FSI researchers examine the role of energy sources from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) investigates how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality. Professors assess natural gas and coal markets, as well as the smart energy grid and how to create effective climate policy in an imperfect world. This includes how state-owned enterprises – like oil companies – affect energy markets around the world. Regulatory barriers are examined for understanding obstacles to lowering carbon in energy services. Realistic cap and trade policies in California are studied, as is the creation of a giant coal market in China.
After Japan was hit with the triple disaster of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011, a variety of urgent policy and economic issues came to the fore. Through papers, speaker series, and conferences, we address the new challenges and opportunities created by the disaster.
At a TEDx event in Ulaanbaatar, CISAC affiliate Undraa Agvaanluvsan discusses nuclear power in Mongolia after Fukushima.
The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) will present its 12th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment: Environment and Security, January 18-20, 2012 in Washington, DC.
The Environment and Security Conference will provide a forum to explore the connections between environment and security issues, their common underlying scientific threads, and the policy and governance needed to address security risks posed by a rapidly changing environment.
The conference is expected to bring together over 1,000 attendees from the scientific, business, academic and environmental communities, as well as international, federal, and regional government officials.
NCSE utilizes a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach to covene involved scientists and decision-makers from various sectors of society. The conferences include renowned speakers, topical symposia to explore issues more in depth, and breakout workshops to develop a set of recommendations on how to advance science and connect it to policy and decision-making.
FSE director Roz Naylor will be participating in a plenary session and symposium.
The first, Integrating Climate, Energy, Food, Water, and Health includes:
Moderator: Frank Sesno, Professor and Director, School of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University
Jeff Seabright, Vice President for Environment and Water Resources, The Coca-Cola Company
Geoff Dabelko, Director, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
The second plenary session is on Climate Change and Food Security and includes:
Moderator: Jonathan Shrier, Acting Special Representative, Global Food Security, U.S. Department of State
Keynote speakers include Amory Lovins, Cofounder, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute and Thomas Friedman, Columnist, The New York Times.
Washington DC
The Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki
Environment and Energy Building
Stanford University
473 Via Ortega, Office 363
Stanford, CA 94305
Rosamond Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor in Earth System Science, a Senior Fellow at Stanford Woods Institute and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the founding Director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She received her B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado, her M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and her Ph.D. in applied economics from Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She works with her students in many locations around the world. She has been involved in many field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to intensive crop production, aquaculture and livestock systems, biofuels, climate change, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. In addition to her many peer-reviewed papers, Naylor has published two books on her work: The Evolving Sphere of Food Security (Naylor, ed., 2014), and The Tropical Oil Crops Revolution: Food, Farmers, Fuels, and Forests (Byerlee, Falcon, and Naylor, 2017).
She is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fellow of the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics, a member of Sigma Xi, and the co-Chair of the Blue Food Assessment. Naylor serves as the President of the Board of Directors for Aspen Global Change Institute, is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Oceana and is a member of the Forest Advisory Panel for Cargill. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the World Food Economy, Human-Environment Interactions, and Food and Security.
Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
University of Washington
Box 351640
Seattle WA 98195-1640
David Battisti received a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences (1988) from the University of Washington. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin until 1990. Since then, he has been on the Faculty in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, and was the Director of JISAO from 1997-2003. Presently, he is the Tamaki Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the University's Earth Initiative.
David Battisti's research is focused on understanding the natural variability of the climate system. He is especially interested in understanding how the interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, land and sea ice lead to variability in climate on time scales from seasonal to decades. His previous research includes coastal oceanography, the physics of the El Nino/Southern Osciallation (ENSO) phenomenon, midlatitude atmosphere/ocean variability and variability in the coupled atmosphere/sea ice system in the Arctic. Battisti is presently working to improve the El Nino models and their forecast skill, and to understand the mechanisms responsible for the drought cycles in the Sahel, and the decade-to-decade changes in the climate of the Pacific Northwest, including how the latter affects the snow pack in the Cascades and coastal ranges from Washington to Alaska. He is also working on the impacts of climate variability and climate change on food production in Mexico and Indonesia.
Battisti's recent interests are in paleoclimate: in particular, the mechanisms responsible for the remarkable "abrupt" global climate changes evident throughout the last glacial period.
Battisti has served on numerous international science panels, on Committees of the National Research Council. He served for five years as co-chair of the Science Steering Committee for the U.S. Program on Climate (US CLIVAR) and is co-author of several international science plans. He has published over 60 papers in peer-review journals in atmospheric sciences and oceanography, and twice been awarded distinguished teaching awards.
Energy geopolitics in East Asia have reflected strong competition among major energy consuming countries (China, Japan and Korea) despite the alleged necessity of energy cooperation to cope with uncertainties in the global energy market and to prevent potential conflicts regarding energy supply. Lacking abundant energy resources, South Korea has to face the tough challenges of energy supply and climate change as well as the North Korean energy and nuclear crisis. In recent years, South Korea has actively pursued overseas energy development to guarantee the stable procurement of hydrocarbon energy resources and introduced a Green Growth policy to deal with the challenges of climate change and clean energy. The Green Growth policy symbolizes a paradigm shift to cope with climate change, fossil fuel depletion, and global economic recession by creating new engines of economic growth through green technology and clean energy. Based on strong political support and policy measures, it has showed noticeable progress in a short period of time, but the transition from a hydrocarbon-based to a renewable-based economy faces enormous uncertainties and challenges. South Korea has also been active in participating East Asian energy cooperation, which is also important in dealing with the serious North Korean energy crisis.
Jae-Seung Lee is a visiting scholar with the Korean Studies Program (KSP) for the 2011–12 academic year, and he is also currently a professor of international studies at Korea University. Before joining the faculty of Korea University, he had served as a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. His current research includes energy security and energy diplomacy of Korea.
Jae-Seung Lee has authored a series of books and articles on East Asian energy security. He is a Managing Director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Institute of Sustainable Development (ISD) at Korea University and has organized the Korea Energy Forum (KEF) since 2005. Professor Lee is editor-in-chief of Korea Review of International Studies and serves as a Member of the Policy Advisory Board of the Presidential Secretariat (Foreign and Security Affairs) and Vice Director of Ilmin International Relations Institute (IIRI). Professor Lee holds a BA in political science from Seoul National University and an MA and a PhD in political science from Yale University. He has taught at Yale University, Seoul National University, and Korea University.
This event is made possible by the generous support from the Koret Foundation.
Philippines Conference Room
Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Jae-Seung Lee is a visiting scholar with the Korean Studies Program (KSP) for the 2011–12 academic year, and he is also currently a professor of international studies at Korea University. Before joining the faculty of Korea University, he served as a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS) and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
As a scholar in international political economy, Lee has authored a number of books and articles on Korea, East Asia, and Europe. His current research also includes the energy security and energy diplomacy of Korea, among others. During his time with KSP, he will conduct a research project on the geopolitics of East Asian energy relations.
Lee is currently an editor-in-chief of the Korea Review of International Studies and he also serves as a member of the Policy Advisory Board of the Presidential Secretariat (Foreign and Security Affairs) and as vice director of Ilmin International Relations Institute (IIRI). He was selected as an Asia Society Young Leader in 2006 and as a Young Leader by the InterAction Council, a group of former heads-of-state, in 2008. He has contributed op-ed articles to major Korean newspapers and has commented on international affairs for BBC, CNN, and Korean broadcast stations.
Lee holds a BA in political science from Seoul National University (1991), and an MA (1993) and PhD (1998) in political science from Yale University. He also earned a certificate from the Institut D’Etudes Politiques de Paris (1995). He has taught at Yale University and Seoul National University.
* His on-line expert interview with World Politics Review on South Korea's energy diplomay is available here.
* His on-line interview with BBC World on the Korean DMZ is available here.
Rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa live under risky conditions. Many grow low-value cereal crops that depend on a short rainy season, a practice that traps them in poverty and hunger.
But reliable access to water could change the farmers' perilous situation. Stanford scientists are calling for investments in small-scale irrigation projects and hydrologic mapping to help buffer the growers from the erratic weather and poor crop yields that are expected to worsen with climate change in the region.
The potential for increased irrigation is there, said Jennifer Burney, a fellow at Stanford's Center on Food Security and Environment at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Burney's team partnered with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) to measure economic and nutritional impacts of solar-powered drip-irrigated gardens on villages in West Africa's Sudano-Sahel region. Burney will present the group's work on small-scale irrigation Wednesday, Dec. 7, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
"Irrigation is really appealing in that it lets you do a lot of things to break this cycle of low productivity that leads to low income and malnutrition," said Burney.
Modern irrigation often means multi-billion-dollar projects like damming rivers and building canals. But Burney says that these projects have not reached sub-Saharan Africa because countries lack the capital and ability to carry out big infrastructure projects.
A different approach, gaining popularity in sub-Saharan Africa, involves cooperation. Individuals or groups, called smallholders, organize to farm small plots and ensure their access to irrigation. These projects allow farmers to grow during the dry season and produce profitable, high-nutrition crops like fruits and vegetables in addition to the cereal crops they already grow.
Still, only 4 percent of cropland in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated.
Smallholder irrigation
Burney and her colleagues' work in two northern Benin villages is an example of successful investment in smallholder irrigation. They worked with women's cooperative agricultural groups to install three solar-powered drip irrigation systems. Drip irrigation conserves water by delivering it directly to the base of plants. The technique also reduces fertilizer runoff.
The team surveyed 30 households in each village and found that solar drip irrigation increased standards of living and increased vegetable consumption to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's recommended daily allowance. By selling the vegetables, households were able to purchase staples and meat during the dry season.
Successful smallholder irrigation projects have high investment returns, said Burney. Her team has seen real success from irrigation projects – like those in Benin – that provide enough returns for women to send kids to school or buy small business equipment like a sewing machine or market stall.
"That's when I think it really becomes a ladder out of poverty," Burney said.
Lessons for success
For solar technology projects to be successful, Burney said, just dropping in and giving people irrigation kits doesn't work. Communities need access to a water source and need to see the benefits of a project.
"You need the technology and management and the water access, all together," said Burney. "Our solar project incorporates all of that."
According to Burney, smallholders need not limit themselves to solar irrigation systems. "Solar is great if you have an unreliable fuel," she said. "But if you're someplace that's connected to the grid, an electrical pump would more economical."
"There are a lot of different solutions that involve many different kinds of water harvesting," Burney said. "Groundwater, rainwater, surface water, and there are a lot of places in the Sahel, like Niger, for example, where there are artesian wells." The Sahel is a transition zone between the Sahara Desert and the savannas further south.
Given the diversity of water resources in West Africa, Burney suggests that nongovernmental organizations and governments prioritize detailed hydrologic mapping in the region. Otherwise, the cost of geophysical surveys and finding water sources, especially unseen groundwater, could become an insurmountable barrier for farm communities.
"It needs to be really detailed, comprehensive, usable information that's out there for everybody to be able to take advantage of," she said.
Burney says that both of the benefits that farmers get from irrigation systems –growing outside of the rainy season and producing more diverse, profitable crops – are important for adapting to climate change.
"You can produce more value on less land in most cases and not be as beholden to the whims of the rainy season," she said. Having more disposable income also will reduce vulnerability to hunger and malnutrition. "Economic development can be a form of adaptation," she said.
Rosamond L. Naylor, director of Stanford's Center on Food Security and the Environment, and Sandra Postel of the Global Water Policy Project were collaborators on the project.
Sarah Jane Keller is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.
Jennifer Burney is scheduled to speak at the fall meeting of the AGU in San Francisco on Dec. 7 in Room 2008 (Moscone West), in Session B32B, Feeding the World While Sustaining the Planet: Building Sustainable Agriculture Within the Earth System II, which runs from 10:20 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. Her talk, "Smallholder Irrigation and Crop Diversification Under Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence and Potential for Simultaneous Food Security, Adaptation and Mitigation," is scheduled from 12:04 to 12:17 p.m.
Richard Morse was the featured speaker at the UT Energy Symposium on November 3rd. His talk, entitled, “Beyond Climate Policy: Reconciling Climate Change and the ‘Coal Renaissance’”, analyzed global coal markets and their relationship to climate change.
Because coal is the single largest source of global CO2 emissions, Morse argued that any attempt to combat climate change requires a strategy to address coal. Morse argued that existing climate policy frameworks are not accomplishing this at the scale required, and suggested new frameworks to address the coal and climate challenge that can be deployed in existing energy markets with limited government intervention and support.
University of Texas
Welch Hall 2.308
Alex Ruiz Euler is a 2011-2012 pre-doctoral fellow at CDDRL and a PhD candidate in political science from the University of California, San Diego. His dissertation focuses on the effects of democratization and economic inequality on the provision of education. His case study is Mexico and is developing novel databases for these indicators at the municipal and locality level. He is also part of a collaborative effort to analyze more broadly the relation between governance and the provision of public goods, including water, health and public security.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Abstract:
There is a wide diversity in the provision of public services in India. In some states one can go for miles without seeing a functional school or public health centre, where roads are poorly maintained, and electricity has not yet been introduced. In other places, governments tend to function remarkably in extending basic public services to all, with tremendous consequences to human lives. In this talk, Vivek Srinivasen will explore why some parts of India have developed an impressive social commitment to such services unlike others. In this context, he will also discuss the remarkable changes in Bihar and other parts of North India in the recent years.
Speaker Bio:
Vivek Srinivasen joined the Liberation Technology Program as the manager in February 2011 after completing his Ph.D. in Social Sciences from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Prior to this, Srinivasen worked with campaigns on various socio-economic rights in India, including the right to food, education and the right to information. Based on these experiences he has written (and co-authored) extensively on issues surrounding the right to food, including Notes from the right to food campaign: people's movement for the right to food (2003), Rights based approach and human development: An introduction (2008), Gender and the right to food: A critical re-examination (2006), Food Policy and Social Movements: Reflections on the Right to Food Campaign in India (2007).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Abstract:
Haber and Menaldo (2011) claim there is little evidence that oil is harmful to democracy, and that previous studies to the contrary were corrupted by omitted variable bias. Michael Ross professor of political science at UCLA will present findings from a paper co-authored with Jørgen Juel Andersen to show there is little evidence of the bias they allege, and point out that they decline to test the most credible version of the resource curse hypothesis. The versions that they do test, moreover, are based on two implausible assumptions: that oil will effect a country’s regime type immediately, rather than over a period of several years; and that the relationship between oil wealth and political power did not change over the 200 year period covered by their data. We argue that oil only had strong anti-democratic effects after the 1970s, when most oil-producing autocracies nationalized their industries; and show their main results are overturned when we add to their models a dummy variable for the post-1979 period, and allow the effects of oil to take place over a period of three, five, or seven years, instead of just one year.
Speaker Bio:
Michael L. Ross is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
He has published widely on the political and economic problems of resource-rich countries, civil war, democratization, and gender rights; his articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Confiict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Politics and Gender, and World Politics. In 2009, he received the Heinz Eulau Award from the American Political Science Association for the best article published in the American Political Science Review.
His work has also appeard in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harper's, The Los Angeles Times, and been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and many other publications.
Ross currently serves on the advisory boards of the Review Watch Institute, the Natural Resource Charter, and Clean Trade, and was previously a member of the Advisory Group for the World Bank's Extractive Industries Review. He is also a member of the Political Instability Task Force and the APSA Task Force on Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room