Page - 30 - in options, Volume winter 2015/2016

yssp 30 options + winter 2015/2016 www.iiasa.ac.at people at iiasa A different view on points of view YSSP 2015 participant Benedict Singleton examines multiple perspectives in his research on whaling in the Faroe Islands Every year in the Faroe Islands, around 1,000 long-finned pilot whales are slaughtered in whaling drives by local communities. International environmental groups campaign against the whale hunt, calling it a barbaric practice, but for many Faroese it is a tradition with long history that retains importance for consumption and culture. What happens when cultures collide on questions of environment and sustainability? How can such conflicts be resolved? Benedict Singleton, a PhD student at Örebro University in Sweden, arrived at the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) in June 2015 with these questions in mind. “My research examines the institution both externally (examining campaigns against it) and internally (how Faroese understand and debate the practice),” he  says. “My intention is that this will feed into efforts to design social scientific and policy tools for constructively involving different perspectives in environmental debates.” Singleton worked with researchers Michael Thompson and Wei Liu to apply two theoretical methods to his research: cultural theory analysis, which examines how culture influences people’s interpretation of the world, and Elinor Ostrom’s design principles, which explain how common goods can be managed in a community. As an anthropologist, Singleton also found IIASA itself an interesting environment for observing interdisciplinary interactions of researchers. Singleton says he had both positive and negative experiences when trying to work across disciplines. “What  this  hammered home to me is that more than anything interdisciplinary work requires open minds along with imagination, and the bigger the disciplinary divide the greater the imagination required. It  certainly made me reflect on the limits of my  own  outlook.” KL blog.iiasa.ac.at/triballines-15 Can nature bounce back? An alumnus of one of the first IIASA YSSP cohorts makes the case for an optimistic view of environmental change Bears, wolves, eagles—many species which were once declining in the USA have bounced back in recent years. The area of forested land is expanding; and while the overall land used for agriculture has peaked, production continues to grow. In a new study published earlier this year, Jesse Ausubel, director of the Rockefeller University Program for the Human Environment, argues that such a shift—or “rewilding”—is beginning to occur in a number of places around the world. Ausubel argues that it is likely to spread, as technology makes production and resource use more and more efficient. “Demand for water, energy, land, and minerals is softening, while demand for information continues to soar. Fortunately, information brings precision in production and consumption and spares other resources. The result is, for example, huge regrowth of forests. The global greening, or net growth of the terrestrial biosphere, allows re-wilding,” explains Ausubel. The process of regreening stems from both technological advancement and changes in people’s behavior, but Ausubel argues that policy has played only a small role. “High tech tycoons Steve Jobs (Apple) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon) popularized tablets and e-readers and did more, together with the innovators in e-mail, to  spare forests than all the forest activists and UN targets,” he says. Ausubel participated in the 1979 YSSP, working under Soviet hydrodynamicist Oleg  Vasiliev. “IIASA showed me the value of scientific cooperation between nations in conflict, and I have actively supported such cooperation ever since.” KL Further info Ausubel JH (2015). Nature Rebounds. Long Now Foundation Seminar, San Francisco, 13  January 2015 [phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/Nature_Rebounds.pdf]. blog.iiasa.ac.at/Ausubel-15 Benedict Singleton Jesse Ausubel