In this episode, Michael speaks with Eddy Niesten, an independent consultant who spent more than a decade working for Conservation International as a conservation economist. During his time at Conservation International, Eddy played a role in developing and implementing what is known as the Conservation Stewards Program, an example of the payment for ecosystem services (PES) approach. In a recent episode of the podcast, Michael spoke with Sarah Milne about a book that she wrote in which she...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-four with Mark Moritz. Mark is a professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University who has studied pastoralist communities around the world. Mark talks with Michael about his interpretation of open property regimes as an adaptation to resource scarcity and vulnerability in pastoralist systems, specifically discussing the Pashtun system in Afghanistan and his research in Cameroon to illustrate his interpretation, and the different...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-four with Mark Moritz. Mark is a professor of anthropology at the Ohio State University who has studied pastoralist communities around the world. Mark talks with Michael about his interpretation of open property regimes as an adaptation to resource scarcity and vulnerability in pastoralist systems, specifically discussing the Pashtun system in Afghanistan and his research in Cameroon to illustrate his interpretation, and the different...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Tony Sutton, Assistant professor of Native American Food Systems at the University of Maine. Michael and Tony talk about the role of academics and researchers working with local communities and Tony’s research with the Wabanaki people who he works with as an equal partner. Tony also discusses how he views the distinction between scientific and indigenous knowledge as artificial and unhelpful. Finally, they discuss a project that Tony is involved in called...

In this episode, Divya speaks with Dr. Johan Oldekop. Johan is a senior lecturer at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. He conducts interdisciplinary research and uses large-scale publicly available datasets to understand tradeoffs and synergies between conservation and development outcomes. In this conversation, they primarily focused on Johan’s work on the impact evaluation of the zero hunger program in Brazil and his parallel research exploring the links...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Sarah Milne, a senior lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University about her recent book, “Corporate Nature: An Insider’s Ethnography of Global Conservation”. In the book, Sarah recounts her experience with a conservation policy implemented in the Cardamom mountains of Cambodia by a major international environmental NGO, Conservation International. This policy is called a Conservation Agreement, and it is a type of...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-two with Daniel Decaro. Daniel is an associate professor at the University of Louisville with a joint appointment in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Daniel speaks with Michael about the basics of self-determination theory, and what he would add to the theory to expand the definition of self-determination. Daniel's website: https://louisville.edu/psychology/d-decaro

This week Dustin speaks with Dr. Soumya Balasubramanya, senior economist at the World Bank based with its global environmental practice. Soumya is trained as a development economist and works on applied research projects at the intersection of environment, poverty and development across Asia and Africa. Before joining the Bank in 2022, Dr. Balasubramanya spent 10 years at the International Water Management Institute, a part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research,...

In this episode, Hita speaks with Dr. Sarah Bezan who is a scholar of environmental humanities currently employed as a Lecturer in Literature and the Environment at the Radical Humanities Laboratory at University College Cork in Ireland. Previously she was a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity in The University of York in the United Kingdom. In this conversation, they chat about how participating in a paleo dig and uncovering a Mosasaur...

In this episode, Hita and Michael speak with noted Indian environmentalist Ashish Kothari, who works at the interface between development and environment and focuses particularly on radical alternatives to development discourses. Ashish is a familiar name to people working in the Indian environmental context as well as those who engage with degrowth, not least because of his strong involvement in grassroots environmental movements such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan in the country. He is one...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-one with Nejem Raheem. Nejem is an associate professor of economics at Emerson College, where he focuses on the economics of natural resource and environmental issues. Nejem speaks with Michael about the similarities between his childhood experiences in Bangladesh and Nepal and the New Mexico acequias. The two discuss their work on the acequias and the complexity of the systems based upon western codifications of water rights and the...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty with Arun Agrawal. Arun is the Samuel Trask Dana Professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, and he has played an important role in the development of the Commons field and related areas of conservation and development. Arun talks with Michael and Stefan about top-down versus bottom-up governance, and how people’s identity informs how they view the world. Arun also discusses how comanagement is...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Dan Holland. Dan is a senior scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center within the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.  Dan joined the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in 2010. Prior to that he held positions with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. He is an affiliate professor at the University...

IJC#10: Picking a bone with Elinor Ostrom? A conversation with Landon Yoder & Courtney Hammond Wagner Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Landon Yoder and Courtney Hammond Wagner. Together with Kira Sullivan-Wiley and Gemma Smith, Landon and Courtney co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections on Common-Pool-Resource Theory, an article that reflects on how to apply Ostrom’s design...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Danny Cullenward. Danny is a lawyer and climate economist working on the design and implementation of scientifically grounded climate policy. He is the Policy Director at CarbonPlan and a Research Fellow at American University’s Institute for Carbon Removal Law & Policy. He holds a PhD and a JD from Stanford University. Danny talks with Michael about his book, Making Climate Policy Work , which he co-authored with David Victor. In this book, Danny and...

In this episode, Divya Gupta speaks with Dr. Daniel Miller. Dan is an Associate Professor in the School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and has been extensively working on the socio-economic, ecological, and political dimensions of forests in tropical countries.  In this conversation, they focus on Dan’s projects on conservation legacy and his other project looking at the role of forests as pathways out of poverty. Later in the episode, they also discuss Dan’s new role as...

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-nine with Courtney Carothers.  Courtney is a professor in the college of Fisheries and Oceans at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Courtney talks with Michael about the importance of indigenous expertise and knowledge systems in maintaining fisheries, and how multiple ways of knowing and understanding the land allows for a deeper relationship with the environment that must be valued when thinking about sustainable fisheries...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Dr. Esther Zeledon. Esther is a senior development advisor, former diplomat, President and founder of Optimax International and @be.act.change. Under these capacities, Esther serves as a senior consultant to international agencies, serves on NGO boards and coaches individuals and businesses. During the interview, Esther talks about her experiences working in the international development space, particularly for USAID, where she worked for ten years. Esther...

In this episode Michael speaks with Bill Fischel, professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. Bill is arguably the global expert on zoning rules used by municipalities in the United States to influence development patterns at the local level. During their conversation, Bill describes a shift from pro-growth to anti-growth approaches to local zoning in the United States (with exceptions being mostly in the South and in the city of Houston, Texas in particular, which has no zoning laws)....

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-seven with Derek Kauneckis. Derek is an associate professor at the Desert Institute in Nevada where his work focuses on the waste commons and technological innovation. Derek talks with Michael about how watersheds can be viewed as an information system, and the importance of designing technology that fits and serves the needs of the system it is used in. Derek’s website: https://www.dri.edu/directory/derek-kauneckis/

In this episode Hita speaks with her colleague, Prof. AbdouMaliq Simone, a Senior Professorial fellow at the Urban Institute of The University of Sheffield. They speak of Maliq’s early life in pre-independence Sierra Leone and its influence on his thinking and his subsequent move from Freetown to Chicago, alongside his shift from pursuing psychology to engaging in developmental practice. Maliq mentions in the interview that his focus on the urban was an organic one and which stemmed from his...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Julia Talbot-Jones, Senior Lecture in the School of Government at the University of Wellington. Julia studies how institutions solve environmental and natural resource problems, with a particular focus on rights of nature approaches. Julia collaborates with Erin O’Donnell, who is a previous guest on the podcast and has also written on this topic. The formal rights of nature approach is ideally meant to instill into our laws a more intrinsic value in our...

Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Valentina Fonseca Cepeda . Together with Daniel Castillo-Brieva, Luis Baquero-Bernal, Luz Angela Rodríguez, Eliane Steiner, and John Garcia-Ulloa, Valentina co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Magical Realism for Water Governance Under Power Asymmetries in the Aracataca River Basin, Colombia, an article on wetlands, water and conflict in the Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta wetland complex in Colombia. As many wetlands...

Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Ilia Murtazashvili. Together with Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Martin Weiss, and Michael Madison, Ilia co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Blockchain networks as knowledge commons. Block chains are distributed append-only ledgers. The purpose of blockchains is to share resources – that is, knowledge, data and opportunities to use outputs created by networks. Knowledge commons are characterized by (i) the production of...

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-six with Hillary Angelo.  Hillary is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she works as a historical sociologist focused on the relationship between the environment and large-scale transformations in urban contexts. Hillary talks with Michael about the term social imaginary and how it allows an understanding of a certain set of social shared ideas about nature. They discuss Hillary’s recent book, “How...