News

The ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes recently became a member of the Natural Capital Coalition (NCC).

NCC is a unique multi-stakeholder collaboration that brings together leading global initiatives and organizations to harmonize approaches to natural capital.

Through this collaboration, CBO joined 250 other member organizations dedicated to protecting natural capital and ensuring sustainability.

CBO’s work with NCC will help advance our partnerships with Conservation International and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, specifically on directing research and creating decision tools that help integrate biodiversity accounting and valuation into the Natural Capital Protocol.

The McDowell Sonoran Conservancy, a non-profit organization in Scottsdale, AZ, has an exciting job opening for a Field Institute Manager.

The Field Institute Manager would work with a dynamic group of citizen scientists, Conservancy staff, land managers, and scientists to lead ecological fieldwork and K-6 STEM education initiatives.

This is a fantastic opportunity for an up-and-coming environmental professional to work with a knowledgeable and passionate group of people doing critical environmental work with regional implications in central Arizona and beyond.

Applications close on Tuesday, June 27. For more information and to apply, please contact Paul Staker at paul@mcdowellsonoran.org (submit cover letter, resume/CV and three references).

It’s easy to misrepresent the field of species prioritization. It’s often tempting to purport that some scientists are advocating for extinction. A few facts:

• There is a clear link between funding and recovering endangered species. Wildlife conservation is grossly underfunded.
• If we are not going to fully fund efforts to recover all endangered species, then it is important to allocate funds to achieve the greatest good.
• A transparent approach designed with costs and other values built in will help us allocate recovery funds to save more species.
• Each choice to fund the protection of one species comes with the consequence of sending unfunded species closer to extinction. Opponents of prioritization just pretend that is not the case by hiding the fact that there is a choice.

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A team of researchers including ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Founding Director, Dr. Leah Gerber, recently published a paper titled “Thinking Beyond the Moratorium: Testing the Feasibility of a Hypothetical Whaling-Conservation Permit Market in Norway” in Conservation Biology.

The article explores a new conservation management approach for protecting whales: a cap-and-trade system for harvests. This concept is dependent on conservationists being willing to pay for permits to protect the species. In this article, the authors model the potential outcomes of various market scenarios while acknowledging the cultural and ethical customs embedded in whaling.

A team of scholars from ASU traveled to South Africa to establish a joint project with the University of Johannesburg. Dr. Leah Gerber, Founding Director of ASU's Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, and Dr. Michael Schoon, CBO Faculty Affiliate and Assistant Professor of ASU School of Sustainability, spearheaded the project in collaboration with the ASU Decision Theater.

In addition to visiting the University of Johannesburg, they traveled to Kruger National Park and adjacent private reserves. This is the beginning of a promising partnership that aims to address the increasing rhino poaching epidemic. The proposed project will develop management plans that draw from the knowledge of a broad array of stakeholders at the local, national, and international levels.

The World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD) will publish a business case report titled “Roadmap for curbing the Ocean Waste” (ROW) the week of June 5-9, 2017 as part of the United Nation’s Oceans Conference in New York.

“Today, at least 8 million tons of plastics leak into the ocean each year, which is equivalent to dumping the content of one garbage truck into the ocean per minute,” explained WBCSD via a release to its affiliates.

The ROW report serves as a call to action to businesses, emphasizing how marine debris prevention practices can benefit industries. The report was produced with the collaboration of various corporations, including The Dow Chemical Company, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation, Unilever, Nestlé, LafargeHolcim and Borealis.

WBCSD is one of the ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) knowledge partners. CBO supported this project by participating in the ROW workshops leading up to the report and by providing expert reviews along the way.

A group of experts from over a dozen key organizations recently published an article titled, “Committing to socially responsible seafood” in Science, under the lead of Jack Kittinger, ASU-Conservation International Professor of Practice,

The framework proposed in the article addresses the growing concerns of social abuses within the seafood sector. By engaging businesses, governments, and nonprofit organizations changes in policy and practice can ensure the sustainability of one of the largest food commodities.

The Nereus Program, an interdisciplinary collaboration of the The Nippon Foundation at The University of British Columbia, released a report titled, “Oceans and the Sustainable Development Goals: Co-benefits, climate change & social equity.”

Just in time for the United Nations (UN) World Ocean Conference, the report emphasizes the connections between the ocean goal and the other UN Sustainable Development Goals established in 2015.

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SESYNC Science Team Leads Effort to Increase Transparency in Endangered Species Recovery

By Kate Weiss, SESYNC

On May 5, 2017, a National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) science team led by Leah Gerber and Mike Runge presented a tool to Senior Administrators of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) that may help the agency prioritize endangered species recovery.

USFWS works to protect 1,275 threatened and endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, and each of these species requires an associated species recovery plan. These plans outline actions, recovery criteria, and other guidelines for species recovery. However, funding limits how many and which recovery plans each of the eight regions USFWS oversees may focus on.

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Arizona State University researchers are working to enhance the public value outcomes of conservation science research. Leah Gerber, a professor in the School of Life Sciences, will work with Derrick Anderson, a faculty member in the School of Public Affairs, to study the ways in which researchers and organizations create public value knowledge outcomes from conservation science research.

This unlikely collaboration between an ecologist and a public management researcher is a result of ASU’s Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) and Center for Organization Research and Design (CORD) which were created in part to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration at the frontiers of biodiversity and organizational design research. As leaders of the two centers, Gerber and Anderson are now teaming up with a joint grant from the National Science Foundation’s Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) program.

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Jack Kittinger, one of the ASU-Conservation International new Professors of Practice, recently published a paper titled “An appeal for a code of conduct for marine conservation” in Marine Policy.

The journal argues that a comprehensive set of social standards is necessary for effective and lasting conservation actions. Key principles and action steps are recommended to create socially acceptable and ecologically effective marine conservation programs.

Recently graduated ASU student and Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) GRA, Jorge Ramos-Holguín, is the new Manager for the Oceans and Climate team inside Conservation International in Washington, D.C.

Jorge graduated from the Environmental Life Sciences Ph.D. program in May, 2017, where he also worked in the Wetland Ecosystem Ecology Lab with Dr. Dan Childers. His investigation focused on quantifying the greenhouse gas emissions (methane and nitrous oxide) from a newly constructed treatment wetland in Phoenix, AZ.

In his own words, Jorge shared an open letter about his experience working with CBO:

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ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes and Conservation International (CI) Distinguished Professor of Practice, M. Sanjayan, was named new CI Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The new CI executive team was announced in May 4, 2017 and it will become effective July 1, 2017.

“It is both a privilege and deeply humbling to step into the role of chief executive officer,” said Sanjayan. “Peter Seligmann’s founding vision, that people need nature to thrive, created a global movement that has helped change the trajectory of our planet. I’m honored to partner with Jennifer Morris, our new president, Sebastian Troëng, our new executive vice president, and all of CI’s talented staff on the journey ahead.”

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The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently unveiled their 100&Change Top 200 proposals, a philanthropic initiative committed to funding $100 million to an initiative or organization willing to fix a world problem forever. The ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) was among the 25 percent of submissions that received the highest scores.

CBO proposed a market-based approach to sustaining natural capital. This approach suggests informing consumers via product labels about the impact production has in biodiversity conservation. Derived from the notion that people love nature, better informed consumers can drive market demand for products and services created with minimal impact on the environment.

Proposals were assessed on four criteria: meaningful, verifiable, feasible, and durable. CBO is proud to join the list of creative problem solvers via this recognition and will work to incorporate the feedback received from MacArthur’s Board of Directors to develop this proposal for future funding opportunities.

The eight semi-finalists selected offer bold solutions to a variety of humanitarian issues, including health, hunger, and refugee crises.

From July 23-27, Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) Founding Director Leah Gerber will join leading sustainability experts at the 28^th International Congress for Conservation Biology in Cartagena, Colombia. The theme of this year’s conference is Insights for Sustaining Life on Earth, which the website describes as “a response to the need for conservation science to help create a better tomorrow for both biodiversity and the people who depend on it.”

Following a competitive application, the proposal titled “Partnership for Conservation: The importance of government, private sector, donor, community, academic and NGO collaboration” was selected. The workshop will consist of a panel discussion on opportunities and challenges inherent to cross-sector collaboration.

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A collaboration between the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes (CBO) and the Center for Behavior, Institutions, and the Environment (CBIE) at ASU aims to unify social and biological science research and provide a more unified methodology to analyze and code coupled social-ecological systems (SES) in order to mitigate biodiversity declines.

Two CBO- and CBIE-affiliated graduate students, Maria del Mar Mancha-Cisneros and Ute Brady, are working with other graduate students and postdoctoral research associates at ASU and other U.S. and Canadian universities to begin standardizing analytical practices for SES in order to attain more successful conservation outcomes.

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The King’s College of London, on behalf of the PLuS Alliance organization, hosted a workshop to develop ecosystem typologies for the new Global Red List of Ecosystems in April 2017. This initiative was born from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Although many typologies of species already exist in the world, most are based on biogeographic and bioclimatic data. These are useful features, but they present limitations to endangered species conservation efforts by lacking representation of “ecological processes, especially those that operate at the scales of landscapes and seascapes,” explained Professor David Keith from the Center of Ecosystem Science at the University of New South Wales.

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Scientists argue that funding allocation for saving endangered species is failing, costing many more species to go extinct. Dr. Leah Gerber, Founding Director of ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, makes that case in a recently published article in Outside.

Although the idea of prioritizing species conservation efforts might seem controversial, decisions need to be made during this time of rapid biophysical, institutional, and cultural change. “There’s a level of discomfort with this, but we have to face hard choices,” explains Gerber.

For the last couple of years, Dr. Gerber has been working closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help develop a decision-making tool to assist with effective funding allocation for rescuing endangered species.

A Thought Leader Series Piece

by Leah Gerber & Penny Langhammer

After a half-century of isolation, the Republic of Myanmar has reengaged with the international community following democratic elections in 2015. The country is experiencing rapid political, social and economic change, presenting it with both risks and opportunities.

Comprising a large portion of the Indo-Burma region, Myanmar is home to a remarkable diversity of unique species and ecosystems. While the country has maintained this rich biodiversity for centuries, Myanmar now faces challenges in sustainably managing its natural life-support systems and must address climate variability, water scarcity, agricultural productivity and energy security.

Recognizing that biodiversity underpins a range of ecosystem services that are required for sustainable development, Myanmar updated its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan in 2015 and confirmed its commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals last year.

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The ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes and Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology have partnered to host a series of dialogues exploring ways in which institutional transformation can lead to diversity and inclusiveness in STEAM+H (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics and health) opportunities.

The series, titled “Community of Scholars Committed to Inclusive STEAM+H Pathways,” has drawn active participation from approximately 25 faculty and deans.

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