In Common

In this episode, Divya speaks with Dr. Johan Oldekop. Johan is a senior lecturer at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. He conducts interdisciplinary research and uses large-scale publicly available datasets to understand tradeoffs and synergies between conservation and development outcomes. In this conversation, they primarily focused on Johan’s work on the impact ev...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Sarah Milne, a senior lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University about her recent book, “Corporate Nature: An Insider’s Ethnography of Global Conservation”. In the book, Sarah recounts her experience with a conservation policy implemented in the Cardamom mountains of Cambodia by a major international environmental NGO...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-two with Daniel Decaro. Daniel is an associate professor at the University of Louisville with a joint appointment in the Department of Urban and Public Affairs and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Daniel speaks with Michael about the basics of self-determination theory, and what he would add to the theory to expand the definiti...

This week Dustin speaks with Dr. Soumya Balasubramanya, senior economist at the World Bank based with its global environmental practice. Soumya is trained as a development economist and works on applied research projects at the intersection of environment, poverty and development across Asia and Africa. Before joining the Bank in 2022, Dr. Balasubramanya spent 10 years at the International Water M...

In this episode, Hita speaks with Dr. Sarah Bezan who is a scholar of environmental humanities currently employed as a Lecturer in Literature and the Environment at the Radical Humanities Laboratory at University College Cork in Ireland. Previously she was a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity in The University of York in the United Kingdom. In t...

In this episode, Hita and Michael speak with noted Indian environmentalist Ashish Kothari, who works at the interface between development and environment and focuses particularly on radical alternatives to development discourses. Ashish is a familiar name to people working in the Indian environmental context as well as those who engage with degrowth, not least because of his strong involvement in...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty-one with Nejem Raheem. Nejem is an associate professor of economics at Emerson College, where he focuses on the economics of natural resource and environmental issues. Nejem speaks with Michael about the similarities between his childhood experiences in Bangladesh and Nepal and the New Mexico acequias. The two discuss their work on the acequias a...

This insight episode comes from full episode eighty with Arun Agrawal. Arun is the Samuel Trask Dana Professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, and he has played an important role in the development of the Commons field and related areas of conservation and development. Arun talks with Michael and Stefan about top-down versus bottom-up governance, and...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Dan Holland. Dan is a senior scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center within the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.  Dan joined the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in 2010. Prior to that he held positions with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council, the University of Massachusetts D...

IJC#10: Picking a bone with Elinor Ostrom? A conversation with Landon Yoder & Courtney Hammond Wagner Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Landon Yoder and Courtney Hammond Wagner. Together with Kira Sullivan-Wiley and Gemma Smith, Landon and Courtney co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled The Promise of Collective Action for Large-Scale Commons Dilemmas: Reflections o...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Danny Cullenward. Danny is a lawyer and climate economist working on the design and implementation of scientifically grounded climate policy. He is the Policy Director at CarbonPlan and a Research Fellow at American University’s Institute for Carbon Removal Law & Policy. He holds a PhD and a JD from Stanford University. Danny talks with Michael about his book,...

In this episode, Divya Gupta speaks with Dr. Daniel Miller. Dan is an Associate Professor in the School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and has been extensively working on the socio-economic, ecological, and political dimensions of forests in tropical countries.  In this conversation, they focus on Dan’s projects on conservation legacy and his other project looking at the role of...

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-nine with Courtney Carothers.  Courtney is a professor in the college of Fisheries and Oceans at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Courtney talks with Michael about the importance of indigenous expertise and knowledge systems in maintaining fisheries, and how multiple ways of knowing and understanding the land allows for a deeper relationship...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Dr. Esther Zeledon. Esther is a senior development advisor, former diplomat, President and founder of Optimax International and @be.act.change. Under these capacities, Esther serves as a senior consultant to international agencies, serves on NGO boards and coaches individuals and businesses. During the interview, Esther talks about her experiences working in th...

In this episode Michael speaks with Bill Fischel, professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. Bill is arguably the global expert on zoning rules used by municipalities in the United States to influence development patterns at the local level. During their conversation, Bill describes a shift from pro-growth to anti-growth approaches to local zoning in the United States (with exceptions being most...

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-seven with Derek Kauneckis. Derek is an associate professor at the Desert Institute in Nevada where his work focuses on the waste commons and technological innovation. Derek talks with Michael about how watersheds can be viewed as an information system, and the importance of designing technology that fits and serves the needs of the system it is...

In this episode Hita speaks with her colleague, Prof. AbdouMaliq Simone, a Senior Professorial fellow at the Urban Institute of The University of Sheffield. They speak of Maliq’s early life in pre-independence Sierra Leone and its influence on his thinking and his subsequent move from Freetown to Chicago, alongside his shift from pursuing psychology to engaging in developmental practice. Maliq men...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Julia Talbot-Jones, Senior Lecture in the School of Government at the University of Wellington. Julia studies how institutions solve environmental and natural resource problems, with a particular focus on rights of nature approaches. Julia collaborates with Erin O’Donnell, who is a previous guest on the podcast and has also written on this topic. The formal rig...

Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Valentina Fonseca Cepeda . Together with Daniel Castillo-Brieva, Luis Baquero-Bernal, Luz Angela Rodríguez, Eliane Steiner, and John Garcia-Ulloa, Valentina co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Magical Realism for Water Governance Under Power Asymmetries in the Aracataca River Basin, Colombia , an article on wetlands, water and co...

Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Ilia Murtazashvili . Together with Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Martin Weiss, and Michael Madison, Ilia co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Blockchain networks as knowledge commons . Block chains are distributed append-only ledgers. The purpose of blockchains is to share resources – that is, knowledge, data and opportunities to...

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-six with Hillary Angelo.  Hillary is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she works as a historical sociologist focused on the relationship between the environment and large-scale transformations in urban contexts. Hillary talks with Michael about the term social imaginary and how it allows an understanding...

In this episode, Divya speaks with Sharachchandra or Sharad Lele, Distinguished Fellow in Environmental Policy and Governance at ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment) in Bangalore, India. They discuss two of Sharad’s books, “Democratizing Forest Governance in India” which he co-edited with Ajit Menon, and his other book titled “Rethinking Environmentalism: Linking Justic...

In this episode, Michael speaks with Mehana Blaich Vaughan, associate professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Mehana is an environmental social scientist whose work focuses on indigenous and community-based natural resource management. Michael asks Mehana about he...

This insight episode comes from full episode seventy-five with Graeme Cumming.  Graeme is a Professor at James Cooke University in Townsville, Australia and the Director of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Graeme talks with Stefan about the lack of methodological transparency in many datasets and the implications of this. Graeme discusses two of hi...

Listen to a conversation that Frank van Laerhoven had with Samuel Adeyanju . Together with Janette Bulkan, Jonathan C. Onyekwelu, Guillaume Peterson St-Laurent, Robert Kozak, Terry Sunderland, and Bernd Stimm, Sam co-authored a recent IJC publication entitled Drivers of Biodiversity Conservation in Sacred Groves: A Comparative Study of Three Sacred Groves in Southwest Nigeria . Sacred groves refer...