Initiating Global Change

The issues affecting day to day life in both developing and developed nations are very similar. Topics such as water management, social welfare, conservation, sustainable development, and public health are being discussed and researched within these countries, with an eye to developing solutions to the range of challenges faced by the citizens of those countries.

That said, a river doesn’t recognize an international boundary, nor does an infection-carrying insect respect a border. Issues such as water and environment and even topics in public health know no boundaries. And this makes international collaboration especially critical.

The Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) is one organization that attempts to do just that. By bringing scientists from across the Americas together, it has created an incubator to focus on sustainability across the continent. One key goal: to train future leaders in global change science, policy, and management by establishing international partnerships and research connections.

By connecting experts and developing and initiating projects that result in on-the-ground changes, the IAI hopes to increase the impact of the research being undertaken across the Western Hemisphere.

Recently the IAI gathered at UCalgary and then at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) for a six-day seminar. 27 scientists and professionals from 15 countries from the Americas worked together to design research projects and to collaborate on issues of common interest.

The Werklund School of Education’s Gabriela Alonso Yanez organized the seminar as part of her research program on scientific collaborations, and the assistant professor says gatherings like this are crucial to advancing research that offers effective solutions for global sustainability issues.

“Large scale, long term collaborative research networks have grown in number and have received sustained research funding for the last two decades in the Americas,” explains Alonso Yanez. “In this region, collaborative networks increasingly focus on providing actionable knowledge the communities can use—on the ground—to deal with unexpected natural events.”

“Producing this knowledge depends on continually engaging with local communities and co-designing research activities that are responsive to local needs,” she continues. “This seminar is training young scientists, decision makers and other professionals to develop skills to communicate across different disciplines, value others’ perspectives and points of view, and engage in productive teamwork with individuals from diverse backgrounds.”

Projects now in the early stages of development and implementation

One group’s work to identify and characterize features of community governance that affect water provision in four locations in the Latin American countries of Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina. The team’s main goal is to gather information about the ways in which people organize themselves and make decisions about water provision at a local scale in four different Latin American sites. Knowledge about water provision at local scale is central to plan for strategies to address extreme droughts in the region.

Another team is focusing on developing a framework to manage temperate grassland ecosystems in Argentina, Brazil, Canada and Uruguay. “Temperate grasslands are among the most endangered ecosystems in North and South America,” explains Alonso Yanez. “Working in close collaboration with scientists, government staff, NGOs and farmers, the team plans to create a framework that identifies and considers the ways in which various social groups and sectors currently adopt sustainable practices in temperate grasslands to design policy strategies that responds to local needs.”

Alonso Yanez says that the outcomes of these projects go beyond developing reports and scientific journal articles, and include direct involvement with communities in an effort to co-produce knowledge that is applicable to real-world current situations.