News & Events: Seminar Series
Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests Seminar Series
Michaelmas Term 2010
Please Note: This seminar series has finished. For information on our current seminar series please see our Seminar Series.
The Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests seminars run from 4.15pm at the School of Geography and the Environment and are followed by drinks, unless indicated otherwise below.
All welcome. For further details and to register, please go to http://bookwhen.com/octf - please take a moment to register to give us an indication of numbers.
Week 1: 4.15pm, Friday 15 October 2010, SoGE, Oxford.
A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilisation
John Perlin, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Week 5: 1.15pm, Thursday 11 November 2010, SoGE, Oxford.
Is Amazonia ready for REDD?
Luis Meneses, REDD consultant (Acre State Government and Governor's Climate Forest Task Force)
Week 5: 4.15pm, Friday 12 November 2010, SoGE, Oxford.
A concern-focused approach to policy evaluation: issues and perspectives for forest policy
Professor Lauren Mermet, Professor of Environmental Management, AgroParisTech, Paris, and Associate Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford.
Week 6: 4.15pm, Friday 19 November 2010, SoGE, Oxford.
Community forestry and certification in the tropics: What works and what doesn't?
Dr Shoana Humphries, Social Policy Manager, FSC International Centre.
Week 7: 4.15pm, Friday 26 November 2010, SoGE, Oxford.
Title to be confirmed.
Chris Cox, Timbmet, and John Arnold, Fairtrade Foundation.
All welcome. For further details and to register, please go to http://bookwhen.com/octf. Please take a moment to register to give us an indication of numbers.
Abstracts
A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization
John Perlin's presentation, 'A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization' will show the singular role wood played in the development of civilization from Mesopotamia to late 19th century America, a period covering 5,000 years on five continents. The book shows how forests were transformed into fuel for industry, from smelting to glass-making, and above all were the source of timber for shipbuilding: for centuries the main pathway to wealth and power. Wood, indeed, was the oil of times past, and empires were brought low as their sources of timber disappeared.
Parallels for us as oil peaks and the world warms are striking.
From the University of California, Santa Barbara, John Perlin is a lecturer in solar energy and forestry and the author of three highly acclaimed environmental books. 'A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization' was described by the BBC as "one of those bold imaginative steps through history that leaves you full of excitement as suddenly events fall into a pattern for the first time." He has spoken to a wide range of audiences in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brazil and Italy. His presentations focus on the story of solar energy and of humanity's interaction with forests over 5,000 years.
Is Amazonia ready for REDD?
Prof. Luis Meneses will bring his wealth of experience of working on REDD issues in Brazilian Amazonia to provide a perspective on the complexity of making REDD a successful conservation mechanism in the Amazon forests within a multi-scale governance structure: from projects to sub-national programmes and a national regime.
Luis Meneses graduated in Agronomy Engineering from the University of São Paulo in 1993 and has a postgraduate degree in agroforestry from CATIE, Costa Rica. He has lived in the southwestern Amazon since 1994, working as professor and researcher at the Federal University of Acre. He worked for two years as Planning Coordinator for the Government of Acre. From 2001 to 2006, he was head of the Amazon Program of WWF Brazil, dealing with issues such as protected areas, sustainable forestry and environmental policy. Since 2007, Luis Meneses has been working as consultant on Environmental Services, especially REDD, for several organisations such as Acre State Government, Governor's Climate Forest Task Force, GTZ, IUCN, WWF, GTA (Amazon Civil Society Network) and CCBA (Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance).
A concern-focused approach to policy evaluation: issues and perspectives for forest policy
The evaluation of environmental policies (and of policies with environmental impact) is riddled by numerous complexities. Some of the most salient ones currently are the diversity of stakeholders and worldviews, the complexity of the natural, technical and socio-economic processes involved, the uncertainties inherent in contemporary science-society relations. One may add the complexity of policy intervention itself: any policy or public action mechanism is bound to be only a small part of the vast set of policies and intervention mechanisms affecting the environmental issue at stake. Moreover, in pursuing their goals, most if not all environmental policies come in conflict with other, often very powerful, policies and public action mechanisms that run against these goals. The momentous dialectics between EU agricultural policies and water or biodiversity policies in Europe is a classic example. How is one to evaluate the success of one policy, in such an ambiguous and contradictory context? Most of the recent literature has focused on integrative, participative evaluation approaches to overcome contradictions in actions and conflicts in expectations and views.
A very different reframing strategy is proposed here for evaluation theory and methodology, i.e. focusing the evaluation on a clearly defined, limited set of environmental expectations. The talk will focus on the general issues of the concern-focused approach: the motives for such a reframing move, the consequences for evaluation design and implementation, the concept of pluralistic debate, participation and environmental integration it rests upon. Based on the example of on-going research on the contribution of FCPF (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility) to REDD, and of both to public action against deforestation, it is hoped that the talk will open a discussion on how to approach evaluation of policies that effectively address environmental concerns about forests.
Laurent Mermet is Professor of Environmental Management at AgroParisTech, Paris, and Associate Research Fellow at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford University. From an initial background in ecology, he rapidly turned to a management science doctorate, proposing a strategic management perspective on societal action to manage ecological systems. His work covers three related areas: strategic analysis of environmental management, negotiation and public participation in environmental decision-making, and environmental futures studies methodologies. In the field of policy evaluation, he develops a strategic approach to the evaluation of policies from an environmental concern perspective (L. Mermet, R. Billé, M. Leroy, 2010, Concern-focused evaluation for ambiguous and conflicting policies: an approach from the environmental field, American Journal of Evaluation, 31(2): 180-198).
Community forestry and certification in the tropics: What works and what doesn't?
Dr Shoana Humphries will share experiences and insights based on ten years work and research experience with community forestry and certification in Latin America. She will highlight trends and lessons learned in community forestry, focusing on her work in Mexico and Brazil, as well as challenges and opportunities for communities related to FSC certification in general. She will also present how the FSC International Center is currently working to improve access to and benefits from certification for community and small-scale producers.