Fall 2004 THE JOURNAL OF THE School of Forestry & Environmental Studies EnvironmentYale Yale School of Forestry Non-Profit Org. &Environmental Studies U.S. Postage 205 Prospect Street PAID New Haven, CT 06511 USA Permit No. 526 Tel: (203) 432-5100 New Haven, CT Foreign Invaders Fax: (203) 432-5942 www.yale.edu/environment Threatening Global Biodiversity Address Service Requested And The Public Hasn’t Noticed—Yet Inside: Greenspace Program Reshaping the Urban Environment, page 12 Chinese Environmental Officials Participate in Executive Program See At the School page 28 Clockwise, from the top: Officials of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration gathered outside Betts House with Marian Chertow, Ph.D. ’00 (seventh from right), director of the Industrial Environmental Management Program; Jane Coppock (third from right), assistant dean; and Gretchen Rings (far left), coordinator of the Center for Industrial Ecology. Members of the delegation during classroom instruction at Bowers Auditorium, Sage Hall. In the foreground, Zaiming Li of the Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) of Fu Jian Province and Weixiang Li of the EPB of Hei Long Jiang Province. Left to right, Jian Zhou, director-general of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration’s (SEPA) Department of Planning and Finance; Linda Koch Lorimer, vice president and secretary of Yale University; Jianxin Li, director-general of SEPA’s Department of Institutional Affairs and Human Resources, and head of the delegation; and Marian Chertow at a university reception with Yale colleagues and invited guests, hosted by Lorimer at Betts House. Facing Camera, left to right, Chaofei Yang, director-general of SEPA’s Department of Policies, Laws and Regulations; Deputy Dean Alan Brewster;Yujun Zhang ’01, a translator for the delegation; and Daniel Esty, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, sharing a toast with members of the SEPA delegation at the farewell dinner at the Yale Graduate Club. photos © Harold Shapiro THE JOURNAL OF THE School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Environment contents 3Cover Story: Foreign Invaders Threatening Global Biodiversity; And The Public Yale Hasn’t Noticed—Yet 12 Greenspace Program Gives New Haven Residents Tools to Reshape the Urban Environment 16 BookShelf 18 Support for Campaign 12 Puts New F&ES Home on 3 Fast Track Environment: Yale 21 Five-Year Program The Journal of the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Attractive to Career- Fall 2004 • Vol. 3, No. 2 Minded Undergraduates Editor David DeFusco Director of Communications Copy Editor 28 At the School Anne Sommer 18 Alumni/ae Liaison to Editor Kathleen Schomaker 31 Study Assessing Impact of Director of Alumni/ae Affairs Climate Change on Africa Design Margaret Hepburn PlazaDesign Editorial Advisory Board 34 Students Seeking Career Alan Brewster, Jane Coppock, Gordon Geballe, Stephen Kellert, 21 Experiences in the Pacific Emly McDiarmid, Peter Otis, Northwest Have Friends Frederick Regan in Al and Ray Jubitz Dean James Gustave Speth Environment: Yale is published twice a year (Spring and Fall) by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Editorial offices 37 Class Notes are located at 205 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511. 203-436-4842 • e-mail: [email protected] www.yale.edu/environment 34 48 Obituaries printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks Fall 2004 1 DEAN’S MESSAGE: UNSHACKLING BUSINESS social, that today’s disruptions by terrorists will look like child’s play. The result will not be good for business or the rest of us.Business needs government action now. We have already increased the carbon dioxide concentration of Earth’s atmosphere by a third and begun the process of warming the planet; we have depleted the Earth’s ozone shield without knowing it; and we are destroying tropical forests at a rate of an acre a second. We have spread persistent toxins to the far corner of the globe and into each and every one of us. Whether we like it or not, we are at the planetary controls. Companies are responsible for a huge share of the appalling environ- Dean James Gustave Speth mental deterioration now under way.But on the other hand,companies are the only actors that have sufficient control of technology, access to n September 22, as Florida prepared for an capital and managerial discipline to provide the transition to sustain- unprecedented fourth hurricane of the season, ability. They now need to fulfill their ethical responsibility and Senator John McCain used the occasion of collaborate with government and citizens to adopt far-reaching Congressional hearings on oceans policy to stress measures to tackle these environmental challenges. Othat more frequent hurricanes were a likely consequence of First, companies must rethink who their friends and enemies are. global warming and to excoriate the Bush administration More than Greenpeace and the anti-globalization activists, business for failing to support the climate change legislation he and should worry about two true impediments.One is what has been called Joseph Lieberman had introduced. market fundamentalism. This strange religion worships the unfettered The McCain-Lieberman bill is modest by international standards, market and seeks to “starve the beast”of government; but in the end,as seeking only to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by Benjamin Barber,the political analyst, has noted, it “robs us of the civic 2010, but it is the best hope of getting the United States to rejoin the freedom by which we control the social consequences of our private international community on this crucial issue. The bill garnered 43 choices.” It leaves business ensnared in the old imperatives, with no votes in the Senate a year ago, and Mr. McCain and Mr. Lieberman are possibility of reaching a higher level of corporate citizenship in determined to keep raising the issue. partnership with government and civil society. New support will be needed if this legislation is to pass in Congress. The other impediment is less obvious but more prevalent in This support should come from corporate America. The business enlightened corporate circles. Progressive corporate leaders often say community should also be pressing the administration and Congress they do not want government action “at this time” because they want for the United States to rejoin the climate treaty process—a goal made their companies to be first to stake out a claim on the future and even more pressing by the Russian government’s approval of the establish a competitive advantage. Kyoto Protocol. Such thinking would not be dangerous if we still had the luxury of When Ronald Reagan famously said that “government isn’t the time,but we do not.There is only so far companies can go on their own, solution to our problems; government is the problem,”many in and it is not far enough. business cheered. But what if business is shackled by forces far more The high point of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable powerful than government and needs government to free it to do the Development in Johannesburg was a press conference convened by the job it increasingly knows must be done? Business leaders know they are World Business Council for Sustainable Development and Greenpeace. trapped by the imperatives of market competition, consumer They came together to call upon governments to provide the preferences, investor behavior and other factors. These imperatives framework for companies and nongovernmental organizations to often preclude attractive options. When the gap between the required promote sustainability. answer and the right answer gets too wide, government action The message of that remarkable moment was that government becomes essential. action is needed to transcend the old imperatives that hold companies We now have such a gap with regard to the challenges of the global back.Vigorous business support for the McCain-Lieberman bill would environment. If governments do not get their act together soon on be another step in the right direction. global warming, the extraordinary economic machine we have created is going to wreak such havoc on the Earth’s systems, both natural and This article first appeared in the Financial Times 2 ENVIRONMENT:YALE The School of Forestry & Environmental Studies Foreign Invaders Threatening Global Biodiversity And The Public Hasn’t Noticed—Yet By Marc Wortman In June 1837, a steamboat, the St. Peter, environment—can move farther and faster carrying fur traders moored next to the same than ever before,traveling around the planet at y the late fall of 1804, villages. Together with goods for trade, a few the speed of an airplane or cargo ship.Within a Meriwether Lewis and passengers also brought the smallpox virus month after the Severe Acute Respiratory William Clark’s expedition with them. With little immunity among the Syndrome (SARS) coronavirus first emerged in through the Northwest had natives, the virulent disease flashed through southern China in November 2002, cases Breached two large Mandan native the Mandan settlements. Only 31 of the 1,600 popped up in other Southeast Asian countries. villages 60 miles north of present-day tribe members survived the epidemic. Soon Another month later, SARS began to show up Bismarck, N.D., along the Upper other native tribes living along the Upper in Europe, the United States and Canada—two Missouri River banks. The explorers Missouri River and the neighboring plains of dozen countries in all—eventually totaling wintered over there, living and Canada fell to the pandemic. Before it burned some 8,000 cases worldwide, resulting hunting alongside their hospitable itself out,most natives in the region,as many as in around 800 deaths. Fear that SARS might neighbors. (It was there that Lewis 150,000 people,were dead. cause a worldwide epidemic virtually and Clark met Sakakawea, the Two centuries later, that process ending in shut down global travel and drastically Indian woman who would be essential disaster now seems all too familiar.