Reflections for the Tufts Environmental Alumni Newsletter

by Lawrence S. Bacow 

Tufts has a long and deep commitment to issues of the environment and sustainability.  The green campus movement worldwide grew out of a conference convened by then-President Jean Mayer at the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France, in 1990.  That conference led to the Talloires Declaration, a ten-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at colleges and universities that has been signed by over 350 university presidents and chancellors in over 40 countries.  In 1999, under President DiBiaggio, the university publicly committed itself to meeting the Kyoto goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Since then, we have continued to take a leadership position.  We were a founding member, and the first university member, of the Chicago Climate Exchange.  We have been recognized as an innovator in finding more efficient ways to utilize and conserve resources throughout the university, including energy and water, and to limit and recycle our waste products.  The members of the staff who volunteer their time to our Eco-Ambassadors program play a special role in ensuring that the values of sustainability are addressed at the level of individual Schools and departments.

Visitors to our campuses cannot help but notice the university's commitment to sustainability-whether they see the electric cars used by our Facilities staff, the Zipcars available for staff and faculty use, or the signs indicating that our grounds are maintained using organic principles.  Some of the very best ideas have come from our students.  This past year, our dining halls went trayless as the result of a student initiative to reduce excessive food waste and energy consumption.  We work to incorporate LEED principles into the construction and renovation of facilities across the university.

Of course, teaching and research are at the heart of our mission as an academic institution.  Here too we are an environmental leader.  Sustainability is a central focus for our School of Engineering, while faculty at the Fletcher School played central roles in the work that led to a Nobel Prize for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Our faculty are opening up new opportunities for innovation in areas as

diverse, and promising, as green chemistry and the use of recycled waste materials in heavy construction.  Tufts students entered a spectacular project, the only one from New England, in the last Solar Decathlon.

After they leave Tufts, our graduates carry on this tradition of being good stewards of the resources entrusted to us.  Today, they hold positions of prominence in government agencies, not-for-profit organizations, and academic institutions dedicated to sustainability. 

Some of the greenest corporations in the United States-DuPont, for example-are led by Tufts alumni.  And the future for our environmental research and teaching is bright:  The first Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship grant that Tufts has ever received from the National Science Foundation will support work on water diplomacy involving five of our Schools.

As someone who has devoted his entire academic career to research and teaching on issues of the environment and sustainability, it has been a privilege and an honor to lead an institution where everyone embraces these concepts as core values.

As President of Tufts University since September 2001, Lawrence S. Bacow has advanced its role as a leader in teaching, research, and public service. Within the university, he champions academic excellence and places a premium on open communication and close engagement with students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Nationally, he is well known as an advocate of broader access to higher education and the importance of need-based financial aid. Internationally, he plays an important role in efforts to strengthen universities' commitment to civic engagement.

Back to top

__________________________________________________________________________

Environmental Studies Program Moving Forward 

by Colin Orians  

Dear Alumni,

There are many critical environmental issues facing society today; we need to better educate the public on both environmental challenges and solutions.  Individuals with training in environmental studies play a key role in this process.  A program that educates its majors effectively, provides a unique interdisciplinary perspective and prepares them for leadership roles.  It is with this view that I begin my journey as the next director of the Environmental Studies (ENVS) program at Tufts. It is an honor and a privilege; I am incredibly thankful to the previous director, Dr. George Ellmore.  George both strengthened the program (we now have an excellent GIS lab thanks to his determination) and helped smooth my transition into this position. My goal for the next few years is to maintain the program's current strengths and to undertake significant expansion. I envision Environmental Studies as a signature interdepartmental program that benefits its majors, the university, its alumni and society.  To reach this goal I will be working closely with Tufts' many excellent students, faculty, staff and alumni. 

The ENVS Program, like many interdisciplinary programs, faces two key challenges: lack of resources and poor community cohesion.  I am striving to overcome both. When I took the position, I requested additional resources and the administration thankfully agreed! Ann Greaney-Williams, our new program coordinator, started on November 1, 2010. Already she has spearheaded many key changes, such as creating a newsletter and updating our website. Our operating budget is relatively small, but we now have funds to support student initiatives, bring in guest speakers each year, and organize various activities, such as the new Lunch & Learn program.  In the future, I hope to have additional funds that will allow the program to fund student travel, bring in more speakers, and facilitate an expanded internship program.

A vibrant community is essential to the success of any organization, so I view the challenge of creating community to be the most important obstacle to overcome.  It is difficult to generate a sense of community when we lack a central gathering space, when majors do not know each other, and when faculty come from so many different departments.

Fortunately, thanks to the Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE), we now have a space on campus where students can meet, gather and learn. Several other changes are designed to increase the sense of community among students. We have recently initiated a weekly Lunch & Learn program where students can hear about the exciting work being done by their peers, graduate students, faculty, alumni, and other guest lecturers.  Meetings will occur Thursdays at noon and we hope that you, as alumni, will consider taking part in this program as well.

A well-developed curriculum also has a big impact on community. Currently, there is little common academic experience among our students. I have been meeting with the Environmental Studies Executive Committee this past semester with the specific goal of creating a more unified and effective curriculum. The core of the new curriculum will give students a breadth of knowledge and a shared academic background; the courses within each track will provide specific training in that area.

While this gives you a sense of where the program is headed, it is only the beginning; I look forward to implementing new ideas as they come forward. Given the important environmental issues facing society today and in the future, we must not accept anything short of excellence from the program and for our students. The time is right to expand the ENVS program, and if you have ideas, we want to hear them.  You can work with us to plan an event, write for our biweekly newsletter, or send us ideas for how to make the program grow. We now have a presence on Facebook and Twitter (@EnvStudiesTufts). We want to nurture the creativity of the entire Tufts ENVS community, so please join us in creating a dynamic and forward-thinking program!

Colin Orians is Director of Environmental Studies & Professor of Biology, School of Arts & Sciences, specializing in Ecology and plant-herbivore-environment interactions. He can be reached at Colin.Orians@tufts.edu    

Back to top

Faculty Profile: Kent Portney, Political Science

by Libby Mahaffy, G11

A professor of political science who has taught at Tufts for 31 years, Kent Portney has long been interested environmental policy and municipal politics. His latest research, an extension of his book

Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously (MIT Press, 2003), examines the barriers to making American cities more sustainable. TIE intern Libby Mahaffy interviewed him on a snowy day in January 2011.
 

Libby Mahaffy: What are you currently working on in terms of research?

 Kent Portney: A lot of my research these days focuses on the politics of sustainable cities in North America. I have worked to develop an empirical research base for understanding sustainability in cities. I wanted to know why some cities were more progressive in adopting and implementing sustainability policies than other cities. There were some cities, like Indianapolis, that had an early sustainability program but weren't doing very much. Then there were cities like Chattanooga that claim to be doing a lot, but are addressing only certain kinds of things, completely staying away from issues such as equity and environmental justice. As I got into this more it became clear to me that the issue was that some cities had the political will to do these things in the first place. The real stumbling block is, as I like to call it, the political will to do it. The differences had a lot more to do with the politics and the political culture there than with the other issues that we might think explain those issues. 

 How did you get interested in this topic? Were you always involved in environmental research?

Analysis of sustainable cities presented me with an opportunity to combine some research interests that had been fairly disparate up to that point. I've always been interested in city and municipal politics; over the years I've published a lot of work on that. I've also been interested in environmental issues and I've written on environmental policy -- federal, state, and local policies. The field of sustainable cities combined my interest in the environment with my interest in cities and city politics -- it seems like it's tailor-made for me. That really started in the mid-1990s.
 
 So what are your plans for future research?

In the near-term I've been working on a project with colleague Jeff Berry. We surveyed public officials and nonprofit leaders in the 50 largest cities in the US. We completed that survey about a year ago; now we're analyzing the results. One of the key issues is the role of the nonprofit sector -- local groups, citizen groups, resident groups in cities that advocate for sustainability and environmental policies -- in helping to make sustainability politically palatable. 

I also want to understand the impact of the policies that cities pursue. Do our climate protection policies in cities really have an impact on the quality of the environment?  Do they produce tangible, measurable results? We can't really say that these policies are making progress toward sustainability unless we have some tangible evidence that they are actually working. Increasingly, I want to research the connection between the policies that are pursued and the results they produce.

Lastly, I have this overarching need to understand the extent to which cities can use sustainable development as a mechanism for promoting local economic development. I'd like to ask the question: If a city commits itself to sustainable economic development, does that actually produce economic development? I think increasingly cities are interested in this question for two reasons: one, many cities don't want to continue to degrade their environments, so they're looking for alternative ways to keep their economies going without destroying the livability of the city; second, cities that have been engaged in traditional economic development -- the attract, retain, and expand model that has been in operation for 50 or 60 years - [are starting to realize that] that model doesn't work anymore. We'd like to have some reason to believe that when cities commit themselves to sustainable economic development that it's going to actually make the economy grow.
 

Are the classes you teach related to your research?

I teach a senior undergraduate seminar called The Politics of Sustainable Cities. I try to get the students to first understand the broader idea of sustainability. Then, depending on what your definition of sustainability is, there are 38 different specific policies and programs that cities and municipalities can do to try to promote sustainability, whether it's through energy efficiency programs, building retrofits, green building, integrated water management, or land use regulation. I talk to students about why those programs promise to promote sustainability and then investigate with them alternative explanations for why some cities do more than others, why some cities tailor their programs one way over another. The students do some of their own original research.

I also teach a course called Politics of Environmental Policy in the United States that is focused largely on US national policies. It uses a standard policymaking process framework as its organizing method: How does Congress look at environmental policies? What kinds of policies get enacted? Why? What results have they produced? How have they been implemented? How does the EPA implement environmental policies? How do they write the rules and regulations? What alternatives are there to the regulatory process? Those are the kinds of things that we discuss in class. At the end of the class we start to talk about state and local alternatives to national policy, but most of the class is focused on federal actions.

The other class that I'm going to be working on is a course for the IGERT graduate program.

Shafiq Islam, Rich Vogel [Civil and Environmental Engineering], Michael Reed [Biology], Bill Moomaw [the Fletcher School] and I applied for a National Science Foundation grant to create a Ph.D. program here at Tufts on Water and Diplomacy. It is designed to be aninterdisciplinary doctoral program and students who enter a Ph.D. program at Fletcher, Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, Nutrition, or another other program at Tufts are eligible. They get financial support and they have to take specific courses. One of those courses is on water policy and economics. I'll probably teach a part of that course.
 

Could interested Alumni sit in on your classes?

I'd love to have alumni come sit in on any of my classes. They just need to contact me to make appropriate arrangements.
 

What is your take on the state of environmentalism at Tufts?

We offer a very impressive array of courses on environmental issues here at Tufts, but there's no one department that specializes in it or has any kind of claim on those courses. In terms of some of sustainability issues, the Environmental Studies undergraduate major under Colin Orians's leadership is now working to define an undergraduate track in sustainability. The program has identified a bunch of courses that would count towards that track, which is an exciting step beyond just focusing on environmental issues. We've got pockets of expertise in different aspects of sustainability and we are just now starting to think about ways to bring them together.

Back to top

Student Profile: Aaron Strong (F11), International Shipping & Climate Change
 by Libby Mahaffy, G11

Tufts student Aaron Strong (F11) sat down with TIE intern Libby Mahaffy this month to discuss the environmental research he has undertaken for his Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. The following is an excerpt of their conversation.   

Project overview

Aaron Strong: My Master's thesis at the Fletcher school is concerned with the the question of how to go about regulating greenhouse gas emissions from the international shipping industry. This is a particularly interesting question to me for two reasons: one, it is very difficult to attribute the emissions from the international shipping industry to one particular country. What do you do when the emissions are coming from a ship that's owned by a German company, chartered by Greek shipping line, flying the flag of Liberia, moving grain from Sydney, Australia, through the Panama Canal to New Orleans? Whose emissions are those? Physically, the fuel is being combusted in international waters. That challenge hasn't been answered on the international level so far; it's really a gap in the policy process. So why should we care about those emissions? The maritime industry -- international shipping -- represents about 3% of global emissions. It's not breaking the bank in terms of the climate, [but] 90% of international trade moves by ship. If you look at the full life-cycle of a product, say a consumer good being exported to the US from China, a lot of its environmental impact has to do with transportation. The emissions from goods that are being transported in international trade are shipping emissions. So I set out in my research to study the institutional role of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations tasked with regulating the shipping industry in tackling this complex issue.

Research on location

I did preliminary research at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15,  also known as the Copenhagen Conference) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.That was my first year at Tufts and I went with the Fletcher delegation of seven other students and my adviser, Professor Kelly Sims Gallagher. For me, being in Copenhagen and interviewing delegates and NGO representatives was an amazing and eye-opening introduction to speaking the language of international climate policy.

In the summer of 2010 I managed to get a research attachment at the International Maritime Organization, which was a fantastic opportunity for me to be able to conduct my research, and the support of the Tufts Institute of the Environment research fellowship enabled me to be in London for two months. Each day I would go to the Maritime Knowledge Centre at the IMO where I had a desk in the research library, and full access to decades and decades of the IMO's documents. While at the IMO, I was also afforded the opportunity to be an observer of small working group meetings where delegates were negotiating the finer details of international climate policy for the shipping industry. That was a gold mine in terms of my research, as it afforded me great insight into to the processes of international environmental negotiations and into how regulations and policies get made.

These international policies for fuel regulations in the shipping industry all seem so abstract, but how they are actually implemented on the ground is fascinating. By "on the ground", I mean on a ship. One of the other things I did with my research funds was to conduct research while traveling for nine days aboard MSC Flaminia, a 300-meter-long, 6000 TEU, that's twenty-foot equivalent units [a unit of cargo carrying capacity], 75,000 horsepower container ship from Le Havre, France, to Charleston, South Carolina at the end of the summer. I was one of three passengers aboard the ship, along with about twenty officers and crew, which was bringing all kinds of goods from northern Europe to the eastern seaboard of the United States. It was just a fantastic experience to be able to understand how a ship operates in motion, and how decisions made at the IMO are implemented by the sailors and engineers running the ship -- it was something I'll always remember.
 

 Challenges to climate change policy in the IMO

The International Maritime Organization was designed to regulate the safety of life at sea. It is an inherently conservative institution designed to serve the needs of industry. It isn't an environmental organization; it's a specialized agency. The biggest problem for climate policy for the shipping industry is that there are two competing principles in the international arena for how to deal with the issue. One of the principles is the principle of equal treatment for all ships: all countries should be treated the same way with a uniform standard. This is enshrined in the International Maritime Organization conventions. The other principle is Common but Differentiated Responsibilities, which has meant that developed countries like Japan, the European countries, Canada, and Australia (and the United States, if it had ratified the Kyoto Protocol) have to take on commitments to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions first, and that developing countries, like China and India, but also sub-Saharan African countries, don't have to take on commitments at first because climate change was caused by the industrialized nations of the global North. So, when trying to come up with a climate policy in the IMO, these two principles are at odds with each other, and the debates get heated. These are two different ways of thinking about designing a policy, so there's no clear and obvious answer.

Possible solutions

I was in Cancun [for the COP16, held in December 2010], with support from the Fletcher School, continuing to study this process.  One proposal that was suggested is to have a uniform fee associated with the movement of all goods in international trade, but then to offer rebates to those developing countries in most need of support to address climate change: to adapt to rising sea levels or increased droughts or to develop community resilience. This proposal hasn't gone anywhere; instead, what's been achieved is an Energy Efficiency Design

Index for new ships -- you can think of it like a fuel standard for cars but for ships of the future. This is unlikely to do anything to current emissions that are coming from the shipping industry.
 

What we need is an emissions target, a number and we almost got it in Cancun. We've got this enshrined target that exists in the UN system [which is to limit global warming to 2° above preindustrial temperatures]. What would the maritime industry have to do in terms of emissions reductions to achieve this goal? It doesn't sound like much, but if we can get a target in the UN framework, that finds a way to satisfy the two competing principles, then we can at least begin the process of figuring out how to move forward.

In today's day and age where we're always flyingaroundthe world, one of the amazing thingsabout moving by ship is that you slow down. That may be the best answer, actually, to how to combat climate change, at least in the maritime industry. If you slow down the average speedof the ship, you'regoing to greatly reduce

emissions and not significantly impact the price of goods, and in fact you'll probably lower thecost of shipping for the industry. It's a win-win-win that involves building smarter ships in the future that are designed to operate at slower speeds. That's not going to work for everybody, but it has a lot of possibility. That, and if we can get biofuelsthat are not just from corn ethanol, shipping can really do its part.
 

Aaron Strong: Publications
Nature 2009:

Ocean Fertilization: time to move on
Oceanography 2009:

Fertilization: Science, Policy and Commerce

Back to top
_____________________________________________________________________

Book Review: Civic Action in the 21st Century

by Regina Raboin
    

Citizen You: Doing Your Part to Change the World by Jonathan M. Tisch (A'76) with Karl Weber. Crown Publishers, New York 2010.

The Light on the Hill burns brightly and is spreading across America.

Jonathan M. Tisch's (with Karl Weber) new book, Citizen You: Doing Your Part to Change the World, invites private citizens, public servants, non-profit organizations and corporations to transform old models of civic action into new. In asking the question, will 20^th century thinking hold back 21^st century progress?, Mr. Tisch is hopeful that new ways of perceiving and implementing civic activism will answer 21^st century challenges. Throughout the book, Mr. Tisch and Mr. Weber weave examples of citizen activism, social and professional entrepreneurship, and corporate philanthropy, bringing to the forefront transformative thinking and new partnerships between people, organizations and corporations.

The authors profile Tufts University's Tisch College of Active Citizenship and Public Service,  illustrating how private organizations foster social activism through integration of active citizenship across all facets of the school (including curriculum), connecting academic rigor with learning outcomes focused on root causes of societal problems and modeling how social activism is open to everyone. Quite simply, Tisch College outlines ways in which America's education system can develop active citizens.

Corporate leaders such as Pierre and Pam Omidyar, Bill Gates, Alan Solomont and Alan Khazei are presented as examples of how great wealth and corporate social leadership can address social problems using unique and sustainable partnerships.

Public servant leadership is also explored using Michael Bloomberg's (and others) New York City (NYC) Service program as an example of "a city of citizens." Mayor Bloomberg believes that active citizenship combined with non-profit, business and city government assistance can help in creating sustainable urban neighborhoods, "...citizen service can make the difference, bridging the gap between what government can do and what needs to be done" (p. 108).

From a practical point of view each chapter provides sections entitled "Food for Thought, Seeds for Action," ideas and information on how to pursue and realize civic engagement. The concluding chapter, "To Learn More," lists fifty-two ways (along with contact information) to become an active citizen.

It's not surprising the majority of Citizen You's featured social activists or organizations are Tufts alumni, students, faculty or affiliated organizations. Tufts University is recognized nationally and internationally for promoting social activism through its Tisch College, student organizations, centers and institutes and curriculum.  Tufts is known for graduating students who seek positions in fields that are dedicated to civic engagement and activism - and I think that's something to write about - don't you?

Citizen You: Doing Your Part to Change the World can be found in Tisch Library. Do a subject search for Social Change - Citizen Participation in the Tufts Catalog to discover additional resources in this subject.

Reviewed by Regina Raboin, Science and Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning Research Librarian, Research & Instruction, Tisch Library, Tufts University. 

Jonathan M. Tisch, A'76: Jonathan M. Tisch is a University trustee and a Tufts alumnus who graduated in 1976. Widely recognized as a prominent civic and business leader, Tisch is the chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels and co-chairman of the board of the parent company, Loews Corporation. In addition to his distinguished business career, he is also the author of a best-selling book, The Power of We: Succeeding through Partnerships (2004), host of the television program "Open Exchange: Beyond the Boardroom," and an active philanthropist.

Back to top

 __________________________________________________________________________

On-Campus Events Sponsored by TIE 

 

Environmental Studies Lunch & Learn

Ecology and Physiology of Green Roof Plant Communities with Colleen Butler

Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 12:00pm (pizza and drinks provided)  

Location: Tufts Institute of the Environment (TIE) Conference Room, Medford Campus 

Green roofs, long common in Europe, are becoming increasingly common in the United States. A number of services are attributed to green roofs, such as retention of rain water, mitigation of the urban heat island effect, and creation of habitat for local fauna. This talk will provide an overview of these living systems, present recent findings on the ecosystem

 

services they provide, and discuss the role of environmental scientists in future green roof research.

  

Colleen Butler is a 5th year PhD candidate in Dr. Colin Orians' lab in the Department of Biology at Tufts University. Her research focuses on the ecology and physiology of green roof plant communities. She is a founding member of the Tufts Green Roof Collaborative and oversees research on the Tisch Library Green Roof. Colleen was also featured in  TEA @ TIE in September 2010.

What Massachusetts Residents Think about Climate Change: Results from an In-depth Statewide Study

Dr. Jon Krosnick, Woods Institute of the Environment, Stanford University  

Thursday, February 3, 2011, 7-9pm   

Location: Tufts University, Cabot 205, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy,

MedfordCampus 

Jon Krosnick is a social psychologist who does research on attitude formation, change, and effects, on the psychology of political behavior, and on survey research methods. At Stanford, in addition to his professorships, he directs the Political Psychology Research Group and the Summer Institute in Political Psychology.

 
   

Tufts Energy Conference

Exploring Energy's Great Debates: Moving Past Posturing to Arrive at Achievable Energy Solutions  

April 15- 16, 2011
Tufts Medford campus
 

We know that we still need fossil fuels, that new technologies are making renewable energy  viable, that policy  solutions are required to enable clean consumption, and nations all over the world must work to balance economic growth with environmental degradation.
What we don't know is everything else. In its 6^th year, the Tufts Energy Conference will engage industry leaders, policymakers, professionals, and students in a constructive debate on how incremental policy changes and business model innovations can make a meaningful impact on global energy challenges in the next 10 years.

Early-bird registration begins February 15, 2011.

$45 for professionals; stay tuned for Tufts alumni discount tickets

http://www.tuftsenergyconference.com/

To learn more about sponsoring the Tufts Energy Conference and/or table at the Friday Energy Showcase to receive additional benefits + discounts for your organization, contact tuftsenergyconference2011@gmail.com

Water: Systems, Science and Society Annual Symposium

Haley & Aldrich - Environmental Engineers, Scientists, Others, Multiple Locations, U

2011 MCCloy Fellowships in Environmental Policy

Higher Education Industry Solutions Manager, ESRI, Redlands, CA

Open Aquatic Scientist Position, Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway, Newton, GA