Philanthropy-State Relations in an Age of Biodiversity Crisis

Dr. Clare Beer, UCLA

The role of philanthropy in biodiversity conservation is rapidly changing. As philanthropic foundations and wealthy donors commit massive sums to help 'save the planet,' they are fueling a growing discourse that large-scale conservation and large-scale giving are both indispensable to solving the coupled climate and biodiversity crises. But are they? What would this mean, and how would this function in practice? This talk addresses such questions through a case study of one large-scale conservation initiative in Chilean Patagonia, established through a novel public-private partnership between the Chilean state and the U.S.-based philanthropic foundations Tompkins Conservation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. Drawing on thirteen months of qualitative fieldwork, it traces the origins and trajectories of this initiative and interrogates the broader implications of leveraging philanthropy in state environmental governance. Tompkins Conservation and The Pew Charitable Trusts attracted state buy-in for the partnership by speculating on the value and investability of national parks as economic assets. Reflecting a logic of conservation-as-development, this disrupted an entrenched state logic of conservation-versus-development that had derailed previous attempts to protect the region. Yet, my research finds that the execution of conservation-as-development in Chile – largely facilitated by these philanthropic foundations – is mimicking and reproducing key dynamics of extractive-led development, raising critical doubts about the feasibility and appeal of conservation-as-development as a green transition alternative.

I am an external collaborator of the eROSITA science team. It is an X-ray instrument built by the MPE in Germany. It was successfully launched in July 2019. eROSITA will map the entire sky in X-ray band and it will be 25 times more sensitive than the previous ROSAT All Sky Survey. 

Visit https://zoom.us/my/jac1604 to watch live. 

The deep gravitational potential wells of clusters of galaxies should capture fair samples of the total baryon fraction of the Universe, unless other physical processes drive baryons out of clusters. Thus precision measurements of the baryon fraction, particularly as a function of cluster mass, can reveal the history of baryon flux into and out of clusters. How those baryons are then apportioned between stars and intracluster gas---the star formation efficiency---informs models of cluster assembly and massive galaxy evolution, as well as efforts to use the cluster gas fraction to constrain the mass density and dark energy equation of state parameters. Even the partitioning of the stellar baryons alone, in and out of galaxies, tests models of cluster galaxy evolution, as intracluster stars are the final, unambiguous signature of stars stripped from cluster galaxies during tidal encounters. We have discovered that intracluster stars are a significant part of the stellar baryons in clusters and poorer groups of galaxies. I will present new work characterizing the properties of this previously unexplored component, as well as the consequences for the cluster baryon budget and its relationship to the Universal value.