Faculty Update

Marion Howard, MA 05

Besides teaching at SID (which I love!), I'm also working as advisor to CORALINA, the agency of Colombia's National Environment System in the San Andres Archipelago. The marine protected area (MPA) project I coordinated and have since been advising on resulted in the declaration of the Seaflower MPA by the Minister of Environment in 2005. This project boasts a number of significant innovations, some of which are that the MPA was declared at the national level but is managed locally, was set up using a true community-based approach in which local users of the marine area had decision-making power, and is a very large protected area consciously planned to promote integrated sustainable development.

The Seaflower is the first multiple-use MPA in Colombia and the largest in the Caribbean at 65,000 km2. In Colombia, we are justly proud of the contribution this work has made to global marine conservation. As a Colombian government agency, CORALINA takes a progressive approach to the role of government in sustainable development, including being an advocate for local resource management and active stakeholder participation in planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

The general objectives, which were designed in collaboration with stakeholders, are: 1) Preservation, recovery and long-term maintenance of species, biodiversity, ecosystems, and other natural values including special habitats; 2) Promotion of sound management practices to ensure long-term sustainable use of coastal and marine resources; 3) Equitable distribution of economic and social benefits to enhance local development; 4) Protection of the rights pertaining to historical use; and 5) Education to promote stewardship and community involvement in planning and management.

I presented a paper about our community-based zoning process in November at the 59th Annual Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute, being held this year in Belize City. The paper also emphasizes the use of protected areas as tools for sustainable development through linking conservation with poverty alleviation and empowerment, an approach we at CORALINA are committed to promoting. While there, I had the opportunity to spend a day with Carlos Montero, MA 06, who showed me some sights in his beautiful country.

Read more about Marion Howard in the new Faculty Guide (http://heller.brandeis.edu/faculty/index.php).

Professor Ricardo Godoy

The summer of 2006 saw the third National Science Foundation training program for PhD students in cultural anthropology from across the USA among the Tsimane' Indians in the Bolivian Amazon. As part of SID's Center for International Development, the training program focuses on methods of collecting a broad range of socioeconomic, health, and psychological data on outcomes such as objective and subjective health, income, knowledge, emotions, and social capital. Students spend a total of seven weeks living in two rural communities, where they learn how to collect data, deal with the many logistical details of living in the rain forest, and do preliminary analysis of data collected.

In 2006, there were a total of six PhD students from USA universities. Working as a team, they developed an innovative approach to measure indigenous knowledge of parasites among children and then went on to estimate the effect of the knowledge on parasitic loads. In another student-initiated research project, students developed a method to assess attachment to traditional culture, and then estimated the effect of cultural orientation on the medical treatment choice.

The summer training builds on a long-term study that started in 1999 and continues to this day with about 1500 subjects from 240 households in 13 villages that straddle the autarky-to-market continuum. A new web site (http://people.brandeis.edu/~rgodoy/) provides more information about the applied and academic research in progress in Bolivia. Two new research projects in Bolivia include: (a) a randomized intervention to increase income and reduce income inequality and assess the effects of the changes on health and social capital and (b) a project to introduce pigeon peas – a leguminous cover crop – to fix nitrogen, increase soil productivity, and thereby reduce deforestation. We are waiting to hear from the National Science Foundation about a funding decision to start work on the loss of indigenous knowledge.

Read more about Ricardo Godoy in the new Faculty Guide (http://heller.brandeis.edu/faculty/index.php).

Ruth Morgenthau, PhD

Alumni from the early years of SID (1995-97) will remember Ruth Morgenthau as their professor, advisor, and a leading advocate of the Program in Sustainable International Development at Brandeis University. It is with a deep sense of loss that we inform you of her death on November 4, 2006, at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She was 75 and had been suffering from a blood disease known as myelodysplastic syndrome.

Ruth was well-known in the public sphere and worked as a political advisor to presidents John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. She was an expert on French-speaking West Africa and utilized those skills at the United Nations, as part of the US delegation. At Brandeis University, she was professor emeritus within the political science department.

She founded Food Corps International, an organization focused on eliminating world hunger through targeted research, training, and low-cost technology to low-income rural communities in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Ruth also helped run Pact, a nongovernmental organization that works on capacity building.