BUniverse

Aeroecology: The Next Frontier

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Professor of biology and director of Boston University’s Center for Ecology & Conservation Biology Thomas Kunz invites the audience to consider the air around them. In Aeroecology: The Next Frontier, Kunz explains the new discipline of aeroecology, which studies airborne organisms and how they depend on the support of their aerospheric ecosystem. Kunz’s presentation is Boston University’s 2009 University Lecture, established to honor faculty engaged in outstanding research.

According to Kunz, the aerosphere — the boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere that supports life — is the least-understood part of the biosphere. Adiabatic forces in the aerosphere strongly influence the evolution of organisms that depend upon this fluid environment. The goal of Kunz’s research is to understand and interpret responses of organisms under different meteorological and atmospheric conditions and anthropogenic perturbations.

Kunz stresses that aeroecology is vitally important because it directly relates to climate change, air pollution, altered landscapes, emerging pathogens, invasive species, and declining bird, bat, and insect populations. Bats and birds are harmed by the ever-changing aerosphere — a serious issue because they play such a crucial role in countering insect populations.

The challenges of counting and tracking bats are enormous, Kunz says. However, most of the advances in aeroecology are being conceptually and technologically driven. New technologies like vertical profiling, computer simulations, thermal imaging, and radio transmitting are greatly increasing the information gained about bats’ common behaviors.

A question-and-answer session follows the lecture, as well as an interactive demonstration of thermal imaging technology.

October 19, 2009, 7 p.m.

Tsai Performance Center

Video length is 01:12:00.

About the speaker :

Thomas H. Kunz is Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Ecology & Conservation Biology at Boston University. A BU faculty member for the last 35 years, he has authored more than 200 publications and is the editor of five books on bat ecology. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a winner of both the Gerrit S. Miller Jr. and C. Hart Merriam awards for his work with bats, and is Past-President of the American Society of Mammalogists.

Future Challenges: Science, Diplomacy and Development

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Zulfiqar Bhutta, professor and chair of the department of pediatrics and child health at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, Harry Barnes, former U.S. ambassador to Romania, India, and Chile, and Patricia Wrightson, director of the Committee on Scientific Communication and National Security at the National Academies, speak about the challenges of public health science, science diplomacy, and the importance of international scientific cooperation in Central Asia, South Asia, and East Africa. Gerald Keusch, a School of Public Health professor of international health and associate dean for global health and Medical Campus associate provost for global health, moderates.

Speakers note the challenges coming from South Asia in terms of the lack of progress made in the awareness and importance of good health practices and their long-term gains to society. The lack of connection between advanced technology and science and fundamental issues of hygiene and public health has led to many infant and child deaths in Pakistan. They stress the need for perseverance, patience, and trust in areas of diplomacy and say that science plays a crucial role in diplomacy because it is a key to the world around us.

July 23, 2009, noon
Pardee House

Video length is 01:15:52.

About the speakers:
Harry Barnes is a former U.S. ambassador to Romania, India, and Chile. He also was the director general of the Foreign Service and director of personnel at the State Department. From 1994 to 2000, he was the director of the Carter Center’s Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Programs and on behalf of the center traveled to North Korea. He graduated from Amherst College and Columbia University and served in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946.

Zulfiqar Bhutta is professor and chair of the department of pediatrics and child health at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan. He was a visiting professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health in summer 2009. He attended Khyber Medical College and began his training in Pakistan, finishing in the United Kingdom. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in London. He has been awarded the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz (Medal of Excellence) by the president of Pakistan, the President of Pakistan Gold Medal for his contributions to child health in Pakistan, the Outstanding Pediatrician of Asia award from the Asia Pacific Pediatric Association, and the Aga Khan University Distinguished Faculty Award for Research.

Gerald Keusch is the Boston University’ Medical Campus associate provost for global health and a professor and associate dean for global health at the School of Public Health. He was director of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health and associate director for international research in the office of the NIH director before coming to Boston University. A graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Medical School, he is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. His research ranges from the molecular pathogenesis of tropical infectious diseases to field research in nutrition, immunology, host susceptibility, and the treatment of tropical infectious diseases and HIV/AIDS. He has written more than 300 original publications, reviews, and book chapters, and he is the editor of 8 scientific books.

Patricia Wrightson is the director of the Committee on Scientific Communication and National Security at the National Academies in Washington, D.C. The committee promotes cooperation between the scientific and security communities.

Future Challenges: Governance and Sustainability

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Hans Hoogeveen of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Abid Suleri of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, and Mukul Sanwal of the United Nations speak on the difficulties of governing forests, food, and climate, respectively. Adil Najam, director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, moderates this seminar on how we can govern three complex problems — forest, food, and climate management — without compromising human well-being.

The linkages between global governments and issues of development can no longer be ignored, the speakers say. For example, Hoogeveen says, forests are integral to health, trade, resources, and climate change, yet they are governed by over forty regional and international agreements that fail to address those issues in a comprehensive manner. However, recognizing that complex problems require complex solutions, he says, a single global forest treaty will not solve the problem.

Suleri underscores the role of national and sub-national policies in episodes of food scarcity, adding that there is no such thing as a “non-political famine.” He points out the small role international institutions play, which is mainly limited to food assistance during a crisis. Sanwal concludes the discussion by arguing that states must adapt to and mitigate climate change. He highlights the imbalance in current mitigations discussions, which demand developing countries curtail infrastructure development while wealthier countries merely adjust their consumption practices. From a developing country’s perspective, he says, technology is more relevant than finance in combating climate change.

A question-and-answer period follows the lecture.

June 5, 2009, 12 p.m.

67 Bay State Road

Video length is 1:26:02

About the speakers:

Hans Hoogeveen is the director general for international affairs at the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality. He served as chair of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) and in the Seventeenth UN Commission on Sustainable Development, where the Netherlands held the chairmanship.

Mukul Sanwal has been the senior policy advisor at the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and a negotiator for the Indian government. His current research centers on strategies for institutional reform in the UN, innovative means to support international cooperation, and the development of partnerships among governments, the private sector, and local communities for environmentally sustainable economic growth.

Abid Suleri is the executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Pakistan, and the author of a recent Pardee Center Issues in Brief paper on food and governance, “The Role of National Governance.” He is currently analyzing the state of food security in Pakistan and leading an SDPI team that is formulating National Sustainable Development Strategy (NSDS) in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme.

2009 College of Engineering Commencement Address: Venkatesh Narayanamurti

Sun, 17 May 2009 16:30:00 EDT

Venkatesh Narayanamurti, inaugural dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and former dean of physical sciences at Harvard University, oversaw the transformation of a division of engineering and applied science to a degree-granting school. For a decade, as a leader in Harvard engineering, Narayanamurti worked to increase sponsored research, as well as the number of faculty and graduate student applications.

Narayanamurti is the former Richard A. Auhll Professor and dean of engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara, vice president of research at Sandia National Laboratories, and director of solid state electronics research at Bell Labs. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

May 17, 2009, 4:30 p.m.

Track and Tennis Center

Video Length is 00:10:51.

The Future of Food: Closing Keynote Address

Sat, 09 May 2009 19:30:00 EDT

The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspective
Session I: From Farm to Fork: The Global Food Chain
Session II: The End of Cheap Food: Food and Geopolitics
Session III: What’s in What You Eat? Food Safety in a New Ecology
Session IV: Eating Green: Food and Climate Change
Session V: What Is “Good” Food? The Ethics of Eating
Closing Keynote Address

Michael Ableman, a farmer, author, and sustainability advocate, delivers the closing keynote address of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives. Ableman discusses his experience as a farmer in southern California — he founded one of the first organic farms in the region — and urges the need for all people, even city dwellers, to reconnect with nature and farming. Urban agriculture, he says, will be an essential component of feeding the world’s expanding population in the future. What we are experiencing today is much more than a food crisis, he argues — it is a crisis of awareness and participation. We forget, because we are so disconnected from our food, that farming should not be a “spectator sport,” he says. Structural changes to the world’s agricultural system will not happen, he concludes, until the impacts of our imperfect system become personal.

Ableman’s lecture ends a two-day conference of speakers, film screenings, and cooking demonstrations, held to examine the causes of the global food crisis while offering solutions for creating a sustainable food system. It was funded by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, D.C., with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

May 9, 2009 7:30 p.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 00:56:38.

About the Speaker:

Michael Ableman is the founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a non-profit organization headquartered at one of the oldest organic farms in southern California. A photographer and author, he has published several books, including From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World (1993), On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm (1998), and Fields of Plenty: A Farmer’s Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It (2005). He received the Ecological Farming Association’s 2001 “Sustie” Award for his work in sustainable agriculture, the 1997 Environmental Leadership Award from the Governor of California, and Eating Well magazine’s 1995 Food Hero Award. At present, he farms on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia and is developing the Center for Art, Ecology & Agriculture.

The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives

Sat, 09 May 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Satish Kumar, an international peace and sustainability activist and editor of Resurgence magazine, examines our crisis of food-related culture and spirit in the opening keynote address of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives. Kumar, a former Jain monk, argues that gardening, farming, and cooking should be a spiritual practice. Factory farming has become a commodity, he says, and feeding people is now a mere byproduct of making money. Therefore, food goes to those who can afford it and those who cannot continue to go hungry, a system contrary to human and animal nature. For food to have a future, Kumar concludes, we must go back to considering food as sacred, and reconnect ourselves to nature and the land that provides our sustenance.

Kumar’s lecture kicks off the two-day conference of speakers, film screenings, and cooking demonstrations, held to examine the causes of the global food crisis while offering solutions for creating a sustainable food system. It was funded by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, D.C., with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

May 9, 2009, 8:45 a.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 00:30:06.

About the speaker:

Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk, is the editor and publisher of Resurgence, a magazine that promotes ecological sustainability, social justice, and spiritual values. A native of India, Kumar is also a nuclear disarmament advocate and peace activist, best known for his 8,000-mile peace walk to the capitals of nuclear-armed countries. He now resides in England, where he serves as the founder and program director of Schumacher College, a sustainability education center, and its counterpart secondary school, The Small School. He has written a number of books, including The Buddha and the Terrorist (2006), No Destination: An Autobiography (2004), and You Are, Therefore I Am: A Declaration of Dependence (2002).

Farm to Fork: The Global Food Chain

Sat, 09 May 2009 09:30:00 EDT

In the first session of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives, three panelists — author Mark Winne, sustainability activist Helena Norberg-Hodge, and College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of international relations Henrik Selin — detail the industrialization of modern agriculture. Moderated by James McCann, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of history, the discussion explores the failings of government programs and the free market to support sustainable, healthful food policies.

The panel discusses how large-scale farmers receive the most government subsidies, leaving small-scale and organic farmers with little assistance. In addition, they say, the marketplace fails low-income Americans by setting the price of organic and nutritious foods at too high a cost. Americans need to support the localization of food systems by pushing for the deregulation of trade, they argue, which will slow the systematic distancing between people and their food sources.

The discussion is part of a two-day conference of speakers, film screenings, and cooking demonstrations, held to examine the causes of the global food crisis while offering solutions for creating a sustainable food system. It was funded by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, D.C., with additional support from the Ford Foundation.

May 9, 2009 9:30 a.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 01:26:42.

About the Speakers:

Helena Norberg-Hodge is founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). Her environmental and cultural work with the people of Ladakh, a poor Indian Himalayan region, earned her the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize.” She is the author of several articles and books, including Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World (1991; 2009).

Henrik Selin is a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of international relations, a core faculty member of the Center for Energy and Environment Studies, and a fellow of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He also conducts research at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research at Linköping University in Sweden. He is co-editor of Changing Climates in North American Politics: Institutions, Policymaking, and Multilevel Governance (2009) and Transatlantic Environment and Energy Politics: Comparative and International Perspectives (2009).

Mark Winne is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (2009). Previously, he was the executive director of the Hartford Food System in Connecticut, where he organized community self-help food projects and developed a commercial hydroponic greenhouse, the Connecticut Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, and several farmers’ markets. He now spends his time writing and speaking about community food systems.

J ames McCann, College of Arts & Sciences professor of history and associate director of development at Boston University’s African Studies Center, is an expert in the agricultural and environmental history of Africa. His book Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop (2005) won the 2006 George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book in environmental history. He has held fellowships at Harvard and Yale Universities and has served as a consultant for organizations such as Oxfam and the United Nations Environmental Program.

The End of Cheap Food: Food and Geopolitics

Sat, 09 May 2009 11:30:00 EDT

Farming activist Benedikt Haerlin, food and trade policy expert Jim Harkness, and Frederick S. Pardee Professor of Global Public Policy Adil Najam tackle the problem of providing nutritious, affordable food to the world’s poor in the second session of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives. The discussion, moderated by Timothy Wise of the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute, addresses the policies that contribute to the paradox of the growing number of hungry in the world — roughly one billion people — and the ever-increasing number of obese people, also one billion.

In many places, the speakers say, hunger is not a result of inadequate food production or outdated technology. Rather, in societies where hunger prevails, there is a social agreement that allows hunger to persist. One key to solving the world’s food problems, they suggest, is to reduce the world’s meat consumption. In addition, they say, the emergence of biofuels also threatens to increase the incidence of hunger and starvation in the world as land is farmed for fuel rather than food. The speakers propose that governments should reward farmers for food-growing efforts and invest in small farms, which not only produce food, but maintain ecosystems, social structures, and cultural and spiritual heritage.

May 9, 2009 11:30 a.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 01:35:26.

About the Speakers:

Benedikt Haerlin works for the Foundation on Future Farming in Berlin, the organizer of the international conference Planet Diversity. Haerlin also coordinates Europe’s “Save our Seeds” initiative, which strives to keep seeds free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and is a member of the International Commission on the Future of Food. He has been a member of the European Parliament and the global coordinator of Greenpeace International’s Genetic Engineering Campaign.

Jim Harkness is president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and is the former executive director of the World Wildlife Fund in China. During the 1990s, he worked as the Ford Foundation’s Environment and Development program officer for China. In addition to writing and speaking on China and its development, he has served as an advisor to the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization on those issues.

Adil Najam is the Frederick S. Pardee Professor of Global Public Policy, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of international relations and geography and environment, and the director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University. He served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments that garnered the organization the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Timothy Wise is the director of the research and policy program at the Tufts University Global Development and Environment Institute. Wise previously served as executive director of Grassroots International, an aid organization based in Boston. He is a co-author of Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico (2003) and A Survey of Sustainable Development: Social and Economic Dimensions (2001).

What's in What You Eat?: Food Safety in a New Ecology

Sat, 09 May 2009 14:00:00 EDT

Three food-safety advocates — Benedikt Haerlin of the Foundation on Future Farming, Helen Holder of Friends of the Earth Europe, and environmental attorney Andrew Kimbrell — tackle the major threats to the safety of the world’s food supply in the third session of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives. The discussion, moderated by Frederick S. Pardee Professor of Global Public Policy Adil Najam, addresses the conflict over the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in modern farming.

The speakers argue that if humans want to protect the earth, they must buy food that is local, humane, biodiverse, and socially just; to keep the food supply safe and ethical, efficiency needs to be balanced with empathy. They discuss regulatory struggles between Europe and the United States and the effects of the EU’s reluctance to import and approve GMOs on the global food marketplace. Finally, the speakers address consumer concerns about the perceived and actual food safety issues associated with GMOs.

May 9, 2009 2:00 p.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 01:40:02.

About the Speakers:

Helen Holder is the genetically modified organism (GMO) campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe, the largest grassroots environmental network in Europe

Andrew Kimbrell, an environmental attorney, is executive director of the Center for Food Safety. He writes frequently on the environment, technology, law, and food issues. He edited Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture (2002) and has written several books, including Your Right to Know: Genetic Engineering and the Secret Changes in Your Food (2007)

Eating Green: Food and Climate Change

Sat, 09 May 2009 16:00:00 EDT

Mia MacDonald, founder of the environmental nonprofit Brighter Green, and Björn-Ola Linnér, director of the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research at Linköping University, argue for “eating green” in the fourth session of the conference The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives. Moderated by Henrik Selin, College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of international relations, the two panelists explain how modern food production is a major but often-overlooked contributor to global warming.

Worldwide demand for cereals, meat, and energy, they say, poses huge problems for agriculture. Food producers must also take into account the current polarizing debate on biofuels and the need for industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent, both of which will have direct effects on farming practices. Although the media has spent countless hours discussing climate change, the speakers say, they rarely publicize the role that food plays in raising the earth’s temperature. According to the speakers, one-third of climate change is attributable to agriculture, including livestock, a major player in releasing methane into the air. They suggest that the typical American’s high-meat diet has contributed to the problem, and say broad changes in our eating habits could help abate the climate crisis

May 9, 2009 4:00 p.m.

765 Commonwealth Avenue

Video Length is 01:19:27.

About the Speakers:

Björn-Ola Linnér is director of the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research and an associate professor of water and environmental studies at Linköping University in Sweden. His research concerns international policy on climate change and sustainable development

Mia MacDonald is the founder and executive director of the environmental nonprofit organization Brighter Green. She is a public policy analyst and a consultant for organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, the Green Belt Movement, the Sierra Club, and Save the Children. MacDonald, a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute, has taught at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Henrik Selin is a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of international relations, a core faculty member of the Center for Energy and Environment Studies, and a fellow of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. He is co-editor of Changing Climates in North American Politics: Institutions, Policymaking, and Multilevel Governance (2009) and Transatlantic Environment and Energy Politics (Global Environmental Governance) (2009).