Most of these themes are not "fields" as defined by traditional academic departments. They have emerged through ERG’s integrative approach to research, and through applying our research to energy and resource problems at home and abroad
Our vision is a world in which the twin goals of human well being and a healthy environment are mutually and sustainably satisfied. To this end, our research and teaching place equal emphasis on
(1) analytical tools and techniques that promote efficiency, conservation, affordability and equity in energy and resource use patterns; and
(2) a deep understanding of the social and institutional contexts in which resource and environmental problems arise, and in which creative and ethical solutions can be sustained.
It is this synthesis of basic science, practical problem-solving and constructive social critique that defines ERG.
Technology, Development and Society
Alex Farrell / Ashok Gadgil / Dan Kammen / Catherine Koshland / Isha Ray
At different places on earth, resources such as energy and water are both critically scarce and wastefully consumed, while resource supply systems and use patterns create some of the most significant environmental impacts that we face. These impacts range from air pollution to water shortages, and from deforestation to global climate change. These outcomes are the result of myriad individual and collective choices, combined with the technological capabilities we have developed. ERG research on technology, development and society focuses on understanding those choices, developing the tools for making more informed choices, and applying those tools to expand the range of technologies that can improve people’s lives while sustaining the environment.
Key issues include the urgent need to use land, energy and water more efficiently and more equitably than we have done in the past; and to ensure that negative environmental impacts of current and future resource use be mitigated or minimized. This will take imaginative policies, new technologies, innovative uses of existing technologies, and new institutional arrangements both locally and internationally. Specific questions addressed by ERG research include: What is the role of new energy sources, such as hydrogen, in our energy future? How can the more than one billion people without safe water and energy - most of who live in the rural South - gain access to these life-sustaining resources? How can technologies and policies combine to protect human well being as well as environmental health? What is the role of technology in the development of a resource-conserving society, and what is the role of society in the development and use of technologies?
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Governance Challenges
Alex Farrell / Dan Kammen / Catherine Koshland
One of the major elements of ERG social science research for the new century will be exploring the challenges to governance that are emerging from the increased and complex linkages between and among problems and their consequences. At all levels from local to global, governments are faced with the need to anticipate indirect and long-term effects of their actions, ranging from the local health consequences of fuel choices to the global consequences of allowing or restricting emissions of greenhouse gases. ERG faculty and students are deeply engaged in the complex technical, economic, social, and political debates surrounding these and other issues such as deregulation and restructuring of electrical systems and protection of biological diversity. Particularly important research foci have been management options for public goods (such as communal water sources or forests) in the face of efforts to privatize resources; and the implications of increasing urbanization and resource inequities for our ability to govern the planet.
Potential new avenues of research are opening up at home and abroad, where energy and environmental studies involving ERG faculty, students, and affiliates in Africa, Latin America, North America, Europe and Asia are raising questions about both the reliability and range of the scientific-technical and socio-political bases for decision-making. This research has deepened our understanding is trite but true to say that we live in an increasingly connected world. What is not so well understood are the indirect and long-term consequences of that connectivity. Many of us at ERG are working in one way or another on the central problem of whether and how societies can learn to adapt or transform historical patterns of governance to better address the range of irreversible, long-range, and cooperative decisions that need to be made.
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Global Change Science
John Harte / Dan Kammen / Margaret Torn
The overarching goal of ERG Global Change research is to understand the interdependence of human well being and the health of ecosystems. ERG research focuses on the effects of human actions on, and the linkages among, biodiversity, ecosystem structure and function, and climate. This work spans a range of scales, from plot to landscape to global, and utilizes field manipulation experiments, the analysis of patterns in nature, and mathematical modeling. Two specific current goals are to understand the extent to which ecosystem responses to climate change may result in feedbacks to climate that can either ameliorate or exacerbate global warming, and to develop, test, and apply to conservation issues, a general theory of the scaling properties of the distribution and abundance of species.
The primary site of field research is the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado, with other work conducted on the Tibetan Plateau of China and the Marin Headlands and the Sierra foothills of California. Current field projects include investigations of ecosystem response to manipulated climate change in a sub-alpine meadow, the effects of plant species richness on ecosystem functions, effects of invasive species and erosion episodes on soil carbon, and the relative role of climate and plant species composition on the carbon cycle in along a forested climate gradient. Theoretical work is focused on the search for a unified understanding of the origin of, and the linkages among, power laws characterizing patterns in the distribution and abundance of species.
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Ecological Economics
Richard Norgaard
Ecology and economics underlie two dominant and diametrically opposed analyses of the human dilemma. From an ecological perspective, economic activity needs to be restrained and redirected to sustain ecosystems and maintain their resilience. From an economic perspective, ever-greater economic activity is necessary to meet the needs of the poor and expand economic opportunities for all. In spite of this prescriptive contradiction, both economics and ecology address complex systems. Ecology draws on economics for some of its concepts and frameworks, and economics looks to evolutionary and ecological thinking occasionally. Yet neither economics nor ecology include both systems in their analyses, so neither is in a position to make prescriptive arguments about our future. For these reasons, the field of ecological economics has arisen to generate new and richer understandings of the dynamics between economic and ecological systems to better inform politics and policy.
ERG faculty and students have already contributed to the emerging field of ecological economics in several ways and the exceptional community of faculty and structure of ERG give Berkeley a strong comparative advantage in ecological economics research in the future. Some of the most promising new directions include: 1) expanding ecological and evolutionary models to include economic systems; 2) applying expanded models to critical issues including biodiversity loss, climate change, new technologies, and globalization; 3) enlarging our understanding of values and valuation processes in the resolution of environmental conflicts; and 4) drawing lessons from the history of economics and ecology, to guide the development of practice for ecological economics.
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Consumption, Resource Use and Equity
Ashok Gadgil / Dan Kammen / Catherine Koshland / Isha Ray
Anthropogenic environmental damage was once thought to come primarily from toxic substances that polluted the natural environment. We now know that problems are also caused by excessive flows of (otherwise benign) substances such as carbon or nitrogen, and by land conversions that reduce biodiversity. This new perspective would measure the mass and energy that humanity is moving about, and the land we are transforming for human use, in addition to analyzing traditionally defined pollution. ERG has always been concerned with the human footprint on the natural world. Our new research illuminates the connections between consumption and environment, by comparing societies with diverse patterns of energy and resource use, and by questioning the economic and social forces that drive particular consumption patterns.
Understanding the culture of consumption leads naturally to questions of equity and inequity. Local and global inequities are a major impediment to healthy environments and sustainable economies. Globally, 86% of private goods are consumed by the richest 20% of the population while the poorest 20% consume only 1.3%. In the United States, poverty, minority status, and exposure to environmental hazards are strongly correlated. Yet alleviating inequalities simply by raising the consumption of the poor will dramatically exacerbate environmental stresses. Research at ERG is motivated by the understanding that, over time, less resource-intensive consumption and more equity in resource access are critical to progress in energy and environmental problem-solving.
Research that links consumption, resources and equity is driven by four underlying questions: What are effective, affordable, and fair responses to the threats of global climate change? How can environmental rights be defined and protected for future generations? What are the pathways that connect population, consumption and the environment? What are the practical and philosophical connections between resource use and healthy societies?
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