Blogue

CSEE 2017 is a conference held by the Canadian Society of Ecology and Evolution, a non-profit organization that includes practicing ecologists and evolutionary biologists. This year, the meeting was held in the beautiful city of Victoria, British Columbia. Symposiums, workshops, and poster presentations took place downtown, at the Victoria Conference Centre and at the Royal BC Museum. It involved almost 700 delegates, including professors and students from all over Canada. My attendance at this meeting allowed me to present my research to other delegates, for which I asked: Are there potential hotspots for the conservation of bumblebee species under different climate change scenarios? I discussed the potential changes in climatically suitable areas of 31 North American bumblebee species in year 2050, and practical conservation methods including in situ landscape management and managed relocation for declining species. The picture below was taken during a coffee break, where a constant and very loud buzz indicated continuous but excited conversations among delegates.

One of the issues that has been raised on the fraught question of whether we should build more pipelines to transport Alberta oil to places where it can be refined and/or exported is climate change. As important as climate change may be, there are many other complex factors that also need to be considered.

My connection with The Economics and Environmental Policy Research Network (EEPRN) started back in 2013. At the time, one of my supervisors, Carol McAusland, was working on a literature review for EEPRN and was seeking a co-author...

I graduated with a MSc in Environmental Sustainability at the University of Ottawa’s Institute of the Environment in the summer of 2015. My graduate studies experience, like many other graduate students at the University of Ottawa was challenging, but very worthwhile

At first glance, the issue of climate change may not be immediately associated with branches of national security and defence. There is a tendency to limit our thoughts on defence and security to putting up fences or defining borders. What is often left unacknowledged, in the context of defence priorities, is the human security element in which climate change has proven to play a dramatic role.

 It is certainly premature to declare the end of the fossil-fuel era but what was agreed at the Paris Climate Change Summit may well lead to such a result. The Paris meetings strongly suggest that there is now a broad acceptance by governments, the private sector and civil society that climate change is a real threat; that the time has come to address the issue and that we are all in this together. It may not be perfect, it may not be the end but it certainly is an encouraging beginning....

Martin D. Heintzelman is the Fulbright Visiting Chair at the University of Ottawa’s Institute of the Environment. He is on partial leave until April from his post as Associate Professor of Economics and Financial Studies and the Fredric C. Menz Scholar of Environmental Economics in the Clarkson University School of Business, as well as Director of the Clarkson University Center for Canadian Studies. He also serves on the executive committee of Clarkson’s Institute for a Sustainable Environment. Martin has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics and an M.S. in Natural Resource Policy and Behavior from the University of Michigan as well as a BS in Economics from Duke University.

The cheers have barely died down following the Paris COP21 climate meetings but the people at Office of Campus Sustainability of University of Ottawa hardly have time to join in; we are busy rolling up our sleeves getting ready for the work to come.

An Isle Madame native who is attending this week's United Nations climate summit in Paris believes it’s both an individual and collective moral obligation to be aware of the issue and try to become part of the solution.

Canadian Governments have a history of setting unrealistic and disjointed targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Too often, provincial governments have been left out of the process, including a particularly striking case when in 2002 the Chretien government agreed to implement the Kyoto Protocol without so much as a phone call to Alberta’s Environment Minister. Politics aside, setting targets of this magnitude without the input of the provinces is a recipe for inaction...