You are invited to participate in the inaugural session of the Forests and Oceans for the Future seminar series sponsored by Forests and Oceans for the Future Research Group.
Starting with a presentation by Dennis Brown, former union leader and special advisor to the Premier’s office, this seminar series will feature researchers, practitioners and environmental activists speaking on issues related to the long term health and sustainability of our natural resource economy.
Winter term 2006 seminars will be held monthly on the third or fourth Wednesday evening of the month (check schedule for details).Seminar 1: Dennis Brown. “Clouding the issue: the shift to weak stock management in the BC fisheries.”
Wednesday, January 18. 7:30 – 9:00 pm, Room 205 AnSo Building (6303 NW Marine Drive. Parking available in the Rose Garden Parkade)
Dennis Brown is the author of The Salmon Wars: the Battle for the West Coast Salmon Fishery.” Dennis is a former United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union leader and special advisor to the Premier’s office (1996-2001). He will speak about changes in management policy in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the implications that these changes have had for commercial fishermen in BC. See also the review of Dennis’ book on The Tyee
Seminar 2: Dr. Felice Wyndham (UBC). “The role of children’s lived experience in changing human ecologies of the Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico.”
Wednesday, February 22. 7:30 – 9:00 pm, Room 205 AnSo Building (6303 NW Marine Drive. Parking available in the Rose Garden Parkade).
ABSTRACT: Wyndham presents an ethnographic perspective of children as important actors in the ecological processes of landscape use, landscape management, and landscape interpretation over time. She argues that children’s ecological practice and knowledge construction represent a central locus for change and continuity in complex human ecosystems. In this presentation she repors on a study of Rarámuri children’s perceptions of and interactions with their local landscapes, discussed in the context of their elders’ recollections of ecological learning and Rarámuri epistemologies. Wyndham explores how human ecosystem perspectives can inform and be informed by historical ecology—particularly, in the contributions of social-political events, contexts and continuities to landscapes, and in applying sophisticated understandings of social and biophysical interactions through time. This research contributes to a larger goal of developing ecological, interactionist models linking individual learning, landscapes, and community processes of change.
Seminar 3: Dr. Ian Davidson-Hunt. (U. Manitoba) “Mobilizing knowledge for community-based resource management”
Wednesday, March 22. 7:30 – 9:00 pm, Room 205 AnSo Building (6303 NW Marine Drive. Parking available in the Rose garden Parkade).
ABSTRACT: The knowledge held by local communities has often been seen as an input for others to generate solutions for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation. However, communities are increasingly asserting that their knowledge is the substrate out of which solutions can emerge. This is consistent with an approach to community-based planning that begins from Friedman’s assertion that planning is the art of turning knowledge into action. Many community-based resource management initiatives begin with a process that brings people from within the community together to document what they know about their place. This information may be shared orally or as in many cases it is recorded through community mapping projects. Such community inventories allow people to recognize and affirm the things they would like to conserve as well as identify new opportunities that they might pursue. While local knowledge and community-based planning are the core of these initiatives many have also partnered with external technical and/or research organizations to provide them with access to new information that they can consider as they pursue their initiatives. This presentation will draw upon community-based resource management initiatives that have been undertaken through the Equator Initiative and with the Whitefeather Forest Initiative.
Additional information on the Forests and Oceans for the Future research group can be found on our web page.