The draft agenda for the October 22 forum "Leadership in a Time of Rapid Change: Envisioning Solutions to Environmental Challenges" is available online. The forum will feature speakers who will assess how we can harness big data, cutting-edge technologies, and adaptation research to create science-based, interdisciplinary approaches attuned to accelerating and dynamic change in our world. CEOs Carter Roberts of the World Wildlife Fund and Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund will offer closing remarks. The event is free with prior registration.

A Nicholas Institute report links the ecological health of the Sargasso Sea to hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues from economic activities such as commercial fishing, eel harvests, turtle tourism, and whale watching. 

In an article co-authored for Resources Magazine, the Nicholas Institute's Billy Pizer notes that understanding the comparability of countries' pledges to reduce greenhouse gases is critical to the negotiating process at the United Nations climate change conference in Paris later this year.  

Nicholas Institute Ecosystem Services Program director Lydia Olander was sworn in to serve a three-year term with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Advisory Board. She joins a select group tasked with counseling the organization's chief of engineers by providing independent guidance and recommendations concerning environmental issues, including flood protection, ecosystem restoration and environmental regulation, overseen by the Army Corps. 

For the first time this summer, the nation's fleet of existing power plants will face limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Understanding the structure and potential impacts of the Clean Power Plan requires some context, which the Nicholas Institute's Jonas Monast provides in The Conversation. 

A new report by the Nicholas Institute and the Kenan Institute for Ethics summarizes discussion from a roundtable with experts from Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University and Research Triangle Institute that explored the multiple starting points for environmental justice research in the Triangle area.