The School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability congratulates our newest cohort of doctoral graduands.
We are pleased to announce that four new faculty have taken up positions in SERS in the past year. We welcomed Dr. Felicitas Egunyu (August 2022), Dr. Helena Shilomboleni (September 2022), Dr. Chantel Markle (January 2023) and Dr. Leah Jones-Crank (July 2023).
Dr. Kelsey Leonard's WAMPUM Lab partnered with the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance to co-develop a report to the UN to prioritize Indigenous Peoples in the digital ecosystem. Their submission indicates principles and actions that can be taken to achieve the goal of an open, free and secure digital future for all. It employs the CARE principles, which are well-established in the open data movement.
Dr. Dustin Garrick, SERS Associate Professor and University Research Chair in Water and Development Policy, leads an international team that was recently awarded $500,000 in funding through a New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) Special Call for Research for Post-pandemic Recovery. The Beyond the Informal Water Paradox project team includes partners in Kenya.
Jennifer Clapp, University Professor in SERS and Canada Research Chair, was inducted into the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry as a new international fellow on January 28, 2023.
Nathanael Bergbusch, a SERS PhD Candidate, has been awarded the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for his innovative research proposal titled “Towards Sustainable Watershed Management: Meaningful Inclusion of Communities and Ecosystems in Environmental Assessment.”
SERS participated in the Sustainability Office's 2022 Eco-Summit. SERS achieved a gold ranking in the Green Office program and two SERS undergraduate students participated in panel sessions.
Maren Oelbermann and Pedro Gonzalez Hernandez cycled 770 km along the Dempster Highway to raise money to support the Grand River Cancer Centre.
Congratulations to Lowine Hill and Madu Galappaththi for their recognition as SERS student achievement leaders. Lowine and Madu (in collaboration with planning student Sarah Ghorpade) established a unique program for the Faculty of Environment that focuses on critical reflections on the colonial aspects of sustainability research.
In light of the meeting of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and negotiations around post-2020 global conservation targets, there is renewed attention on the need to assess and apply novel conservation policy tools. One of these tools is referred to as ‘Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs)’. 25 experts representing 26 institutions and 14 countries recently published a paper in Nature that assesses for the first time the core opportunities and challenges of OECMS to address the biodiversity crisis. This work is one output of Science for People Partnership (SNAPP) ‘Coastal Outcomes’ working group.