ENVS PhD Candidate, Sebastian Dueñas Ocampo, has been selected by the ENVS Graduate Committee to receive the Excellence in Research Award 2023. The committee highlighted his past accomplishments as a scholar, his range of interdisciplinary expertise, and his commitment to engaged and relevant scholarship. Congratulations!

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ENVS is excited to announce that PhD candidate, Denise Fernandes, has been awarded the Spring 2023 GPTI Teaching Recognition Award! Denise has taught in the writing and rhetoric program for almost the entirety of her tenure at CU Boulder ENVS. Last academic year, in tandem with Assistant Professor, Karen Bailey, Denise also helped create and now teaches the course on environmental racism now offered in ENVS. Denise has always gone above and beyond for her classes and students and we are very excited to see where her research and teaching talents take her. Congratulations, Denise, on a a well deserved award. 

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ENVS PhD candidate, Emily Nocito, had a front row seat to the passage of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement earlier this week. The following is an account of her experience studying the negotiation and passage of BBNJ over the last 6 years, and her summary of the function of the treaty for ocean conservation. CU Boulder Today also featured Ms. Nocito's experience and the passage of the treaty in a piece, which can be found here.

"On 4 March 2023 at the United Nations Headquarters in NYC, a new Agreement for the high seas was reached. Areas beyond national jurisdiction, or the high seas as many call it, are governed through a piecemeal, fragmented system of governance. This agreement - often called the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement - provides a concise framework for countries to work towards protecting and conserving the high seas. The BBNJ Agreement outlines aspects such as area-based management tools, environmental impact assessments, marine genetic resources, capacity building and transfer of technology, and represents the first piece of international ocean governance in decades.

The BBNJ process has been ongoing for over 15 years, with negotiations disrupted by the global pandemic. The fifth and final meeting occurred in August 2022, but consensus on the text could not be reached. The fifth meeting resumed in late February, and the final hurdle saw delegations negotiating for over 30 hours straight to reach a treaty text.

The BBNJ Agreement still needs to be adopted and ratified by UN member states, but the hope is that once it is entered into force there will be a streamlined process for governance of oceans related to its protection and conservation of the marine environment and the use and benefit-sharing of marine genetic resources.

As a researcher attending and studying this process since the preparatory committee phase (2017), seeing this agreement finally come to fruition was amazing. The long hours and hard work over so many years, by so many people finally paid off. This feels like a huge win not just for the oceans, but for multilaterism and environmental governance as a whole, especially given the breakdown within and between country’s relationships, increasing polarization of science, and increased natural and human-induced disasters to our environment. The BBNJ Agreement and the effort that got us there feels like a beacon of light in an ongoing storm." 

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This week ENVS PhD candidate, Emily Nocito, and Assistant Professor, Cassandra Brooks, presented at the 5th annual International Marine Protected Area Congress () in Vancouver, BC. IMPAC is a global forum that brings together scientists, government officials, conservation managers, and many more to inform and act on marine protected areas. 

Checkout the IMPAC  for more info.

 

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ENVS recent PhD graduate, Dr. Urooj Raja and her advisor in ENVS, Professor Amanda Carrico, just published an amazing study in Nature Scientific Reports, linking childhood trauma to civic environmental engagement. The study uses survey data to understand what kind of experiences could predict environmental engagement. The outstanding commonality in addition to experiences in the outdoor was experiences childhood trauma.
 

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ENVS PhD student, Waverly Eichhorst, recently published a discussion of cultivated meat and persisting scientific challenges that could prevent the wide-scale commercialization of cultivated meat products through the Breakthrough Institute. Full piece here.
 

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Recent ENVS PhD graduate, Rayna Benzeev, and ENVS Professor, Peter Newton, published a landmark study in the journal PNAS Nexus today titled, "Formalizing tenure of Indigenous lands improved forest outcomes in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil." The research, which is part of Dr. Benzeev's doctoral work in ENVS shows that granting legal land tenure to indigenous tribes not only reduces deforestation, but aids in reforestation.

The study, which examined tribes and forest loss in the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil can have potentially large implications with the shifting political situation in Brazil and governance of the Amazon Forest, which has seen huge losses over the last several years.

Links to CU Boulder Today article on the piece, , and additional  
 

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Senior Virginia Weiskopf and PhD candidate Emily Nocito, both in environmental studies, head to the United Nations to research marine conservation, as the last stages of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty negotiated. 

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Have you noticed the alternative protein options popping up in your grocery store and wondered to yourself, how is this made? You're not the only one, and ENVS PhD student, Margaret Hegwood,  is helping shed some light on these questions. Check out the advisor interview , with WhatIsCultivatedMeat.com.

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 Funded by NEST, CU Boulder, and written by Denise Fernandes (ENVS) and Shelby McAuliffe (former Art and Art History Student) the photography book Invisible Disruption looks at ways in which different political, cultural,social,and economic forces produce invisible disruptions at hydraulic fracturing sites in Colorado.

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