Environmental Change Institute (ECI)

Oxford Martin School Fellows

The James Martin fellows in ECI are undertaking research that contributes to a critical and constructive evaluation of policies and institutions designed to prevent dangerous climate change and assessing approaches to international environmental management more broadly. This research provides both innovative contributions to the academic literature and has important influences on contemporary policy agendas. The fellows range in status from post-doctoral researchers at the start of their careers to professorial sabbatical fellows, and in disciplinary background and training creating a stimulating, informative and engaging interdisciplinary environment.

The James Martin fellows are collaboratively working on a number of issues including questions about successful adaptation to climate change, the drivers of environmental policy (particularly non-state actors), contemporary scientific approaches that inform policy decision-making and current climate policy mechanisms including carbon offsets and the Clean Development Mechanism. More information on these projects can be found here and on the individual fellow’s pages.

In 2008 the ECI received further funding from the Oxford Martin School to undertake new research on the topic of Tropical Forests, leading to the launch of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests. A number of research fellows and visiting researchers will join the ECI’s Oxford Martin School funded programme throughout 2009 and specialize on various aspects of tropical forestry. Profiles and research summaries will appear below as they become available.

Current Fellows

Professor Yadvinder Malhi - yadvinder.malhi@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Professor Yadvinder Malhi leads the ECI’s Ecosystem Dynamics Laboratory within which a number of James Martin 21st Century Research Fellows undertake their studies. A particular new focus within the team is on the role that the international carbon markets and climate change framework can play in protecting tropical forests.

Dr Constance McDermott - constance.mcdermott@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Connie joined ECI in April 2009. Her research examines diverse public and private institutions and initiatives for forest governance, at local to global scales -- from forest and carbon certification to state regulation to community-based forestry - to understand how structural features (of markets, land ownership, etc.) as well as agency (dynamics of trust and power) shape forest-related policies and impacts.
Connie's work at ECI will include analysis of the intersection of existing forest-related institutions and policies with the global climate regime. Projects include:

Globalization of domestic policy: A twenty country comparison of environmental forest policies that examines the variables explaining policy change, and factors supporting an international 'race to the bottom' or 'race to the top' of environmental policy and performance.
The climate regime as 'global forest governance': The role of public policy and private sector certification initiatives in achieving 'dual effectiveness' for both sustainable forestry and climate mitigation under REDD.

Former Oxford Martin School Fellows

	Dr Emily Boyd - emily.boyd@ouce.ox.ac.uk Emily researches issues relating to governance, forests and climate policy, specifically focusing on institutional and development issues. Emily is working on the following projects: Resilience and development for Global Environmental Change Adaptive capacity, New forms of environmental governance for resource management, and hybrid institutions in Amazonia Evaluating successful adaptation to climate change Learning from natural hazards – the role of disaster risk management for sudden and slow onset hazards Commodifying carbon: examining ethics of markets in nature
	Dr Max Boykoff - maxwell.boykoff@eci.ox.ac.uk Max worked for ECI between 2006 and 2009 before moving to the University of Colorado. His work focussed on analyses of non-state actors at the climate science-policy interface. He conducted comparative analyses of media coverage of climate change between the United States and the UK. He also examined the role of climate change-related celebrity endeavors, and explored links between these projects and environmental ethics, environmental justice social movements, and public understanding. Max worked on the following projects: Climate Stabilization discourse Media coverage of climate change: Current trends, strengths and weaknesses Mass media influences on climate science, policy and the public Celebrity Involvement in Climate Change Science, Media and Policy Contentious geographies: environment, meaning and scale Commodifying carbon: examining ethics of markets in nature Theorizing the carbon economy
	Dr Simon Batterbury - simonpjb@unimelb.edu.au Simon worked on the political ecology of natural resources and rural lives in developing countries, notably in West Africa but more recently in SE Asia and the Pacific. He is now based at the University of Melbourne in Australia, where he has conducted several major research projects and convened meetings on the relationship between rural livelihoods and environmental change in dryland environments, adaptation to climate change (particularly to drought in the Sahel), rural development policy, and environmental governance. Simon is worked on the following projects at ECI: Land, livelihoods, and the politics of agrarian change in East Timor Environment, development, “desertification”, and social change in the West African Sahel Agrarian change in New Caledonia Organisational cultures in international development policies and programmes
	Dr Lauren Coad - yadvinder.malhi@ouce.ox.ac.uk Lauren joined ECI in April 2009, and is interested in the impacts of protected areas on deforestation and carbon loss, as well as their social, economic and cultural impacts on communities and local livelihoods. Her projects at ECI include: Measuring the effectiveness of different protected area management and governance systems in reducing deforestation. These analyses utilise the Protected Areas Management Effectiveness (PAME) database, which is linked to the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), and holds information on the management and governance of over 6000 protected areas worldwide. Testing methodologies for measuring the impact of protected areas on local livelihoods, as part of a working group including TNC, CARE International and UNEP-WCMC Exploring the characteristics of Community-Based Natural Resource Management systems in West and Central Africa, building on previous collaborations with IIED.
	Professor Maria Carmen-Lemos - lemos@umich.edu Maria visited ECI as a Oxford Martin School Sabbatical Fellow in 2006 to investigate the role of governance institutions in building adaptive capacity to climate variability and change in water management in Brazil. Using survey data from eighteen river basin committees and consortia across different regions, she is exploring the implications of the use of technoscientific knowledge, including climate information, to foster adaptation and democracy in the management of vulnerable water resources. Maria continues to work with many of the current fellows and is involved in the following projects: Resilience and development for Global Environmental Change Adaptive capacity, New forms of environmental governance for resource management, and hybrid institutions in Amazonia Learning from natural hazards – the role of disaster risk management for sudden and slow onset hazards What Drives Environmental Policymaking in Brazil? Implications for Proposed Amazon Solutions
	Dr Dave Frame - dframe@atm.ox.ac.uk Dave looks at new ways in which advances in climate change research can improve the physical science inputs into climate change policy. In particular he looks at some policy implications of moves towards more probabilistic forecasts of climate change. Scientific red herrings Marrying climate science and economics for sensible long-term climate policy Bridging the divide between climate science and policy Climate Stabilization discourse Commodifying carbon: examining ethics of markets in nature
	Dr Cameron Hepburn - cameron.hepburn@economics.ox.ac.uk Cameron is working on solutions to long-term climate policy problems, such as the absence of a clear carbon price signal for business post 2012. He is also writing a much-needed textbook on Climate Change Economics and Policy (with Dieter Helm). At the policy coal-face, Cameron assisted the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and is involved in advising OECD governments on their discounting frameworks, which determine how a balance is struck between short-term and long-term public objectives. Bridging the divide between climate science and policy Marrying climate science and economics for sensible long-term climate policy
	Dr Nathan Hultman - Neh3@georgetown.edu Nate is working on the following projects: Funding Adaptation to Climate Change: Are the emerging institutions for financing adaptation already too inflexible? Financial instruments to hedge climate risk: A survey of behavior and attitudes in the UK Wind Industry
	Tim Killeen - t.killeen@conservation.org Tim Killeen is a visiting Oxford Martin School Fellow with the ECI. Tim works for Conservation International as a Senior Research Scientist where he studies the impacts of climate change and deforestation on biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Amazon and Mekong river basins.
	Prof Arthur Mol - arthur.mol@wur.nl Arthur joined ECI in April 2007 for a 3 month sabbatical as a James Martin Research Fellow. His research interest and work is in the environmental social sciences, strongly focusing on Environmental governance, Industrial transformation, Globalization and the environment, Social theory and the environment, and Environment and the Information Society. Projects include: biomass-based energy production in rural areas of developing countries (with a special focus on East Africa and China) Environmental governance in the Information Society: informational governance Urban water governance in China Innovating Urban Environmental Infrastructures in East Africa: modernized mixtures
	Prof Peter Newell - P.Newell@uea.ac.uk Peter joined ECI as a James Martin Fellow on November 1st 2007. He is Professor of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. In relation to climate change his main interests lie in the political economy of the issue: the role of business actors in the governance of climate change, the role of civil regulation of the private sector and the political dimensions and developmental implications of the new carbon economy. He is currently working on two books. One on Climate Capitalism with Matthew Paterson, tracking the different dimensions and implications of the remarkable growth in the carbon economy and a second, Governing Climate Change, with Harriet Bulkeley, which explores the increasingly diverse modes and practices of climate governance by a range of state and non-state public and private actors.
	Prof Roger Pielke Jr. - pielke@cires.colorado.edu Roger A. Pielke, Jr. joined ECI on sabbatical as a Oxford Martin School Fellow. He comes from the University of Colorado, where he has been based since 2001 and is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). At CIRES, Roger serves as the Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Roger's current areas of interest include understanding disasters and climate change, the politicization of science, decision making under uncertainty, and policy education for scientists.
	Dr Scott Prudham - scott.prudham@utoronto.ca Scott visited ECI on sabbatical for one term as a Oxford Martin School Fellow in Autumn 2006. He is working on the following projects: Carbon commodification
	Dr Sam Randalls - samuel.randalls@ouce.ox.ac.uk Sam's research focussed on the relationships between weather derivatives, emissions trading and climate change policy, particularly focusing upon the energy industry. Sam left ECI to take up a geography lectureship at UCL in August 2007. Climate Stabilization discourse Weather derivatives and climate policy Financial instruments to hedge climate risk: A survey of behaviour and attitudes in the UK Wind Industry Theorizing the carbon economy
	Prof John Schellnhuber - diretor@pik-potsdam.de John worked as a Oxford Martin School Fellow from 2006-2009. He was recently appointed 'Chief Sustainability Scientist' for the German Government and is Founding Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a Distinguished Science Advisor and former Research Director of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. His research interests are: The theory of complex non-linear systems, and regional and global environmental analysis.
	Professor Timmons Roberts (Sabbatical Fellow) - jtrobe@wm.edu Timmons investigates the role of foreign assistance in helping poor nations reorient their economies towards lower carbon pathways of development. The project utilizes the PLAID dataset of 428,000 aid projects over the past 30 years to examine efficacy of aid and looks forward to post-2012 efforts to decarbonize development. Foreign assistance and low carbon economies Media coverage of climate change: Current trends, strengths and weaknesses Emerging Contradictions for Civil Society in Climate Governance: Carbon Offsets, Food Miles, Forests, and Development What Drives Environmental Policymaking in Brazil? Implications for Proposed Amazon Solutions The Role of Aid in Addressing Climate Change Public Trust and Tap Water Consumption
	Dr Heike Schroeder - heike.schroeder@ouce.ox.ac.uk Heike is analyzing options for international action on climate change, in particular how to avoid deforestation and forest degradation under the evolving REDD mechanism. She is also interested in the role of non-nation state actors in the current post-2012 negotiating process and the interactions between the formal and informal arenas. Specifically she is looking at: how global cities mitigate climate change the role of non-nation state actors at international climate conferences the role of key developing countries in mitigating climate change agency in the evolving REDD mechanism how effective REDD will be in Ghana and Peru
	Dr Emma Tompkins - emma.tompkins@ouce.ox.ac.uk Emma examines four areas: knowledge transfer across social groups and cultural contexts; decision support tools for climate change decision making; the role of governance in enabling and constraining climate change responses - with a view to identifying indicators of 'good governance'; identifying the psychological and economic limits to adaptation. Learning from natural hazards – the role of disaster risk management for sudden and slow onset hazards Motivators of individual responses to risk in the Cayman Islands Private sector adaptation to storm risk in the Cayman Islands Funding Adaptation to Climate Change: Are the emerging institutions for financing adaptation already too inflexible? Evaluating successful adaptation to climate change Scientific red herrings Resilience and development for Global Environmental Change
	Dr Petra Tschakert - Petra@psu.edu Petra was a Visiting Research Fellow with the Oxford Martin School during spring 2009. Petra’s research focuses on climate change adaptation, resilience, marginalization, and social learning. Her interests are in the theoretical and empirical intersections of political ecology, environmental justice, complex systems science, and participatory research.
	Dr Jimin Zhao - jimin.zhao@ouce.ox.ac.uk Jimin joins the James Martin 21st Fellow team on September 1st 2007. Her areas of research interest include environmental policy, energy policy and technology development, international environmental governance, and sustainable transportation development, with a focus on China. Based on in-depth field research, her research investigates the factors that determine successful policy implementation, emphasizing analysis of the behavior and interaction of involved state and non-state actors at different levels. The objective of her research is catalyze and inform the design of policies and institutions that can address not only climate issues but also environmental and energy security issues.