Blog

12th ALTER-Net summer school
August 30 – September 10, 2017

ALTER-Net summer school was a laboratory on what it means to be a scientist – personally and professionally. The summer school is organized every year by ‘A Long-Term Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Awareness Research Network’ (ALTER-Net), a European network. Its 12th edition, “Biodiversity, ecosystem services: Science and its impact on policy and society”, focused on putting science into practice and demystifying myths about academia.

On World Oceans Day (June 8, 2017), we met for a 2-day workshop at the University of British Columbia to discuss oceans and fisheries access issues in Canada. Access cluster co-leads – Megan Bailey and Nathan Bennett – organized the workshop in order to launch the OceanCanada Access working group, with the goals of taking stock of access issues in Canada, as well as identifying the linkages between access and the wellbeing of coastal communities.

The United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are centered around the ideas of social and environmental justice. Within each goal, the targets seek to address both human and environmental issues – to strike a balance between the needs of our species and the planet that gives us life. Continue reading Enhancing the achievability of SDG 6.

In the context of increasing pressures on the land-sea interface, the role of governance is a potentially important, yet unfortunately an understudied consideration in our pursuit of sustainability. Existing governance can set the course for the fragmented decision-making that currently spawns many inappropriate uses of coastal areas and watersheds (e.g., land-clearing for agriculture without considering reef sedimentation).