We are the final cohort of Doris Duke Conservation Fellows (2011-2012) at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Being a part of the next generation of environmental leaders, we dedicate this blog to finding the way forward and to identifying the key attitudes and strategies that will help us solve the complex environmental and social problems we face. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/ http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1475 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1475 This environmental journalism project has evolved out of a series of recent events and conversations the five of us have shared with friends, colleagues and professionals. Being amongst the final cohort of Doris Duke Conservation Fellows, a program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to identify and support future conservation leaders, we felt an imperative to address the broader contemporary issues facing conservation today. Being amongst the final cohort of Doris Duke Conservation Fellows, we felt an imperative to address the broader contemporary issues facing conservation today. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1478 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1478 As a sponsor of the sixth annual Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference, the Doris Duke Conservation Fellows had the privilege of interacting with conference participants about our blog project. We took this opportunity to crowdsource ideas, asking folks to jot down their thoughts on the following four questions that we see as being central to our theme of Reshaping the Environmental Movement: What is the most critical issue facing the environmental movement?; What kind of leadership does the environmental movement need?; Is the concept of “environmentalism” still relevant?; and Is activism still relevant? Participants were particularly eager to respond to the first two questions, and interesting concepts emerged. One critical issue identified is the failure of the environmental movement to proffer positive, clear and cohesive messaging around common goals. Identifying such commonalities was another emergent topic, and it was offered that relevant to all people’s lives is food, energy and dignity. With a growing population, on a finite planet, the environmental movement must balance improving the quality of life while reducing environmental impact, all the while respecting individual values and culture. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1484 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1484 After reading over some of the comments we received at the Earth Day conference, I felt compelled to also try and distill the discussion had at the spring graduate student retreat. During the blurry morning hours on the last day of that weekend of camaraderie, we were wrestling with some of the same big questions in a World Cafe-style discussion: What is environmentalism? What are the biggest issues facing the environmental movement? What can we as Nelson students do on a daily basis to address these issues? http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1491 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1491 Making his work accessible to those not in the physical sciences, or in fact science at all, became one of the themes of our conversation with Raghu Murtugudde, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1504 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1504 As Doris Duke Fellows, we have been charged with engaging in environmental leadership in our communities. Sometimes, this means figuring out how to integrate seemingly disparate ideas and tell an interesting and compelling story. At the Nelson Institute’s Earth Day Conference on April 16, we found ourselves in just that position. We spoke with several guests in rapid-fire succession, all of whom had unique and fascinating takes on the idea of happiness and our connection with the world around us. Juliet Schor, author of True Wealth, The Overworked American, and The Overspent American and a professor of sociology at Boston College, generously spoke with us at the conference and provided a really interesting way of thinking about the environmental movement through the lens of how we choose to act as consumers. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1505 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1505 Who better to give a keynote address at a conference focused on sustainability, security and happiness on a finite planet than a leader from Bhutan? With its alternative economic measure of "gross national happiness," the small Himalayan kingdom has been showing the world how to grow sustainably and how to monitor success based on happiness rather than finances. The Doris Duke Fellows had the honor of speaking with Lyonpo Yeshe Zimba, Minister of Works and Human Settlement and former Prime Minister of Bhutan, following his address at the sixth annual Nelson Institute Earth Day conference April 16. Speaking in a metered tone, with a diplomatic presence, his statements were straightforward and clear. The things he said made so much sense that it was easy to miss how the development he is enacting is so profoundly different from the path most of the world’s nations are on. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1509 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1509 On a rainy day in March in Madison, filmmaker Shalini Kantayya sat down with us to discuss her views on the environmental movement, the power of storytelling and strategies for moving forward. Actually, Kantayya does not consider herself an environmentalist, but an eco-activist. She feels that this term is more inclusive, and it doesn't separate the planet from the people. But the difference is more than one of semantics because it belies a shift that is underway in the environmental movement, toward what's being called the Third Wave of Environmentalism. This shift is an emphasis on solutions instead of reactive regulations. From Kantayya's point of view it has the capacity for energizing the mainstream by reframing environmental issues into issues of social justice, economics, racism and sexism. And this is exactly where her work finds meaning within the movement. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1513 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1513 On the afternoon of May 10, the cramped hall on the fourth floor of Memorial Union hummed with the energy of more than a hundred enthralled minds. For the first time since “The Great Wilderness Debate” of the 1990s, two University of Wisconsin-Madison luminaries, William Cronon, the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of history, geography and environmental studies, and Donald Waller, professor of botany and environmental studies, sat down to discuss some of the key points from that debate and modernize it for today’s political and environmental reality. http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1530 http://nelson.wisc.edu/news/fellows/fellows-details.php?e=1530 Bill Eichner is an ophthalmologist and farmer living in Vermont. He is married to American-Dominican novelist Julia Alvarez. For the last fifteen years they have been helping coffee farmers in the Dominican Republic organize and grow organic, shade-grown, specialty coffee (Café Alta Gracia) for U.S. markets.