Jo and Alberto will be joining as PhD students in September, Jo from the University of Waterloo and Alberto from Aquasis in Brazil.
Ashli Akins wins Emerging Humanist of the Year Award
Ashli was honoured by her alma mater, the University of Victoria, for this prestigious award. The parallel Public and Historic Humanist Awards went to the Honorable Roméo Dallaire and the late writer Ursula K. Le Guin.
Cam Bullen wins an NSERC CGSM
Cam was awarded an NSERC Master’s Scholarship for his work on the potential ecological effects of rewilding Steller’s sea cows.
Chan et al., Relational values: what are they, and what’s the fuss about?
Chan, K.M.A., R.K. Gould and U. Pascual (2018). “Editorial overview: Relational values: what are they, and what’s the fuss about?” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 35: A1-A7. Doi: 10.1016/j.cosust.2018.11.003
Abstract
Relational values—as preferences, principles and virtues about human-nature relationships—have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. The term has been used to include concepts and knowledge from a wide range of social sciences and humanities, e.g., importantly making space for qualitative approaches often neglected within environmental management and science. Meanwhile, crucial questions have emerged. What counts as a relational value, and what does not? How do relational values (RVs) compare with other value categories and terms, including held, assigned, instrumental, moral, shared, social, and non-material values (e.g., associated with cultural ecosystem services)? In this article, we address these issues, partly by providing context about how the RV term originated and how it has evolved to date. Most importantly, because of their somewhat unique combination of groundedness and moral relevance, positive relational values may offer important opportunities for the evolution of values that may be necessary for transformative change towards sustainability. The special issue includes contributions that contemplate particular concepts (e.g., care, stewardship, eudaimonia—human flourishing), applications (e.g., environmental assessment, environmental policy design), and the history of relevant scholarship in various intellectual traditions (e.g., ecological economics, human ecology, environmental education). Together with this suite of thought-provoking papers, we hope that the clarification we provide here facilitates a broad and productive interdisciplinary exchange to create and refine a reflective but powerful tool for sustainability and justice.
Gaston et al., “People and nature—A journal of relational thinking”
Gaston, K.J., E. Aimé, K.M.A. Chan, R. Fish, R.S. Hails and C. Maller. (in press). “People and nature—A journal of relational thinking.” People and Nature 0(0). Doi: 10.1002/pan3.7
This editorial introduces our new journal. Snippets include the following, “We strive to welcome and evaluate every submission on its own terms; we cannot promise to “get it” on first read, but we can promise to try…. we heard from a lot of researchers who had experienced painful review processes for their interdisciplinary work. We commit to being a leading light of interdisciplinary editing and peer review…. People and Nature thus aspires to be not a collection of unlike contributions to different literatures, but rather the nexus where these various literatures about human‐nature relationships convene.”
Jax et al., “Caring for nature matters”
Jax, K., M. Calestani, K.M.A. Chan, et al. (2018). “Caring for nature matters: a relational approach for understanding nature’s contributions to human well-being.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. Doi: 10.1016/j.cosust.2018.10.009
Abstract: Ecosystem services frameworks effectively assume that nature’s contributions to human well-being derive from people receiving benefits from nature. At the same time, efforts (money, time, or energy) for conservation, restoration or stewardship are often considered costs to be minimized. But what if caring for nature is itself an essential component of human well-being? Taking up and developing the concept of relational values, we explore the idea that well-being cannot be reduced to the reception of benefits, and that instead much derives from positive agency including caring for nature. In this paper, we ask specifically, first, how can ‘care’ be conceptualized with respect to nature, second, how does caring for nature matter both to protecting nature and to people’s well-being, and third, what are the implications for research and practice? We describe the theoretical background, drawing especially from (eco)feminist philosophy, and explore its (mostly) implicit uses in the conservation literature. Based on this analysis we propose a preliminary framework of caring for nature and discuss its potential to enrich the spectrum of moral relations to/with nature. We explore both its consequences for environmental research and for the practice of conservation.
Kai is listed among the Highly Cited Researchers of 2018
Kai was one of Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researchers 2018, a list that “recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional research performance, demonstrated by production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science.”
Marc Tadaki defends his PhD
Marc Tadaki successfully defended his PhD in Geography entitled, “Filling the Void: Struggles over Implementing Freshwater Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand”, co-supervised by Trevor Barnes and Kai Chan. Congratulations, Marc!