An agenda for ecology in an era of globalization

Title	An agenda for ecology in an era of globalization
Publication Type	Conference Paper
Year of Publication	2006
Authors	Herrick JE, Sarukhan K.
Conference Name	Ecological Society of America Abstracts
Date Published	August 8, 2006
Conference Location	Memphis, TN
ARIS Log Number	204667
Keywords	abstract, abstracts, degradation, ecology, globalization, sustainability
Abstract	The relationship between ecological sustainability and human poverty is evolving rapidly in response to changes associated with the globalization of capital, labor, natural resources and knowledge. The processes associated with globalization lead to changes in the scale, patterns and relationships between poverty and environmental degradation. Due to the increased mobility of labor and capital, environmental degradation and opportunities for restoration increasingly appear in areas with relatively little social, environmental and scientific infrastructure, while most ecological investigations remain focused on a limited number of study sites concentrated in the countries of highly developed western economies. At the same time, the increasing globalization of knowledge provides new opportunities for environmental scientists to address these challenges. We propose an agenda for ecology in an era of globalization that includes three changes in the way ecologists work: (1) an increased willingness and ability to rapidly change the focus and the spatial location and scale of our research, (2) development of more flexible funding sources that allow scientists to develop international, interdisciplinary research projects, (3) increased involvement of local knowledge experts and social scientists in all aspects of research design, implementation, interpretation and communication to managers and policymakers.