Environmental Policy and Planning Faculty Profiles

Research and teaching emphases are on the politics of international development and environmental conservation, with a focus on institutional change, property rights, poverty, and biodiversity. Written extensively on 1) indigenous knowledge, 2) community-based conservation, 3) common property, 4) population and resources, and 5) environmental identities. Recent interests include the decentralization of environmental policy (especially forestry and wildlife), and the emergence of environment as a subject of human concern.

Dr. Keoleian co-founded and serves as co-director of the Center for Sustainable Systems. His research focuses on the development and application of life cycle models and metrics to enhance the sustainability of products and technology. He has pioneered new methods in life cycle design, life cycle optimization of product replacement, life cycle cost analysis and life cycle based sustainability assessments ranging from energy analysis and carbon footprints to social indicators.

Teaching and research in evolutionary and behavioral ecology; resource control and reproductive success in vertebrates, including humans; integration of evolutionary theory and resource management; resources and reproductive variance; reproductive and resource tradeoffs for modern women.

Teaching and research interests are focused on environmental justice, public opinion and the environment, and influences on environmental policy making. A founder of the Environmental Justice Program at the University of Michigan. Current research includes understanding the causes of disproportionate environmental burdens in people of color communities and the role that environmental factors play in accounting for racial and socioeconomic disparities in health.

Michael Moore's teaching involves courses in natural resource and environmental economics. His research interests include analysis of federal water policy and water allocation conflicts between environmental and consumptive uses of river systems; economic aspects of biodiversity and species conservation; and economics of environmental markets, including markets for green products (such as green electricity) and markets for pollution permits (such as the federal SO2 allowance market).

Ted Parson holds a joint appointment with the School of Law. His interests include environmental policy, particularly its international dimensions; the political economy of regulation; the role of science and technology in public issues; and the analysis of negotiations, collective decisions, and conflicts. His recent research has included projects on scientific and technical assessment in international policy-making; the policy implications of carbon-cycle management; the design of international market-based policy instruments; and development of policy exercises, simulation-gaming, and related novel methods for assessment and policy analysis.

Research focus

Issues of social and ecological sustainability with a primary focus on the drivers of overconsumption and the conditions for restrained resource use.

My courses are largely case-based and discussion-oriented. They examine different dimensions of environmental decision-making in organizations, agencies and society in the face of conflict. Specific course topics include: Environmental Dispute Resolution; Collaborative Ecosystem Management; Negotiation and Mediation; and Environmental Organizations.

Steven Yaffee is the Theodore Roosevelt Professor of Ecosystem Management. Research involves natural resource and environmental policy, planning and management; processes of policy formation and implementation; and organizational arrangements for managing natural resources. Of particular interest is policy involving endangered species, public lands, ecosystem management, and nonprofit environmental organizations. Also interested in innovative ways to make collective choices including alternative dispute resolution, collaborative problem-solving, and negotiation processes.

To thrive on this finite planet humans need to reduce material and energy consumption by over 80%, and do so, most likely, by mid-century. The need for such a radical change in our behavior derives from an expectation of diminishing and, eventually, leveling material and energy abundance, and an appreciation of the climate disruption caused by our consumption.

Such a transition will be historically unprecedented, but it need not be a collapse, nor a return to a distant past. It will involve giving up business-as-usual thinking and the misdirected hope that, given time, we can return to normal. It will require our adapting to a more appropriate pace. Transitioning to a sustainable patterns of living requires using a psychology of transitions. We must plan for, motivate, and maintain radical, yet perhaps delightful, behavior change starting with each of us, where we are, now.

Professor Hardin holds a joint position with the Department of Anthropology. Her areas of interest and scientific study include human/wildlife interactions, and social and environmental change related to tourism, logging, conservation and hunting in the forests of Central African Republic. Recent projects focus on the increasingly intertwined practices of health and environmental management in equatorial and southern Africa. She also studies historical and ethnographic aspects of concessionary politics involving corporations, NGOs, and local communities, particularly in Africa.

Andy Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise; a position that holds joint appointments at the School of Natural Resources & Environment and the Ross School of Business. His research focuses on corporate strategies that address environmental and social issues.  His disciplinary background lies in the areas of organziational behavior, institutional change, negotiations and change management.  He has published seven books and opver seventy articles. Prior to academics, he worked for the US Environmental Protection Agency, Metcalf & Eddy, the Amoco Corporation, and T&T Construction and Design, Inc. In 2004, he was a Senior Fellow with the Meridian Institute.

Teaching interests include competitive environmental strategy, strategies for sustainable development, organizational behavior, negotiations, green construction, and organizational change

Research Interests:

My broad research interests are related to the human dimensions of global change and social studies of science. I am particularly interested in understanding: (a) the use of technoscientific information, especially seasonal climate (El Nino forecasting) in building adaptive capacity to climate variability and change (drought planning, water management, and agriculture) in the U.S. and Latin America (Brazil, Mexico and Chile); (b) the impact of technocratic decisionmaking on issues of democracy and equity; (c) the co-production of science and policy and the role of technocrats as decisionmakers; (d) the role of popular participation in urban environmental policymaking and policymaker/client interactions; (e)U.S.-Mexico border region environmental policymaking especially regarding transboundary water conflict, environmental health, a common use of shared natural resources.

Tom Lyon is the Dow Professor of Sustainable Science, Technology and Commerce, and serves as Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise.  His research and teaching interests include environmental information disclosure and greenwash; corporate environmental strategy; environmental NGOs; voluntary environmental agreements; government regulation of business; industrial organization; and energy and the environment.

Joan Iverson Nassauer is Professor of Landscape Architecture in the School of Natural Resources and Environment. She was named Fellow by the American Society of Landscape Architects (1992), Fellow of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (2007), and Distinguished Practitioner of Landscape Ecology in the US (1998) and Distinguished Scholar (2007) by the International Association of Landscape Ecology. She focuses on the cultural sustainability of ecological design in human-dominated landscapes.  Her research offers knowledge and strategies for basing ecological design on cultural insight, strong science, and creative engagement with policy. Her teaching and recent projects apply this approach to brownfields, vacant property, exurban sprawl, and agricultural landscapes.