Tag: Heather Tallis

Why and How Conservation Needs to Tackle Human Well-Being: A Conservation with Heather Tallis

March 11, 2013  |  by: Bob Lalasz  |  0

Bob Lalasz directs science communications for The Nature Conservancy.

Can conservation make a decisive and systematic contribution to solving social problems and improving the lives of people — especially the world’s poor?

Finding out is Heather Tallis’s job: As a new lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy in charge of the Conservancy’s new Human Dimensions Program, it’s her task to bring “people metrics” to assess the impact of the Conservancy’s work on the ground on people. She’s also charged with integrating innovative economics and social science into the organization’s field work in a way that builds conservation methods and tools that can benefit everyone.

The challenges are many — among them, getting those metrics right (something conservation has struggled to do); designing conservation from the ground up to impact people positively; and helping  policymakers and other decision-makers to recognize the value of conservation for answering many of the big questions facing the planet.

I sat down with Tallis to talk about where she and the Human Dimension Program will begin addressing those challenges:

Why does conservation need an initiative to attack human well-being head-on?

HT: Well, I like the way the folks from the Stockholm Resilience Center say it: “There are no natural systems without people, nor social systems without nature.” This is our reality, especially as the Conservancy moves to thinking about and managing whole ecological systems.

But this is obviously not the way most people see the world, so our personal decisions, our political ideas and our management process are out of synch with this reality. The next 20-30 years will see dramatic change in the face of the planet — and what lives on it or doesn’t — as society decides how to double food production, build hundreds of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and create more megacities.

Conservation needs to be in those decisions. And we won’t get past the door unless we know and can describe what nature has to do with major social problems, and how nature can contribute to human well-being solutions.

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Heather Tallis Becomes Lead Scientist at The Nature Conservancy

February 4, 2013  |  by: Darci Palmquist  |  1

Heather Tallis, one of the world’s foremost analysts of the connections between nature and human well-being, has agreed to join The Nature Conservancy as lead scientist.

Tallis, 36, will become the first woman to serve as lead scientist in the Conservancy’s history. She joins M. Sanjayan as one of two lead scientists for the organization.

“Heather brings incredible expertise in understanding and measuring how conservation impacts people,” says Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy. “She will be leading new efforts that conservation desperately needs — a scientific focus on how our work can both improve human well-being while also protecting biodiversity.”

Tallis comes to the Conservancy from her position as lead scientist for the Natural Capital Project, a path-breaking scientific collaboration based at Stanford University that seeks to understand and measure the economic values of nature. Measuring these ecosystem services — the benefits that nature provide people in the form of clean water, fertile soil, clean air and much more — has become increasingly important as human activity stresses natural resources and extreme weather events push communities to consider how healthy nature can buffer and protect us.

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What is Cool Green Science?

Most projections say at least 9 billion people will be alive on Earth come 2050 -- putting tremendous pressures on the natural systems that we all rely on for survival and prosperity.

Cool Green Science is where Nature Conservancy scientists and science writers discuss and debate how conservation can help meet those challenges head on -- in partnership with you, of course. You'll also find photos, videos and dispatches from our fieldwork, book reviews, raves and groans about new research, natural history accounts, citizen science opps, and much much more -- including stuff about critters that are just cool.

Cool Green Science is managed by Matt Miller, senior science writer for the Conservancy, and edited by Bob Lalasz, its director of science communications. Email us your feedback.

Live Osprey Cam

They're getting huge! Watch live as two ospreys grow up in a parking lot nest in Orange Beach, Alabama--and read Conservancy scientist Jeff DeQuattro on why these birds of prey are a great indicator species for the health of the Gulf's ecosystem.

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