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15 January, 2009
Socio-ecological systems and urban environmental transitions: Comparison between experiences of the Asia Pacific and the developed world
As the next installment in UNU-ONY's Washington series, Dr. Peter Marcotullio will be speaking on the topic of urban environmental transitions in Asia and the West, with comments offered by Dr. Robert McDonald.
WHEN:January 15, 2009 | 3:00pm - 4:30pm
WHERE: 5th Floor Conference Room, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington DC
To view Dr. Marcotullio's presentation, Click Here
This talk will focus on urban "socio-ecological transitions" in the Asia Pacific and compare these experiences to those of the developed world. The findings of the study suggest that
1) human-environment dynamics now differ from the experiences of the past in the following ways; environmental challenges are experienced sooner (lower down on the income scale), change faster over time and are occurring in a more simultaneous fashion;
2) despite these dynamics and differences in the scale of urbanization, some of the per capita environmental impacts of human activities, particularly those experienced at the regional and global scale are lower now than experienced in the past; and
3) local scale ecological conditions and trends in consumption of materials are more intensive now and the impacts are greater than experienced in the past in the developed
world.
These findings have policy implications at all institutional levels of governance.
Dr. Peter Marcotullio is Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College (2007 - present), City University of New York (CUNY), where he teaches in the Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, the Department of Geography and in the CUNY Macaulay Honors College. He is also Senior Fellow at the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities and Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University Department of Urban Planning. Prior to returning to New York City, Dr. Marcotullio was Professor of Urban Planning, Urban Engineering Department, University of Tokyo (1998-2006), and held several positions at the UNU-IAS (1997- present). His research interests include urban sustainable development, urbanization and the environment, urban and regional environmental planning and global cities.
Dr. Robert McDonald works for the Nature Conservancy, working to evaluate the drivers, trends and conservation implications of emerging or understudied threats to biodiversity. Dr. McDonald's recent research has developed a global set of scenarios of urban area growth, and then provided quantitative estimates of how many species are likely to be affected as the world adds almost another 2 billion urban dwellers. He has also explored the ways urban land use and development more generally can affect nearby protected areas. In collaboration with researchers at UNESCO, CUNY, and the Nature Conservancy he is working to assess the effect of global urban growth on the supply and demand of ecosystem services. Prior to joining the Nature Conservancy, Dr. McDonald was David H. Smith Conservation Biology Fellow at Harvard University, and has also taught Landscape Ecology at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He earned a B.S. degree in Biology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then defected down the road to earn a PhD in Ecology from the Duke University.
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Page last modified Last modified: November 02 2009 at 05:12:07 PM.
