In this episode, Dr Gillian Kerr, emphasizes community and shared values as crucial for addressing climate emergencies. She highlighted the importance of connecting ecosystem services concepts to human behaviour and interests like cost savings to engageorganizations and governments to integrate natural assets into policy. Gillian criticized the political focus on short-term gains and stressed the necessity of building legitimacy, accountability and trust when engaging citizens in conservation efforts. She also underscored the role of community engagement and the importance of asking questions to ensure sustainable practices.

Gillian identifies the challenge of information echo chambers and the polarization caused by social media slowing the winnings in favour of the environment, asshe mentions the best way to reduce polarization is, instead of getting angry, to use that energy to find common ground and identify how we are related,more than how we are apart, that will lead to the conversation about what is happening and how can we make it better together.

“One of the things that have become more and more clear to me is that community, people sharing space and time, people working together, people engaging in activitiestogether… I think that that is the premise for sustainability”.

Dr Gillian Kerr.

Dr Gillian’s publications:

Kerr, G. L., & Bjornlund, H. (2010). Alberta’sdrive to use market-based instruments for ecosystem services provision. In WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment. SUSTAINABLE IRRIGATION 2010. WITPress. https://doi.org/10.2495/si100191

Ranganthan, L, Raudsepp-Hearne, Lucas, N., Irwin, F.,Zurek, M., Bennett, K., Neville, A. and West, P., Ecosystem Services: A Guide for Decision Makers. World Resources Institute, 2007.

Landscape Change Team, Ecosystem Services through Land Stewardship Practices: Issues and Options. Land Management Group. Department of Sustainability and Environment. Victoria Australia, 2003.

Kerr, G. L., Holzer, J. M., Baird, J., & Hickey, Gordon. M. (2021). Ecosystem services decision support tools: exploring the implementation gap in Canada. In E. M. Bennett (Ed.), FACETS (Vol. 6, pp. 1864–1880). Canadian Science Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2020-0090

This project contributes to the completion of my Master’s degree in Environment and Management at Royal Roads University, under the supervision of Dr. Alice MacGillivray.

I acknowledge that this research has been conducted on the traditional lands of the Lekwungen-speaking Peoples, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.