Forests & Oceans for the Future Discussion and News

Upcoming speaker: March 8, 2007. 5:00 – 6:30 pm, AnSo Rm 2107.

Dr. Kelly Bannister (Director, POLIS Project on Ecological Governance, U Vic.).
“The Nexus of Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge.”

The role of traditional knowledge in biodiversity science and decision-making has peaked serious interest by governments, policy-makers, academics, Indigenous communities and others around the world. However, despite increasing agreement in principle that combining western scientific and traditional knowledge systems may better address some emergent human and ecosystem health problems, relatively little progress has been made in practice ­ or in developing policies and infrastructure to support such practice. The role of ethical and quasi-legal instruments, such as research protocols and codes, are receiving significant attention at local to international levels for their potential to address a number of challenges that lie at this nexus of principle-policy-practice involving biodiversity and traditional knowledge. Are such instruments tools for building cross-cultural relationships, democratizing biodiversity science and empowering communities in decision-making, or do they serve to bureaucratize the research enterprise?

September 21, 2006.
Dr. Ronald Trosper (UBC) " Gifts, Chiefs, Contingent Proprietorship:
Ideas for Restoration of Resilience." Click here for podcast. Click here to view video presentation.

AbstractRestoration of a degraded system requires changing the behaviour of the keystone species which caused the degradation. Rules addressing reciprocity, stewardship, peer monitoring and accountability need to be added to the discussion of complexity and ecosystem based management. Restoration of these important human relationships create social learning through information sharing and public knowledge, as was the case when Northwest Coast fisheries supported a resilient system for more than 2,000 years. Unfortunately, several key assumptions remain unexamined with the currently popular proposals to reform ocean systems. These proposals retain beliefs in the efficacy of private top down authority, and the separation between ‘society’ and ‘nature.’ Although such fundamental changes in mind sets are difficult to achieve, crises may provide and opportunity for radical change.

Working in collaboration with members of the Le Guilvinec Fishermen’s Committee, The Ethnographic Film Unit at UBC is making a documentary that explores how family-based fishing is navigating the impacts of increasingly liberalized trade in fish and fish products. Le Marin, the leading marine policy and issues newspaper in France has published an article on January 12, 2007 (see here) on our current project in France.