Overfishing, habitat degradation, water and land use mismanagement, pollution, natural hazards, and climate change are the principal threats to sustainability of natural environments and the societies that depend on them. We at the Abess Center and the Department of Environmental Science and Policy (EVR) approach these challenges knowing that we cannot solve the environment’s greatest crises without first accepting people and the environment as two inherently linked components of the earth system. Abess-EVR research and academics deal with complex interdependent nonlinear systems that involve human-environmental feedbacks, different legitimate perspectives and values, nontrivial or unclear tipping points, and limited possibilities for controlled experimentation.
EVR’s mission is solutions-oriented, policy relevant research and scholarship, training the next generations of environmental managers, practitioners, and research scientists. Our faculty are leading scholars in the applied environmental social sciences dedicated to addressing pressing ocean, coastal, and climate challenges central to long-term sustainability and resilience. We are the hub at the University and Rosenstiel School for connecting the natural sciences with society and policy.
The EVR faculty and students seek to improve understanding of the dynamic interactions between humans and the natural world. Our motivation arises from an awareness that better scientific information alone, without a full understanding of the cultural, socioeconomic, political, and psychological context for the use of this information, can limit its impact, and in some cases lead to unintended or unwanted equity and environmental consequences. Here at the Rosenstiel School, and UM in general, in comparison to the natural and physical sciences, there has been a dearth of social scientists dedicated to environmental scholarship and teaching. The Abess Center and Department of Environmental Science and Policy fills this critical intellectual gap.
EVR is interdisciplinary at its core and aims to broadly represent the functional and cultural intersection between humans and the natural world. As such, Abess-EVR focuses on providing environmental and social science perspectives that have explicit policy relevance for these complex challenges. In particular, the interdisciplinary aspect of the department refers to conducting teaching and research that are problem driven and solutions oriented, integrating data, methods, and theories from the social and natural sciences.
