Master in Environmental Management

You may wonder where the name of the Master comes from. Why would we call it “global environmental change” rather than “environmental studies” or “environmental sustainability” (both of which are respectable names)?

Well, one of the reasons that inspired us to pick this name is the so-called “Amsterdam Declaration“, an important statement drawn up in 2001 and supported by over 1,500 scientists, who

recognise that, in addition to the threat of significant climate change, there is growing concern over the ever-increasing human modification of other aspects of the global environment and the consequent implications for human well-being. Basic goods and services supplied by the planetary life support system, such as food, water, clean air and an environment conducive to human health, are being affected increasingly by global change.

The Amsterdam Declaration drew attention to the fact that not only anthropogenic climate change is happening, but that also other changes are affecting the earth system, including land use change, changes in water use, and biodiversity loss. So rather than talking about “climate change” in isolation, we should be talking about “global change” or (perhaps a bit clearer) “global environmental change”.

Now, almost 10 years later, climate change still carries more weight in global politics than water or biodiversity. However, there seems to be a slow but steady shift in the right direction.

I want to highlight a few other elements from the Amsterdam Declaration, that capture the essence of the Master in Global Environmental Change at IE University.

Complexity.

Global change cannot be understood in terms of a simple cause-effect paradigm. Human-driven changes cause multiple effects that cascade through the Earth System in complex ways. These effects interact with each other and with local- and regional-scale changes in multidimensional patterns that are difficult to understand and even more difficult to predict. Surprises abound.

This doesn’t mean that science becomes useless. However, the role of science should not be reduced to prediction. Monitoring change and testing alternative ways to manage the environment are also important roles for scientists. It also means that sustainability science needs to be interdisciplinary, beyond the confines of the environmental sciences. This is fully taken into account in the curriculum and faculty composition of the Master in Global Environmental Change. The diversity of the educational backgrounds of our students also reflects this!

Communication.

The global change programmes are committed to working closely with other sectors of society and across all nations and cultures to meet the challenge of a changing Earth. New partnerships are forming among university, industrial and governmental research institutions. Dialogues are increasing between the scientific community and policymakers at a number of levels.

We strongly subscribe to this. What is unique about the Master in Global Environmental Change is its emphasis on communication and public participation. Courses in the Master not only cover traditional communication skills, such as writing, but also Web 2.0 technologies, that allow for more interaction with the information. Also, students learn group facilitation techniques that allow them to work in a more participatory way with decision makers, making dialogue happen.

Globality.

The Amsterdam Declaration refers to the need to integrate environmental and developmental concerns and to collaborate between rich and poor countries. Environmental degradation often affects poor people more than rich people. Therefore, the global North and South need to collaborate on global environmental stewardship. Global thinking is crucial. For instance, when one country achieves to stop deforestation within its own boundaries, but increases its importation of products from other countries that cause deforestation (like palm oil), there is no net gain in sustainability. Actions are local, but outcomes are global.

In the Master in Global Environmental Change, we reflect on the global dimension of environmental change throughout the programme. Also, the international composition of our body of students, with an almost equal representation of students from the global North and South, enormously enriches discussions on these themes.

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So with the name “Global Environmental Change” we try to reflect the specific focus and philosophy of this programme: global, integrative in its focus on environmental issues, interdisciplinary, and crossing the boundary between science and decision-making.

OK, we knew that most ecosystems on our planet are dominated by humans.

But when you take a look at this first map, still some biomes stick out as relatively unaffected by human influence: the Tibetan Plateau, the Sahara, central Australia, and the Arctic except Scandinavia.

Anthromes according to Erle Ellis

But now, take a look at this map. (Click on it for a larger version.)

Global transport

What I didn’t think much about before seeing this map is that those environments that are relatively untouched by people on the ground are frequently crossed by airplanes. Given the absence of airports in these areas, most airplanes will pass at a considerable height. But still, this map confirms in a very visual way the idea that planet Earth is definitively dominated by our species.

The Master in Global Environmental Change benefits from the collaboration of a number of adjunct professors who have a distinguished career in different settings. Our adjunct professors add much expertise to the programme and link it to very diverse working environments. Students not only profit from the knowledge and expertise of our adjunct faculty, but also from their wide professional networks!

In the academic year 2011-2012, we will have four new adjunct faculty members.

Guido Schmidt (Germany) holds a PhD in Environmental Planning and Engineering and has almost 20 years of professional experience. Over the past 13 years, he has been responsible for the design, implementation and monitoring of work programmes, projects and teams at environmental consultancies and NGOs, including WWF.

Guido has a broad experience in water-focused environmental policy, planning and management, communication and public participation processes, with a solid academic track record of publications and conferences.

Pablo del Río González (Spain) hold a PhD in Economics. He is Senior Researcher in the Environmental Economics Group at the Institute for Public Goods and Policies in the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

Pablo’s areas of research and interest are related to environmental economics, energy economics and innovation economics. He has more than 70 international publications in these areas. He has participated in 6 European-funded research projects on several topics in Environmental Economics and Energy and he is on the Executive Board of the Spanish Association for Energy Economics (AEEE). He has over a decade of teaching experience at several universities.

Mathieu Dionnet (France) graduated in Population and Ecosystem Biology at the University of Geneva and in Ecosystems Management at the University Paris 7.

Mathieu is a founding partner of Lisode, a company specializing in public participation processes. He applies participation methods in natural resource management processes and particularly in rural settings. His knowledge of innovative participation processes such as role games or simulation exercises allows him to propose original solutions to collective learning or decision-making processes.

Federico Steinberg (Spain) holds a PhD in Economics. He studied at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Columbia University, and London School of Economics.

Federico is Senior Analyst for International Economics at the Royal Elcano Institute for International Affairs. He has consulted for the World Bank and the United Nations. He is author of several books, and a large number of book chapters and journal articles.

We warmly welcome all four of them to the programme!

In one of the Environment Outlook sessions with Prof. Van Etten he exposed a really interesting case of a “safe farming project” (Kilimo Salama in Swahili) for Kenyan Farmers. This project is the sum of the synergies between Syngenta Foundation, UAP Insurance and Safaricom. Prof. Van Etten explained how this project enables micro insurance for farmers & makes them more prepared for extreme weather conditions. The concept is “pay as you plant”, the technology is simple to use, there are no middle mans & benefits for farmers are immediate. Below is a sketch that intends to tell the story. Read more about it here.

Prof. Van Etten also talked about agro-forestry, as a science-based solution, where farm land can also preserve trees. It is worth taking a look at the latest fostering projects that the World Agroforestry Centre has in Africa. Kenya & Malawi are on this way of farming to help them adapt to hotter climate & unpredicted rainy seasons.

In June and July, the students of the Master in Global Environmental Change are doing an internship as part of their program.

Some of the students have searched and found a placement themselves. Others have used the existing contacts and agreements of the university, which also offer some excellent opportunities. This year, roughly half of the students are doing their internship in Madrid, while others have gone abroad.

This is a representative sample of the places where the students are right now:

Futerra Sustainability Communications (London)
UNESCO (Paris)
Standard and Poor’s (Madrid)
Climate Strategy & Partners (Madrid)
Varda Desarrollo Sostenible (Madrid)
BPD Water and Sanitation (London)
Chelonia Foundation (Montevideo)

The organizations are a diverse lot. As a group, the students nicely cover the themes that are central to the Master: water, biodiversity, and energy. Well done!

This week we had an energetic Environment Outlook session with Peter Sweatman, Chief Executive of Climate Strategy, a consultancy team based in Madrid, working on Clean Energy, Clean Technology, Energy Efficiency & Climate Change strategies. Peter is also a professor at the Master in Global Environmental Change, and during the session presented the Roadmap 2050 project for 100% renewable energies in Europe. This project was developed by the European Climate Foundation.

The goal of the project is to reduce CO2 emissions, reaching 1.2 gigatons per year in 2050 (an 80% reduction of actual 1990 base year emissions), involving the substantial shift to near zero carbon emissions for three main sectors: power, buildings & road transport. During the talk, Prof. Sweatman focused the short-term ramification for investments in Europe in the power sector. The vision of the project considers different scenarios where renewable energy makes up 40%, 60% and 80% of all power generation in Europe with the remainder delivered equally by clean coal with carbon capture storage technologies & nuclear power. The roadmap considers strengthening a pan-European power grid, taking the best of seasons and regions regarding their access to wind, water, biomass & solar energy. This stronger interconnected grid would make the system more efficient and the addition of demand response programs that would better manage the supply & demand of power, with more control over intermittency fluctuations of energy (one of the main concerns for renewable power). Demand response programs can bring financial benefits to users and already are encouraged by LEED (green building certification). This would contribute to the project’s goal by also reducing the usual power reserves of often fossil fuel back-up reserves.

Prof. Sweatman also presented the investment that the project represents for the European energy sector. Historically the investment rate for the EU transmission grid has been 17 GWh km per year, the project depending on the scenario chosen it can represent near a 30 GWh km investment rate per decade (ie near doubling) to achieve the 80% share of renewable energy. The sectors’ shift would have a positive impact on employment, even though jobs may be lost in traditional energy in the end the net effect would be of net 200 000 new jobs within renewable energies. The session was a great insight into the scope of the project and of Prof. Sweatman’s assessment of a positive future for the energy sector. The Roadmap 2050 in conclusion represents an interregional challenge and above all an opportunity of job creation, energy efficiency & security along with a sustainable environmental edge. Thank you once more to Prof. Sweatman & to all following the session.

Further readings on the Roadmap 2050 project are here: http://www.roadmap2050.eu/

Prof. Jacob van Etten presented an online  Environment Outlook session with the title “Foodprint: the sustainability of eating”. This series of talks intend to create debate around important issues related to global environmental change and to provide a taste of the themes studied in the Master program. In the session, we looked at the big picture of farming worldwide, trying to answer questions like: What is the impact of financial speculation in world food markets as one of the causes of the actual food crisis? Are organic agriculture techniques making food production more sustainable? Are they scalable at an industrial level? How does the future production of animal protein look like?

The session started off with the story of palm oil. Palm oil is an important vegetable oil that is present in many products we use on a daily basis, such as margarine and chocolate. Palm oil production has grown steeply in Indonesia and Malaysia in the last 40 years. Palm oil plantations replace natural rainforests, threatening rare species and the ecosystem as a whole within the region, especially on Borneo, one of the islands that make up Indonesia.

In December 2009, Greenpeace released a report on the case which included strong evidence that things were going wrong in Borneo. Satellite images where used to show deforestation. Greenpeace campaigned against the companies that use palm oil in their products. Quickly after this publication, Unilever, a main buyer of palm oil in the region, cancelled its contract with the accused palm oil production company until their production is proven to be sustainable. Unilever worked with a non-profit consultancy, aidenvironment, to produce further insights and to take a decision.

Greenpeace then demonstrated that deforestation was still going on and targeted Nestlé, another big palm oil user. In this case, Greenpeace made intensive use of the social media, including YouTube and Facebook and mobilized a large group of people to protest. Nestlé responded slowly, with negative consequences for its reputation.

There are many lessons to learn from this story, according to Prof. Van Etten. One of these lessons is the increasing relevance of environmental consultancies and third-party certification. Independent advise and evidence are needed to hold companies accountable and to manage their reputation. This is an important potential job market for graduates of the Master in Global Environmental Change. The second lesson is that role of information technologies (like the use of satellite images) and the Internet (including social media) is enormously important to create transparency and accountability in support of sustainability.

The students of the Master in Global Environmental Change just kicked off their internships, while the professors are preparing their classes for next year. So that explains the temporary silence on this blog.

We just became aware of a very interesting video made by CTA that brings together two important themes of the Master programmes: maps and participation.

Maps make it possible to locate and quantify environmental change. They play an important role in several courses. We collaborate with Vizzuality to bring cutting-edge digital mapping methods to the program.

The other topic is “participation”, the involvement of stakeholders in decision-making. We believe this is fundamental to achieve sustainable solutions to environmental problems, which often require that people start to collaborate in new ways. Next year, our students will get hands-on training in participatory methods, in collaboration with the company lisode.

In this excellent video, both topics come together.  Maps have enormous potential to make people communicate effectively about natural resources and environmental change. The video explains how this can be done with participatory mapping.

Localisation, Participation and Communication: An Introduction to Good PGIS Practice from CTA on Vimeo.

The theme of this year’s World Environment Day is forests.

This is what Dr Frances Seymour, the Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research, has to say.

A new scientific article reports on research done at IE University on greenhouse gas emissions.

Methane is an important greenhouse gas. Methane is produced by landfills and industry, but also by natural wetlands. Another important source of methane are flooded rice fields, mainly in Asia.

Understanding methane emissions is necessary to fully understand the causes of climate change. Past levels of methane in the atmosphere can be reconstructed by analyzing ice cores. These are samples of the different layers of ice that have accumulated over millennia on the polar ice caps. Ice cores contain small amounts of air, which can be used to reconstruct the composition of the atmosphere over time.

From these data, it seems that anthropogenic methane levels started to rise some 4000 years ago, thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution would start to push methane levels even further up.

Levels of atmospheric methane start to rise 4,000 years ago, when we would expect a natural decrease. What caused this increase?

Rice cultivation in Asia started more than 6,000 years ago in Asia. Others had already suggested that there might be a link with prehistoric methane levels. What lacked until now was a careful evaluation of this hypothesis with archaeological data. Working together with scientists from three continents, we started out to put together a database that contains what we know about rice cultivation from hundreds of archaeological sites spread across Asia. With these data we could reconstruct the spread of rice cultivation across the continent.

One important finding is that although the first archaeologocial rice finds date from 6,000 years ago, it was only 4,000 years ago that enough rice was grown to make a significant impact in terms of methane emissions.

Around 4,000 years ago (2000 BC), wet rice started to emit significant amounts of methane

Knowing how humans have influenced their global environment over longer time periods is important to understand. This does not mean that the Industrial Revolution and current greenhouse emissions are not important. However, some components of the global climate system react very slowly to change, so looking further back into history is necessary to understand the present and the future.

This and related research received news coverage in March.