German tradition says eating herring at midnight on Dec. 31 brings good fortune for the year to come. Is herring part of your New Year's celebration? If not, here's your big chance!

Lake Superior's lake herring, also known as cisco or inland tullibee, are an environmental success story. Once supplying up to 19 million pounds of commercial catch per year, lake herring populations plummeted in the 1960s and '70s due to overfishing, habitat loss and the introduction of rainbow smelt.

By John S. Adams

Editor's note: Adams, emeritus professor of geography planning & public affairs at the University of Minnesota, submitted this post in response to "A Measure of Well-Being," published in the Fall 2012 issue of Momentum.

During the recent presidential and congressional campaigns we were smothered with endless babble about jobs, jobs, jobs, tax cuts, entitlements, fiscal cliffs and other sound bites supposedly aimed at clarifying a path to rejuvenated prosperity.

We didn't learn much.

Our country should be understood as a mosaic of metro-centered regional economies, but despite the intensity of campaign debates we didn't learn much about the different ways a region can obtain its income and grow its economy, nor how national economic growth plays out unevenly from the global to the inter-regional to the local scale.

The question that should have been probed and debated by our candidates is this: What are the current trends that matter, that affect how regions grow? Some candidates tried to keep this question the table, but results were hit and miss.

Perhaps one of the only times people in the U.S. consciously think about restaurant food safety is upon reading "Consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish or eggs may increase your risk of foodborne illness" on the menu. But what about perceived safety? If a restaurant looks clean, it's easier to assume it serves healthy food. If it looks unkempt, a consumer may want to know what's going on in the kitchen.

Jumping across the globe, food safety in India, while mandated, is not effectively enforced. Yet research suggests that people in India are willing to pay around 25% more for food that keeps them healthy and able to earn an income. There is need for a helping hand in government enforcement, vendor education and auditing as well as communication with consumers. Enter BlueFood.

BlueFood is a food safety consulting and certification business that received a startup grant from Acara, an IonE program designed to launch social businesses. It is currently in its market research/pilot phase and has gone through some strategic changes in the last two months.

The company targets mobile street vendors and permanent storefront restaurants in Lajpat Nagar market in South Delhi. Through a series of education, audits and close communication, vendors can become certified with a BlueFood logo. The team hopes the logo will become a recognized, trusted brand signifying food safety to customers. The safety measures attained by certification also mean the vendors will be at less risk of  shut down by government food-safety workers.

The pilot program in Lajpat Nagar is about halfway complete. So far the vendors are utilizing visible safety gear, such as gloves and filtered water. The consumer response to these results and others will determine if the company will begin a full launch in January 2013.

While Blue Food's main focus is food safety, there are undoubtedly positive environmental impacts as well. The education in safe food handling is currently resulting in less food waste; this in turn will likely result in a smaller carbon footprint for these vendors. In addition, the team is talking about encouraging vendors to use more carbon-neutral fuels (instead of biomass like wood) and beginning a possible secondary initiative about sustainable eating. In time, BlueFood may change the street food culture of Delhi and spread further into the urban world, protecting millions more.

 

The irony was not lost on the 300 or so environmental scientists, policy makers, activists and citizens who gathered earlier this week at the Aspen Institute for three days of solution-seeking around the theme, "Living in the New Normal." Even as participants in Aspen Environment Forum 2012 shared information, ideas and opinions, haze from the forest fires currently ravaging Colorado hung over the nearby mountains. This, more than one participant commented, is the new normal: uncertainty, extremes, unpredictability, unexpected turns of events - all brought on by humans' fiddling with the dials of nature on a grandiose scale.

Of course it's relatively easy to talk about troubles. But that's not what AEF2012 was about. The forum focused not only on defining the new normal, but also on exploring what we ought to do about it. Should we let us take it where it will? Or should we engage? Will we be tossed about like ships at sea? Or will we work to understand the changes taking shape, and shape our own activities to make both most compatible with the preservation of life on Earth?

Perhaps the best way to get a sampling of the conversations is to pull some participant quotes and paraphrases from the Twitter stream (#AEF2012):

If we continue at the present rate of eliminating species, half of them will be gone by the end of the century. - E.O. Wilson

The bulk of the credit for maintaining a planet that works goes to a living ocean. - Sylvia Earle

60,000-90,000 years ago, there may have only been 600-2,000 human beings. We were an endangered species at one time. - Richard Potts

‎‏ We *have* to figure out how to close the gap - to bring environmental externalities into pricing. - Jason Clay

The past is no longer any guide for the future. This planet (w/new climate, biosphere, land use, ocean acidification) is new. - Jon Foley

Abruptness in climate change creates largely unpredictable side-effects. - William Calvin

Eating tuna is like eating something that feeds on dragons. Very high on the food chain. - Daniel Pauly

What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. - Neal Conan

If you're pro-free market and ignore biggest market failure on planet (CO2), you have a problem. - Gernot Wagner

We have the tools at our disposal to end overfishing. We should start tackling the problem now. - Miguel Jorge

Comparing block to block, house to house, there is 7% greater property value to tree lined streets. - Rohit Aggarwala

In public's eye, pollution is top ocean problem. In reality, it's #3, behind overfishing & climate change. - Ayana Johnson

When you say "climate" it turns people off because they fear they'll have to reduce their quality of life. - Heidi Cullen

Not climate change or global warming, but planetary destabilization. - David Orr

‎‏The future of America is networked resilient communities. - John Robb

Never eat shrimp: either caught with 90% bycatch net, or in mangrove-destroying aquaculture. - Ayana Johnson

We have to be careful about what we can measure and what matters - Daniel Pauly

We need to make climate an economic issue, because it is. - Mindy Lubber

The notion that our emergence occurred during the most violent period of climate fluctuation means that we're able to adapt. - Richard Potts

We need to preserve ecosystems as working systems, for us to learn from and emulate in the Anthropocene. Not keep as museum pieces. - Jon Foley

Don't fish, you have zero fish. Fish too much, you have zero fish. Sustainable fishing is in between. - Daniel Pauly

Smart growth is the greatest technology we have to fight climate change, and its not in any of the books. - Peter Calthorpe

Trawling is like using a bulldozer to catch songbirds. - Sylvia Earle

The past can no longer be a guide to the future.- Dennis Dimick

No farmer is going to invest in sustainability if they don't have land rights. - Jason Clay

Let's celebrate successes in sustainable agriculture - and scale them up. - Chris Reij

U.S. agricultural research budget has gone to hell in a handbasket. - Dan Glickman

‎‏Something that people often miss: resilience doesn't just mean strengthened rule of law, it also means stronger civil society. - Jamais Cascio

We thought the ocean was too big to fail. Now we know otherwise. - Sylvia Earle

Why should unsustainable products cost less? They should cost more because they are subsidized by nature. - Jason Clay

If there's an elephant in the room with the global food system, it's a cow. - Jon Foley

Like to learn more? Check out video of select AEF2012 panel presentations here.

BY KRIS JOHNSON

Minnesota's climate is changing. Not only are we experiencing a strangely warm and early spring, but the evidence from historical climate data is mounting and unmistakable: average annual temperatures are rising, average precipitation is increasing and storms, floods and droughts are becoming more common. The story the data tell is one of a future Minnesota that is hotter, wetter and with more unpredictable and variable weather.

Yet the data can't tell us everything we might want to know about Minnesota 50 or 100 years from now. How will the changing climate affect our state's beloved lakes and rivers? Will pines, spruce and fir fill the forests of the north woods - or will deciduous trees or grasses, better adapted to a warmer world, replace them in the decades or centuries to come? And will Minnesota's species, both common and rare, stay within our borders or flee as their native habitats are subjected to a changing climate, invasive species or other environmental or human pressures?

These questions and more were the focus of a meeting at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources last month, as the agency works to develop a Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment for Minnesota's native habitat types. The DNR manages 5.5 million acres of land across the state and is charged with ensuring the support of healthy wildlife populations as well. This responsibility is difficult enough in a context of competing interests and shrinking budgets, but the challenge will only increase as the agency tries to prepare Minnesota's natural resources for a changing climate.

To cope with the challenge of managing ecosystems in the face of climate change, the DNR asked for help from the Boreal Forest and Community Resilience Project, a Discovery Grant project at the Institute on the Environment. This project, led by Regents professor Peter Reich, was launched in 2010 to help build social and ecological resilience - to enhance the capacity of human communities and ecosystems to cope with stressors and adapt to change.

One way the Boreal Forest Project helps build resilience is by working with various stakeholders in Minnesota and beyond to incorporate thinking about uncertainty and complexity into decision-making. With the DNR, we are developing "systems mapping" workshops to accomplish rapid vulnerability assessments for key habitats and ecosystems in the state. Systems mapping is used to understand complex systems by revealing critical relationships, highlighting major uncertainties and identifying potential opportunities for action. For the DNR vulnerability assessments, scientists and experts familiar with Minnesota's ecosystems will work together to distinguish among the major factors that influence ecosystems in our state and assess how climate change and other stressors might affect these systems in the future.

Efforts like this are critically useful when scientific and technical analyses alone can't provide us with the answers we need to make good decisions. Although current data and models cannot give concrete guidance about how to manage our state's ecosystems in a changing climate, the DNR stills needs to prepare for a future shaped by climate change. With the help of the Boreal Project and the systems mapping workshops, the DNR will harness the best available scientific expertise to guide public land management and ensure our state's ecosystems are as resilient as possible to climate change.

Photo by smarzinske via Creative Commons