in some cases.

(Are you an activist?) No, I’m not an activist. I’m a cynic, sometimes I’m a realist which is a cynic with a better cause than just being cynical. But in my work I always try to do things that are important rather than unimportant. There is unimportant work being done out there that is pretty irrelevant – I don’t like doing that. It’s not something that gives me a lot of satisfaction. But I’ve never protested anything…no I don’t think I’m an activist but I do what I can… but like to be able to put a perspective across that may make people think a bit differently- or make a difference in the end, but I don’t really believe that going out there and protesting is necessarily the best way of doing it because people have been doing that for too long and governments are really too savvy on that. They’ve got the spin doctors who are quite able to nullify any legitimate protest anyway.

Categories
climate change oil politics

The rise of the hyphenated activist

Anadarko's drill ship the Noble Bob Douglas drilling off the Otago Coast. Credit: Damian Newell aboard the Oil Free Otago flotilla.

Patricia Widener - oil [ 56:06 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dr Patricia Widener hails from the Sociology Department of Florida Atlantic University. She studies the effect of the oil industry on communities.

Talking points

I study the conflict and contamination as communities respond to the oil industry.

Even the threat of an oil industry can damage a sense of place

For many places the oil industry is not something people have considered

New communities are being forced to assess what oil means to them. In a way oil has been invisible to us, its always been available to us, it’s such a part of our lives we don’t critically think of all of the meanings petroleum until these new projects are announced.

Oil splits communities.

If people are afraid to take a strong position, that’s a problem, that’s an environment that is not conducive to everyone discussing it, debating it forming their own opinions about it.

If they are not shy about holding a position, but afraid that they’ll be rejected, a stigma for that position. In a democracy shouldn’t be happening, in a democracy, everyone should be comfortable talking about their position, how they got to that position and why they feel strongly about it.

People can be criticised for taking a position against a project – but that’s democracy.

Small businesses in business associations

Communities are not able to assess projects on a equal playing field, they only have tidbits of information.

We say we are aware of climate change and we are addressing it, and yet we are increasing fossil fuel production. To a community that makes no sense. It is confusing for community members who need to make decisions on specific projects that potentially will produce greenhouse gases.

National responses are very mixed, but a community itself has to make a decision on an actual project. It’s not an abstract conversation, it’s a specific project – or potential project that’s coming in.

Both signals are happening. Yes we’re dealing with climate change, yes we’re increasing fossil fuels production and use. Both of these are happening at the same time. People, agencies, governments are saying both without connecting what that actually means.

I’m concerned about the focus on individual energy use, while at the same time giving industry a pass.

Until there are locally alternatives to driving the car – we’re mobile people – we do need to transition, and it’s not happening.

It is a diversion and it is easy to focus on and target the individual, and blame the individual for the problem. And this serves industry to target the individual.

It serves as a diversion to get the eyes, the gaze, the critical thinking away from industry and onto households and individuals.

We still need to drive less, the developed wealthy world, we live beyond our means, beyond the world’s means.

Oil is pleasing, it is so close to our lifestyles, the pleasurable parts of our lifestyles, but we need to be thinking about what it means when other areas or other communities are negatively impacted.

It is really difficult for us to think about how what is pleasing to us may cause someone else’s suffering. We don’t want to dwell on that so we give industry a pass.

We see oil wealth and hope that it is going to solve problems, but it can lead to inequality – it doesn’t mean it is going to reduce poverty and inequality.

Rather than individuals’ choices, the focus has to be on the political economy of oil – to make changes there.

Democracies need spaces.

(On potential for oil jobs in countries of abject poverty) It’s really hard for someone who has a job and isn’t experiencing dire poverty to criticise someone for wanting a (oil) job someone needing a job for themselves and their family, but could there not be developments for other jobs? Ones that are do contribute to the community, that do build livelihood, economic security and sustainability. A concern is when it (an oil job) becomes the only option, and there are no other options for the community – and they are risky jobs.

We need to make connections. The extraction, production, consumption and disposal – that’s the flow of the product, and along the entirety of a product’s life are inequalities, injustices and risks. If we think of ourselves as part of a global society – and we’d like to think we do, then we’re obligated to think of the harms associated with our products.

We can also see a flow of activism or resistance along the flow of petroleum.

We need to disengage from the industry that is causing harm. But we’re in a protracted age of oil, we have a fossil fuel addition. So despite climate change awareness, despite increasing knowledge of harms…we haven’t stopped or slowed down.

The political economy of oil is so entrenched, communities would struggle to resist it.

Industry is working on extraction to depletion.

Ask decision makers: what are you doing about climate change, how is increasing fossil fuel production an answer? I’m not hearing anyone answering this. It is staggering that projects are getting the green light without that question being answered.

What does it mean when we are producing something with global (negative) impacts, are you comfortable with that? And increasingly people are not comfortable with that.

(Am I an activist?). Yes, I’m a sociologist-activist.

We’re seeing the rise of the hyphenated activist…the professor-activist, the lawyer-activist, the farmer-activist, the grandparent-activist, the student-activist. A lot of people are doing both, and they’re doing both because these problems are coming closer to where they live, work, study and play. At that point, when you take a position on something, you have a multiple presence – you are what you are and you’re an activist, or advocate. Not against, but advocating for. For communities, for environment, advocates for – not against.

Be informed, to increase awareness about environment and community, take a position on that, and be heard with regards that position. Democracies rely on that.

Photo: Anadarko’s drill ship the Noble Bob Douglas drilling off the Otago Coast. Credit: Oil Free Otago flotilla.

Categories
behaviour change

Flipping behaviour change

Michael Daddo

No matter what role we have in life, we all have the ability to contribute to changing the world for the better – so we should always look for opportunities to do that and go for it as hard as we can.

Michael Daddo [ 54:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Shannon Company is dedicated to Behaviour Change. Michael Daddo is the Managing Director of the Shannon Company. Before this interview we asked around for some background. “He’s the flipper” said one. So we asked Michael about flipping.

We discuss the application of behaviour change techniques honed in campaigns such as Victorian Worksafe “Homecommings” campaign to wider issues of sustainability.

Talking points:

hope and obligation

I’m just a person with a conscience who can make a difference

Inspiring people to make a change willingly and for good, the more we can do that the better.

The greatest thing we can do is change the world in some shape or form for the better. If we can all find ways to contribute to that, in whatever way we can, then we should do that and seek those opportunities.

Categories
conservation biology marine mammals ocean

Dolphin Research Australia

Dolphin Research Australia - Isabela Keski-Franti and Liz Hawkins

Every little step, every little change that you make is huge.

Dolphin Research Australia's Liz Hawkins and Isabella Keski-Franti [ 58:10 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In the last of the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series we are joined by Dolphin Research Australia‘s Dr Liz Hawkins and Isabella Keski-Franti. They talk about research, education and Indigenous Management Frameworks

As well as academic performance, students have to have character strength, they have to have a feeling of citizenship – they have to belong.

Students have to remember that they belong in the ecosystem.

Children are very curious, they want to know what is around them, it’s a matter of providing them with opportunities

One of our traditions is to give something back to our host, so how can we show gratitude and respect for nature and place?

(On kids fund raising to adopt a dolphin) It’s the interconnectedness of everything, that makes them understand the importance of saving an animal, that even though they don’t have a direct connection but they are doing something – this is empowering them in becoming a citizen – an active citizen in their community.

If you want to live in the dolphin’s world you would need to lose your eyes

Everybody can make the changes, everybody has a right to be different

There is a role for all of us – if you do what your character strength is

Making the change through connecting with children – helping them shift the status quo of our society.

To talk about an inter-generational future, we need to connect with our children and help them make connections with their ecosystem – this is activism. We need to be part of the ecosystems and working together.

We create our world, our reality, dependent on the changes we make.

(Isabela on challenges for the future) I find myself in a really good place. I am really doing what I love – what I feel connected with. I am an optimistic person. I live every day at a time. I have hope for the future, and I think my work with children helps a lot. And I’m working with people who are passionate about it. This helps a lot, and I’m blessed to be working with people that have great integrity, ethics and works as a team. So I can’t see challenge right now. Life is exciting.

(liz on challenges for the future). It’s always challenging keeping an NGO afloat – making science sexy to attract and attracting community support.

Every little step, every little change that you make is huge. So don’t feel overwhelmed by the news or what is happening around you. Focus on every little change that you make on a daily basis.

(Am I an activist?). I don’t like labels to be honest because I think they limit us. I like to think of myself as…everybody can make the changes, bit everybody has a right to be different. You don’t have to either be one thing or another. There is a place for everybody.
(I was very busy designing our dolphin education programme and someone asked me to a protest about oil seam coal mining)…I would like to be there, but I didn’t find it in me to be there because I was so excited about designing our programme, my insight was I didn’t have to be there – there is a place for everybody. We need the role of all of us – we do what our character strength is.
If I am making the change through connecting with children, helping them shift the status quo of our society – the focus inter-generationally speaking, for the families and our future – I see this as an activism. If others want to be more actively participating in manifests…I think that’s perfect we need all these ecosystems working together,

This is the last in the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series recorded during the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society.

Categories
conservation biology marine mammals ocean

Whale rights

Philippa Brakes

What are those things that qualify human beings as having rights? What are the things that qualify an entity as a person? It’s extraordinary, a corporation can be a person and can have rights, and yet there are lots of species that might be able to suffer quite extensively but yet don’t yet have rights.

Philippa Brakes [ 30:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Philippa Brakes works with Whale and Dolphin Conservation (whales.org) where she leads the ethics programme. She is the co-author of Whales and Dolphins: Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Perceptions.

She talks with us about the role of the WDC in advocacy. We talk charismatic megafauna, personhood and the declaration of rights for cetaceans. She says that scientific whaling isn’t. And what is being done about. And we talk about the challenge of marine renewable energy installations.

Very much like us: long lived, slow reproducing mammals that just happen to live in the sea. They have complex social groups…but they’re very different to us too. Their world is usually one of sound, whereas ours is predominantly one of sight.

As an eleven year old we visited a zoo in Thailand and saw an elephant in chains…..and I went on and on about it…eventually my father said, “If you feel so strongly about it, why don’t you write to the King of Thailand” so I did. And that was the beginning of my career of feeling that I needed to represent those who don’t have a voice.

While I’m massively concerned about the conservation and sustainability implications of some of the things that are going on in the modern age, I’m also very concerned about the welfare of some of the individuals.

Individual behaviours have population level effects…but it is not really taken into consideration in conservation models. For socially complex mammals the individual is going to be really important in the future.

The spatial scales of other species who can transmit and communicate with each other across ocean basins…we can’t help but consider things from our own perspective. If you could talk to your friend who was 10, 15, 20 kilometers away, that makes your sense of scale quite different.

Whales and dolphins are not well adapted to life in captivity

If we focus on populations, knowledge rather than genes becomes the currency if it’s influencing fitness

Things are going in the right direction with whaling, but there’s still a lot more to do. They’re quite diminished from 150 years ago, so we need to be looking at protecting their environments better rather than looking at how many we can sustainably remove from populations.

(On a Minke whale from the area targetted by Japan’s whalers being found near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef) It’s important that we don’t get into the game of saying “they’re our whales..no they’re our whales we can do with them what we like”. The whales are their own entity, they should be allowed to go about their business unharassed.

The scientific evidence is such that it can be argued that some whale and dolphin species qualify on the basis of personhood.

We rightly have rights for my 4 year old daughter, yet we wouldn’t say here decision making is at the level of qualifying her as upstanding member of our society yet…just because an individual is granted rights doesn’t mean that they have associated responsibility. This comes up as a confusion ‘does that mean that Orcas shouldn’t hunt Hector’s dolphins?’.

Personhood is a legal term based on certain traits – communication, cognition, meta-cognition, all of those aspects – no-one wants to call them people.

The legal recognition qualifies them to not suffer psychologically, or physical trauma for any extended period. The right not to be subject to abuses.

(Am I an activist?). I wouldn’t call myself an activist, I’m an advocate. I’m a scientist who also works in the policy end of the debate.

This is the sixth in the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series recorded during the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society.

Categories
conservation biology marine mammals ocean

Saving whale habitats

Sarah Courbis

Not so much about saving the animal as the ecosystem where they live – habitat destruction is the biggest threat to almost every animal on the planet

Sarah Courbis [ 56:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Dr Sarah Courbis is a Research Associate at Portland State University, specialising in whales and mammals in Hawaii.

This is the fifth in the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series recorded during the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society. Sarah’s attendance at the conference was provided by the Conservation Council of Hawaii and Honua (Hoe-New-ah) Consulting.

We don’t need to anthropomorphise to make them interesting

They are really amazing social animals with lots of cool behaviours and intricate relationships

(Am I an activist?). I wouldn’t say that. I do have opinions. But as a scientist it is really important for me to go into a situation and do my research without having a desired outcome – I just want to see what’s true. Whether or not that supports my opinion, maybe I’ll need to change my opinion. I don’t think activist is a good way to describe my approach to things, but I would say I am an environmentalist, and I do think that it is important that we do understand and take care of our environment – and I’m hoping to do my little part to help that.

Categories
conservation biology marine mammals ocean

Dolphins:communities

Tara Whitty

Tara Whitty [ 1:03:09 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I don’t come in saying “hi guys, I know you’re struggling to survive, let’s save the dolphins”.

For me it has become as much about understanding and helping these communities as it is about helping the animals.

Tara Whitty describes herself as an aspiring ecologist, conservationist, do-gooder and wanderer. She is also a PhD student at the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Tara has developed an interdisciplinary approach, “mapping conservation-scapes,” synthesizing methods from ecology and social sciences. Conservation-scapes are the set of factors composing a conservation situation, encompassing: how human activity overlaps with and impacts organisms; sociocultural and economic drivers of human activity; and governance structure and potential for management. Tara is applying these conservation-scapes to developing an understanding of Irrawaddy dolphins in Malampaya Sound (The Philippines) and Guimaras Strait, Philippines; Trat coastline, Thailand; Mahakam River, Indonesia.

Talking points:

The over-arching issue is how do we look at fisheries management in a way that might contribute to dolphin conservation.

Socio-ecological systems: Systems that involve links an interactions between complex human systems and complex natural systems

I hesitate to distinguish between human systems and ecosystems. Ecosystem based management explicitly states that humans are part of ecosystems.

I’d like to see an set of social-environmental metrics…so we can rate sites based on social cohesion, community engagement, strength of enforcement…develop sets of profiles.

We can learn from areas such as public-health, they’ve had a long history of balancing collecting information and taking action.

The dolphins are not doing OK, they are being caught as by-catch at an unsustainable rate

Sometimes I would forget I was working on dolphins, because I was looking at very entangled issues of fisheries management, and those will take a long time to fix. Even if it doesn’t save the dolphins, it’s worthwhile doing it but you’re going to hopefully improve the ecosystem as a whole, including to improve human livelihoods. But realistically speaking I don’t think it is going to happen in time for these dolphins unless some serious triage efforts happen quickly.

Tara Whitty was in Dunedin as as part of the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society. Her talk was titled “Mapping conservation-scapes of Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) and small-scale fisheries in Southeast Asia: An interdisciplinary approach”.

After we recorded this session, Tara was awarded the J. Stephen Leatherwood Memorial Award for the most outstanding student presentation on marine mammals of South and Southeast Asia, with particular emphasis on conservation. Congratulations Tara.

This is the fourth in the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series recorded during the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society.

Categories
conservation biology marine mammals ocean

Whaley wicked problems

Andy Read

Andy Read [ 53:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Inaction is failure

Andy Read describes wicked problems as the basis of the situation of much of marine mammal conservation globally. But, he says, the wickedness of problems is no excuse for standing by while species go extinct.

Dr Andy Read is the Stephen Toth Professor of Marine Biology at the Duke University Marine Laboratory, in Beaufort, NC, USA. He is interested in the life history and population dynamics of threatened and endangered species, the application of spatial analysis to marine ecosystems, the intersection of oceanography and foraging ecology and the development of new approaches to conservation.

Trying to understand patterns and processes in an environment you can’t see…this mysterious world that exists in three dimensions. I found that fascinating, and still do.

Climate change is felt most keenly at the poles, we can work there to understand over shorter time periods ecological changes…as a signal of what’s coming in other places, we should be very concerned.

Wicked problems are complex, difficult to characterise, you don’t know how to intervene and if you do you don’t know if you’ve been successful or not – we have lots of those.

Tricky conservation problems keep you up at night – how to balance the needs of social justice and feeding 60 million desperately poor, with the ecological needs of 80 dolphins who are the last of their species.

Truly wicked problems are ones that don’t have answers, if they did they wouldn’t be wicked.

There are no technology solutions to wicked problems

So we’re concerned about the viability of the Mekong river dolphins, but if you think about the problem we need to solve, it’s food security for 60 million desperately poor people living alongside the river.

(We look for) strategies that benefit human communities and are as least damaging as possible to the environment

There are no solutions, just good or bad bad options

The conservation community was afraid of action, and we lost an entirely family of mammals (the baiji or Chinese river dolphin)

The more each of us thinks about how each of our actions impacts the sustaining systems, the better off we’ll be. We have to do this all the time, and it’s a challenge as we’ve evolved to be deliberately not good at making connections.

There is something innate about being human that we appreciate the complexity of the natural world – when we simplify it as a result of careless inactions it becomes a less beautiful place.

Conservation is a normative discipline, we believe that the loss of biodiversity is a bad thing. We should do everything we can to minimise that loss of biodiversity caused by human activity and to restore it where we can. In way, yes I’m an activist, but I feel all people working in conservation are activists – it’s a normative discipline and we accept that part of our science.

Dr Read was in Dunedin as a Plenary Speaker at the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society. His plenary talk was titled “Conservation of marine mammals in the twenty-first century: challenges and opportunities”

This is the third in the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series recorded during the conference.

Categories
conservation biology marine mammals

Ocean noise

Jay Barlow

Jay Barlow [ 57:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Whaling is not the biggest threat to the marine mammals of the world, it’s fishing, it’s climate change, it’s ocean noise. I’d like to see the concern that was generated in the 60s and 70s to stop whaling which was largely successful, applied to other areas. Stopping harmful fishing practices, stopping needless propagation of sound from our shipping vessels. This story is harder to tell, but to be effective stories have to be personal.

You can take a person and play them a recording of what the ocean should sound like, and then play them a recording of what it sounds like now. We don’t really have any sense of how much human caused noise there is in the ocean. That noise never leaves the ocean.

If our national parks were as noisy as our national marine sanctuaries are underwater, people would never stand for it.

Dr Jay Barlow is a research scientist within the NOAA’s Protected Resources Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Centre. He is the leader of the EEZ Marine Mammals and Acoustics Programme within the Protected Resources Division and is an Adjunct Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

I’m not an activist. There are a lot of pathways to being scientists, advocates and fundraisers. Every marine mammal scientist has to be a bit of a fund-raiser. I shy away from the role of a pure advocate because it is really difficult to keep your scientific credibility if you appear too passionate, and let your passions outrun your academic approach to the science. But on the other hand, my passions drive what science I do.

This is the second in the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series recorded during the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society.

Categories
conservation biology marine mammals ocean

Succeeding at marine mammal conservation

Barbara Taylor

Barbara Taylor [ 55:29 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Threats are now largely invisible, it’s no longer the graphic carnage…now it’s more indirect but no less a threat to the species.

NOAA’s Dr Barbara Taylor argues that we need a new approach to marine mammal conservation. Principal current and near-future conservation challenges include direct human-caused mortality (via fisheries by-catch in small-scale fisheries and hunting) and an indirect reduction in population growth due to habitat degradation from over-fishing, environmental contamination, and global climate disruption.

Dr Taylor was in Dunedin as a Plenary Speaker at the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society. Her plenary talk was titled “All the ingredients—how to succeed at marine mammal conservation”.

This is the first in the Sustainable Lens #whaleofasummer series recorded during the Biennial Conference of the Marine Mammals Society.

Categories
museum

Engaging to change lives

Ian Griffin

Dr Ian Griffin from Otago Museum on Sustainable Lens. [ 54:55 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Our job is to inspire people to take in interest in the world around them.

We talk with Otago Museum’s Dr Ian Griffin on mixing authentic story, interactivity, collection and quality into an engaging treasure house to be proud of.

Dr Ian Griffin, the eighth Director of the Otago Museum. With a PhD in astronomy and the discovery of 27 asteroids among his accomplishments, Ian brings a strong scientific background to the Museum. Ian’s last role before joining the Museum was as Chief Executive of the Oxford Trust in Oxford, England – a charitable foundation encouraging the pursuit of science. His other previous roles have included Director of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England; Head of Office of Public Outreach and Director NASA Origins Education Forum Space Telescope Science Institute; and CEO of the Auckland Observatory and Planetarium Trust. Ian has also been appointed an honorary fellow in the University of Otago Physics Department.

Talking points:

I want to work in a museum because museums have the potential to change lives.

Museums are places where you come to help make sense of the world.

The museums job is to help you connect.

Do you need to believe it to be real?

The role of the collection is critical in understanding your part of the world.

A key part of what the museum must do is not so much is this important now, but asking could it be important in the future?

A key thing scientists need to do better is communicate the process of science – that’s a role for the museum. It’s almost impossible to come to a final understanding.

We have to communicate to our visitors that science is changing yet tell a simple story.

We need to figure out to convey change, yet have visitors come away with a good understanding.

Where appropriate, interactive exhibits beside artefacts can help you make sense of those artefacts.

It’s a reflection of our society that people like to see things as black or white, or right or wrong but as we all know, in climate science in particular, it’s a very nuanced story.

I wouldn’t want funding that came with conditions about the science.

You can’t present a complicated subject in a simplistic way – and that’s the challenge.

It (climate science) is not a simple subject so perhaps shouldn’t be reduced to simple interactives.

It’s very difficult in the amount of time (visitors) spend in the museum gallery to convey all the information you need to make a knowledge based decision. And, we add to this that, some visitors are 5 years old, and some are 80, and some will be able to read at particular levels. The challenge is explaining that in a way that all those folks can go away (understanding)….it’s difficult.

We’re not leading the science, we’re communicators of what others are doing.

The fundamental challenge is to make sure the museum is relevant to our community….so we can be here in another 150 years.

Anything that inspires an interest, that fires up your imagination is good…and has a place in the museum.

Categories
innovation systems

Complex systems

Henk Roodt

Dr Henk Roodt on Sustainablelens.org [ 55:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rocket science is simple compared to the complex systems that involve modelling people and the environment.

Dr Henk Roodt knows about the development of technology. And about making that real. A Scientist/Engineer with 25+ years experience in high technology environments, he is currently Research Programmes Manager at Waikato Institute of Technology. We asked Henk to talk about his background (it’s rocket science), whether 3D printing will really change the world, and innovation processes as applied to Green-Tech. Henk is associated with Audacious – Dunedin’s student business incubator, where he is Entrepreneur in Residence.

Talking points:

It’s only when it is really big, and audacious that you go for it. Big things in the history of science were driven by real world problems.

Need to model the environment and the people at the same time. Not the physical model then slap in the people as an add-on. Start with people, the complexity of the people and their culture.

So how do you pitch the right level of modelling? (for complex problems such as hunger in Africa)…one of the things I’ve discovered is that doing mathematical models at that level is stupid. non-quantitative models, morphologies that show how things fit together, that opens up the discussion rather than bringing it into a fixed framework. A model like that gives you an instant picture at a moment in time. This sets the scene for the next level, and the next, the whole model is a work in progress.

Modelling systems is not like modelling airflow over the wing of an aircraft – sure that’s super-mathematics…but to model complex systems and people you often only need a piece of paper and a computer to help you look at all the options.

You have to make certain choices, and that comes down to ‘what are those guiding principles you have in your life that you are willing to live by?’. You have to set those up in your mind and listen carefully to that voice.

Opening up a social good category in Audacious meant they could put their emotions and their hearts into their businesses. They are mixing the social responsibility and the business – this is the edge that will deliver the social good.

I ask myself: can I change things by applying my skills?

Shane’s number of the week: 2.07&#176C is how much hotter the >Australian Spring was above average, producing the warmest spring on record.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: Sam is working up a survey into the values and educational expectations of incoming IT students.

Henk described Ken Erwin’s book Communicating the New.

Categories
computing education

Opening education

Wayne Mackintosh

 

Wayne Mackintosh [ 55:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The key challenge we are trying to address is how to provide spaces for the additional one hundred million students – that’s the equivalent of building four sizeable universities with roughly 30,000 students each, every week for the next 15 years.

 

Dr Wayne Mackintosh imagines a world where anyone in the world has access to a world-class education online for free, and getting credentials for it.    But he is not just imagining it, he is doing it.  Wayne holds the UNESCO-COL Chair in OER at Otago Polytechnic. He is the founding Director of the OER Foundation and the International Centre for Open Education based at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.  He talks about the launch of Open Educational Resources University (OERu) – a significant milestone in higher education globally, and marking a transition from an international collaboration prototype to a sustainable, scalable program of accessible OERu study.

We are shifting the question from how do you achieve sustainable OER projects at your institution to, how will your institution remain sustainable without OER? We are the competition on the doorsteps of tertiary education institutions around the world

The conventional model of delivery is not going to be able to respond to the challenge of the growing need internationally.

I’m a teacher by choice, and it’s been the most rewarding decision I have taken in my career

Smart thinking, use technology to reach the unreachable

Absolutely I’m an activist, an open source, open education activist.

it’s (open education) mission critical for a more sustainable planet. We need to be using scarce resources more effectively, and respect the fundamental freedom of expression – freedom of speech- that we espouse to in modern democracies

Shane’s number of the week: 4,500,000. That is there are 4.5 million people in the UK who are members or supporters of environment and conservation groups.

Sam’s joined-up-thinking: Sam talked us through the increasingly important role of social enterprise in computing.

Categories
Africa science

Crap as a vehicle for discovery

Marcus Byrne

Marcus Byrne talks dung on Sustainable Lens [ 52:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

We use crap as a vehicle for discovery

On making science accessible: We owe it to the public. We live in a society that allows us to do these crazy things, and it’s my job to give back, one: the knowledge and two: the process.

Marcus Byrne is an Associate Professor at Wits University, Johannesburg, South Africa, where he teaches zoology and entomology. His research interests revolve around the use of insects for biological control; which includes dung beetles. Dung beetles have a single-minded approach to life and its challenges. Dung beetle orientation is underpinned by an effective visual navigation system which can operate in the dimmest starlight, using limited computational power. This research won Marcus an Ignoble Prize in 2013 – an award he wears with pride as it gives opportunities to talk Science.

Talking points

I knew I wanted to be a biologist but…I was terrified of insects.

Dung Beetles are such enigmatic animals, hugely entertaining and really interesting.

The is the planet of the insects.

Having a big dung ball is a bit like having a Porsche

You hang around the bar – the pile of poo – with your big dung ball and hopefully pick up a chick – and roll it away with her.

That’s how you spend the day, finding poo, rolling dung balls and fighting off other males.

Observation triggers questions. Like most fields of science, as your dig into it you turn up more questions than answers, and that’s the joy of science.

A society that allows people to be curious and ask crazy blue-sky questions is a wonderful society. It’s part of the human condition – why is the sky blue? These are important questions, if we didn’t ask them we wouldn’t have poetry, or music or literature. I don’t think things have to have a purpose in themselves. I really believe that science should not have to be commercial as its basis.

We can learn things from these little guys.  Their brains…are solving complex problems with very little computing power.

Learning from the Ignoble: Science is not a creed – it can be bent, folded, stapled, beat-up in any way you like and it still works. It’s this self-correcting system that doesn’t need respect

We use crap as a vehicle for discovery

On making science accessible: We owe it to the public. We live in a society that allows us to do these crazy things, and it’s my job to give back, one: the knowledge and two: the process.

Marcus was in Dunedin for the Science Teller Festival organised by the Centre for Science Communication at the University of Otago. We are grateful for the organisers of the Festival in their help in arranging this episode of Sustainable Lens.

Image: Chris Collingridge

Categories
communication conservation biology

Rekindling the inner frog

Robin Moore

Robin Moore talks frogs [ 58:23 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

There’s an inner frog within all of us, we just need to rekindle that

The Amphibian Survival Alliance’s Dr Robin Moore aims to get people concerned with conserving less charismatic creatures. Robin explores how we can scale up conservation efforts for the most threatened vertebrate group, the amphibians. In particular he questions how we might engage a public that is disempowered by prophecies of inevitable doom. We talk about several unconventional projects in amphibian conservation, including: the Search for Lost Frogs campaign; the Metamorphosis project; and the Frame of Mind campaign. What is clear is that storytelling takes engagement to a whole different level as humankind explores our connection with amphibians and the wider environment.

Talking points

Kermit makes it easier – he is an amiable character, he helps people relate to frogs

You do need the poster frogs – we’re picking the sexiest of the relatively unsexy.  To just focus on the ecologically valuable – the small brown frogs – wouldn’t engage the public.

The future of frogs is in our hands, we’re bound by the same fate of environment

Scientists are trained to be so objective, to remove human bias or emotional attachment toward study subject. But truth is, there is always a human bias, the fact that there are 500 times more studies on mammals than amphibians is a human bias towards mammals. Scientists always approach something with unique experience and perspectives

My eyes were opened to the power of story-telling and using art first of all through the Search for Lost Frogs.  I realised that that resonated with people not because we were trying to tell them that a third of amphibians were threatened, but because we were telling stories and I think people respond in a different way when you’re telling stories and not just delivering the dry facts.

You can fit facts around your existing attitudes. Climate Change is a perfect example, the more facts you tell them they can dig in their heels.

Walking a fine line with maintaining scientific integrity, when you engage with the media you lose to a certain extent the control of the message. The story that gets picked up may not be the story that you want to tell.

When you are trying to save the frogs, you are really trying to save the environment – you are not trying to save the frogs in isolation. And when you’re trying to save the environment, you’re essentially trying to change people’s behaviour and attitudes. So conservation, more often than not, boils down to working with people.

One of the challenges is the perception of the environment as something separate from us, something to be exploited and abused

Improving the state of the environment and the lives of the people is the same deal. You can’t improve the lives of the humans if you are destroying the environment. (In Haiti) a lot of the problems are linked to the state if the environment.

It is a false dichotomy to look at human welfare and think it is conservation versus development.

(Am I an activist?). I guess so, yeah, I don’t often use that word. (You used it to describe the model you worked with . She does consider herself to be activist?) I think so. I can from a background of reporting conservation and working with local groups, I didn’t feel that was activism so much. Whereas Gabby really does focus on the messaging and getting the message out there, whereas my work with amphibian survival alliance, is also supporting habitat protection projects – which I don’t think of as activism. Perhaps an element of what I do is activism, but not the whole suite.

You can’t not answer a 12 year old who is asking a question about her future.

Dr Moore was in Dunedin for the Science Teller Festival organised by the Centre for Science Communication at the University of Otago. We are grateful for the organisers of the Festival in their help in arranging this episode of Sustainable Lens.

Categories
climate change science

Historian of climate science

Naomi Oreskes

Naomi Oreskes [ 56:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Ever wondered why science and politics don’t play nice? Naomi Oreskes tells us why in this history of climate science.

The naive vision of ‘we do the facts then hand it over to the policy makers and they act on it’. That would be great in a perfect world, and it worked for ozone so scientists could be forgiven for thinking that was realistic, but it hasn’t worked this time around.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard. Professor Oreskes’s research focuses on the earth and environmental sciences, with a particular interest in understanding scientific consensus and dissent. Her 2010 book, Merchants of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Global warming , co-authored with Erik M. Conway, was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Time Book Prize, and received the 2011 Watson-David Prize from the History of Science Society.

In this conversation, Naomi tells us of the bad luck of the coincidental rises of neo-liberal economics and the emergence of the global environmental issues

Talking points

We see a tendency to err on side of least drama

What we call science has changed dramatically over time

Narrowing of focus of science…the rise of specialisations, a powerful tool but comes at cost of broader perspectives.

After 1940s, increasing recognition of role of science and technology in modern warfare…not entirely new but…becomes much stronger.

Disassociation begins to take place where scientists don’t talk about the larger geo-political context of their work

We might like to believe that there is a litmus test for the truth…the reality is that it doesn’t really work that way.

The insight of Kuhn…consensus.

Continental drift…as a model for how scientists judge evidence independent of political interference (was originally uncontroversial before people realised had age of earth implications).

Climate change not a paradigm shift because didn’t replace an alternative

Climate change is applied physics and chemistry.

By 1965 signals that carbon in the atmosphere was increasing…(but)… most scientists thought we wouldn’t be able to detect climate change from increased greenhouse gases until the 21st Century.

The surprise in the story was when it occurred sooner. when already the the late 1980s and early 1990s the effects were beginning to be seen.

When was it first described as problem:

In 1957 he (Roger Revelle) gave an interview with Time Magazine where said one reason why we should care about this is that a warmer world will lead to sea-level rise

There is no question that Revelle thought it could be a problem, he wasn’t 100% sure that it would be a problem and how soon it would be a problem.

The idea that it (anthropogenic climate change) could be a problem was on the table going back to the late 1950s.

Gordon MacDonald was one of the first in the US to say that climate change could be a problem. He wrote about it in the 1960s and called it inadvertent weather modification.

At that time he’s a relatively quiet voice, its not a big issue in the environmental movement as a political issue but it turns out to be really really important politically…today in the US the Environmental Protection Agency has the legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, this has been affirmed by the Supreme Court and we are waiting for the EPA to do this.

The Clean Air Act 1973 includes weather and climate in the issues the Act has authority over… that is because people already understood at that time that pollution had the potential to cause changes in weather and climate. And that work was largely done by Gordon MacDonald.

By the 1980s climate modellers are building climate models that they now think are good enough to be able to predict what the climate signals should look like if there were no additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere versus what it actually does look like. In 1988 James Hansen and his colleagues published a paper in which they said that they believed climate change had become detectable. (That was controversial but it reached public awareness).

In the next few years there’s this tremendous political momentum begins to build and its that momentum that also triggers the backlash…a right-wing turn against science.

This is the bad luck story – what historians call a history contingency…the growth of neo-liberal economics happened just around the same time as scientists begin to find evidence of some really major global environmental problems. So as environmental concerns moved from local to global issues…gigantic issues with huge economic consequence…just at the same time as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan are promoting deregulation in the economic environment, scientists are pointing out these very major potentially grave environmental threats, and how do you prevent acid rain…climate change…protect the ozone…? Well the answer is regulation, and sometimes really big scale regulation like international conventions with significant political implications. So we were beginning to see the advocates of free market policies turning against science.

People who up until then had generally supported science as supporting industry…the business community valued science because it helped create technology, now you see large sectors of the business community beginning turn against science. And that is the historic Greek tragedy part of the story, things go downhill from there very seriously and very quickly.

Critical analysis is one thing, dishonest attack is another.

Scientists have been conservative in their estimates of the rate and degree of climate change over the last 30 years.

The whole issue of climate change is now so political and so difficult that I think a lot of people in the scientific community are kind of spooked. And they’re nervous and they don’t really know how to respond. And I think a lot of scientists think that if they’re just very cautious and very careful and very conservative that that will preserve and protect their credibility.

Absolutely scientists should be conservative and should not make claims they can not support with evidence and high quality data…the question is once you have that data, what do you say about it? And if you don’t think the world is responding, if you don’t think the world gets it, then that tells me that you aren’t communicating it clearly enough.

How do we communicate clearly in ways that are effective and truthful and correct? It’s not an argument in favour of exaggerating the science or saying things that aren’t true. It’s about taking what we believe to be true and communicating it clearly.

But now you’re up against the largest, most successful, most profitable business in the history of mankind, you’re up against an economic system that depends on burning fossil fuels, you’re up against a lifestyle – every rich person in the world because we live off the energy stored in fossil fuels, and I don’t mean rich-rich, I mean all of us, every person who lives in the West.

Can science compete against the business system with vested interests in us over-consuming? That’s the $64,000 question…that is the question that will determine the what happens in the next 100 years. If we can’t figure out a way to act upon what we know then we’re going to see a lot of pain and suffering.

The naive vision of ‘we do the facts then hand it over to the policy makers and they act on it’. That would be great in a perfect world, and it worked for ozone so scientists could be forgiven for thinking that was realistic, but it hasn’t worked this time around.

(Am I an activist?). Not really, I teach classes and do my research. Students often ask me…”what should they do?” and I always say you have to figure that out for yourself – based on who you are, what your temperament is, what your personality is, what your talents are, what resources you have at your disposal…so I’m a scholar, and I love doing the work I do. …. I feel like I’ve ended up in a place that has worked out being meaningful, and valuable, and I think the best thing I can do is keep on doing what I’m doing.

We went from ‘most of the observed warming is likely to be…’, to ‘most of the observed warming is very likely to be…’ and now ‘it’s extremely likely…’…likely, very likely, extremely likely I think these are shades of difference that the scientific community thinks are terribly important but that most people outside the scientific community don’t really see that that’s so significant…

Naomi was in Dunedin for the Science Teller Festival organised by the Centre for Science Communication at the University of Otago. We are grateful for the organisers of the Festival in their help in arranging this episode of Sustainable Lens.

Categories
climate change communication

Communicating climate science

Andrew Tait

Andrew Tait [ 1:08:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’m driven by the communication of science – how information is used – can it influence somebody? can it open people’s eyes to possibilities?

Dr Andrew Tait is a Principal Scientist in the climate team at NIWA. A geographer, he focusses on the application of climate information. We talk about his role and the challenges of communicating science.

Talking points:

Objectivity is needed rather than an emotional response

Denialism is beyond what a scientist can really handle. They’ve got a world view and if your information doesn’t fit that worldview the they’re just closed to it

Climate information is a part of the landscape of being able to do what you do sustainably

I’m impressed by the adoption of sustainable principles – as a nation we’re managing drought on a large scale – this has been a change in thinking

People appreciate the effort you make to try to connect with them, and saying if you want to be able to making the best decisions you possibly can then please take account of this information

The enormity of decision making such as sea level rise – boy oh boy – it evokes interesting and sometimes heated discussions with people concerned for the future value of their properties

Have to ask the question, would we be better off if we didn’t know, or didn’t attempt to know just because there may be significant implications?

There’s got to be a strategic push for people to actually start doing the work – seriously thinking about implications. We have a hesitancy to start doing that work because of perceived implications of what the results might show

I’m driven by the communication of science – how information is used – can it influence somebody? can it open people’s eyes to possibilities?

(Do you make a point of staying out of the political?) For sure. (safe is a politically charged term, should scientists use such terms?). To me is going beyond what a scientist should be doing, but there’s a frustration for a scientist who wants to provide the best information they possibly can for a decision-maker to use and seeing that the information isn’t being used well. There’s a big frustration there, and I can understand why others, particularly if they’ve got a global soapbox will, and have got into this debate – that of why isn’t more being done? From my perspective I’m not prepared to get into that area. I want to help as much as I possibly can. … We’re such a small community of scientists, that we do get involved in discussions with policy makers at all levels – and we can be at the personal level of talking to a minister, or a CEO. But they don’t want us to be telling them what to do. I don’t think anyone wants someone coming in from an ivory tower telling them what to do. But people appreciate the effort that we make to try to connect with them – to say, if you want to making the best decisions you possibly can, then please take account of this information and understand how it was derived and what its implications are. The scientist can do a lot to make that bridge.

The old model of scientist as the remote expert is gone, people are part of the system so they have to part of the research