News

A Profound Inequality: Spurring Global Electricity Access

One in six people—1.2 billion worldwide—lack access to electrical power. Noting that electricity is the foundation for economic development, education, women's rights, and health, former Duke Energy CEO--now Duke University fellow and Nicholas Institute Advisory Board member--Jim Rogers says that remedying that problem is a human imperative. That’s why he’s pushing for the United Nations to extend its Sustainable Energy for All initiative (SE4ALL) by declaring access to electricity an official human right.

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Our Impact: Guidance for Ecosystem Services Assessments

Initiative Helps Natural Resource Managers Connect Decisions to Things People Care About

This is the third installment in a 12-part series highlighting the environmental policy impacts of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions over its first decade.

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High Costs Prevent Wide Adoption of Animal Waste-to-Energy Systems

As the search continues for more cost-effective energy sources that also are environmentally safe, companies are getting more creative. Many are looking toward utilizing things that were once relegated to the waste stream. One example of a system for harnessing energy from swine manure, which the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions partnered to launch, is featured by Waste360.

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Q&A with Linwood Pendleton: Co-Author of Study on Economic Impacts of Ocean Acidification

Ocean acidification is a global, long-term problem whose ultimate solution requires carbon dioxide reduction at a scope and scale that will take decades to accomplish successfully.

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Mussels, Clams Hit by Ocean Acidification: How Effects Could be Forestalled

There's a growing understanding of the factors that contribute to ocean acidification in coastal areas and how shellfish respond. The Christian Science Monitor reports on a new study, co-authored by a Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions researcher, which looks at the risks to shellfish and identifies areas where livelihoods are most at risk.

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Q&A With Ian McAllister: Protecting the World's Largest Remaining Temperate Rainforest

Advisory board member and The Nature Conservancy president and CEO Mark Tercek interviews Ian McAllister about Pacific Wild--the wildlife conservation organization McAllister cofounded--and Canada's Great Bear Rainforest, which is featured in the new PBS series EARTH: A New Wild.

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New Hope for an Ancient Forest

Advisory board member and president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Mark Tercek examines the intersecting interests in Canada's Great Bear Rainforest--the subject of the latest installment of the PBS series Earth: A New Wild and of a TNC-brokered agreement on forest management. After years of discord, the rainforest's main constituents came together to create a plan for blending conservation with compatible human use. TNC help bring this agreement to fruition, leading a funding campaign that led to $120 million in financing for "conservation management and ecologically sustainable business ventures designed to protect the forest and support the livelihoods of local communities," says Tercek.

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Fellows Program Brings High-Profile Leaders to Duke to Address Global Challenges

Reubenstein Fellow and former Duke CEO Jim Rogers on the graduate-level class on renewable energy sources for the developing world that he co-taught with Nicholas Institute director Tim Profeta: “It has been remarkable to work with such a diversity of students to seek solutions to a major problem facing so many in the developing world." The Rubenstein Fellows Academy brings leaders with deep expertise in issues of global importance to the Duke campus each year for 1–12 month terms.

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Finally, a Nature Documentary That Shows the Whole Picture

In a Huffington Post blog, Advisory Board member and The Nature Conservancy president and CEO Mark Tercek writes, "I love nature documentaries. They take us to Earth's most spectacular places and teach us about its fascinating diversity of life. Yet something always seems missing. Where are the people who live alongside these animals? Even in the remotest landscapes, people are an integral part of nature." That idea is reflected in EARTH: A New Wild, a five-part PBS series in which The Nature Conservancy (TNC) partnered.

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Kristina Johnson Inducted into Inventors Hall of Fame

Advisory board member, CEO of Enduring Hydro, and former Under Secretary for Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy Kristina Johnson has been inducted into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame. Johnson is widely recognized as a pioneer in optoelectronic processing systems, 3D imaging, and color management systems. The Inventors Hall of Fame honored her for her work in polarization-control technology.

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