jivetalking

Episode 56: Gábor Ungvári (https://rekk.hu/colleague/1/gabor_ungvari ) is senior water economist at AQUA.REKK the water economics unit of the Regional Centre for Energy Policy Research. He received his MSc in economics in the Budapest University of Economic Sciences.

His main professional interest is applying economics for the advanced use of water resources and water related ecosystem services in the current context of water policy problems.

Since 1999 he has worked in a series of water-resource focused, interdisciplinary research and economic consultancy programs. His analytical work in water economics targets (among many) flood risk management, the problem of waterlogging management of sub-surface water resources and waterway development issues on the Danube. These experiences were used in the Economic Expert Group that contributed to the first National River Basin Management Plan of the WFD and in the Ex-ante economic analysis in the current second round of the plan’s supervision.

You can find all his papers on researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gabor_Ungvari2

The paper we discussed:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335619466_A_macroeconomics-inspired_interpretation_of_the_terrestrial_water_cycle

To make the complex issues along the water cycle more understandable for a wider audience he edits the Hungarian language blog and webpage www.szelidvizorszag.hu

This episode's motto: "If you think the economy is complex and interconnected then wait til you look at ecology!"

Other links:

Water for the Recovery of the Climate - A New Water Paradigm . http://www.waterparadigm.org/download/Water_for_the_Recovery_of_the_Climate_A_New_Water_Paradigm.pdf

Traditional floodplain farming in the Hungarian Flats

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-73250-3_28

Episode 55: Brendan Frett (https://pharmcollege.uams.edu/aboutus/contact-us/directory/22879-2/) is a professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and moonlights as a hobbyist watchmaker (https://www.reddit.com/user/AreWGadmin). His watch restoration projects often involve dramatic movement finishings that breathe new life into vintage timepieces. Brendan is fascinated by what makes things tick – from both a medical and horological standpoint.

This episode's motto: "Don't take apart a watch near shag carpeting!"

Episode 54: Gjalt Huppes former head of Department Industrial Ecology, CML, Leiden University helped develop models at the interface economy-environment: LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), SFA (Substance Flow Analysis) and E-IOA (Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis). He now focuses on climate change governance and related resource governance. Key is institutions redesign to stimulate and accommodate renewable electricity and related energy carriers such as batteries, hydrogen and pumped hydro. Institutions are a prime requisite for successful climate policy, with publicly controlled infrastructure a second main pillar, and research, development and demonstration the third more applied pillar. The physical basis of society, energy and resources, requires not just physical and technical-economic considerations, as security of supply is based on substantially global governance institutions. Working less and consuming differently, as key culture shifts for sustainability, also require substantial institutional changes.

This episode's motto: "Climate chaos is going to be bad but our inaction will make it much worse."

Strategic Designs for Climate Policy Instrumentation: Governance at the Crossroads

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328956884_Strategic_Designs_for_Climate_Policy_Instrumentation_Governance_at_the_Crossroads

Paper on CC and Syria's civil war (not by Gjalt):

http://csm.org.pl/pl/component/phocadownload/category/65-2018?download=902:csm-komentarz-water-security-2018

Episode 53: Alex Baum (https://www.linkedin.com/in/baumawb/) is a city and mobility planner with a masters focused on "Sustainable Transportation and Infrastructure Planning”. He is very interested in the integration of land-use, mobility, and sustainability planning, and how this relationship creates livable, thriving communities. He has worked for a public transport agency and a regional planning organization. Prior to his career in planning, he co-founded and managed a non-profit community sailing center, Hudson River Community Sailing (https://hudsonsailing.org/), which teaches math, science, and leadership to underserved NYC youth through sailing and boat building and provides waterfront access to the NYC community at large.

This episode's motto: "Build trust by talking to each other"

Links:

https://vimeo.com/237581965 (a recent HRCS video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9BUyWVg1xI (crazy planners)

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2010/01/weapons-of-the-weak-the-review/ (Seeing Like a State)

Episode 52: Steven Asei-Dantoni (https://www.linkedin.com/in/greatteachersteve/) in his own words: "As far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a doctor. I was dreaming of traveling the world to heal people. Life happened with its up and down. Along the way, my goals might have changed but my life purpose stayed the same. I am passionate about helping people to become who they truly are. I am obsessed with championing heroes of change. I believe in the interconnectedness and the power of the community. As a learning experience designer I focus on creating deep human transformative experiences. Time and time again, I have seen the magic of human connections operate successfully.

I am a lecturer, researcher and international consultant in the field of social innovation. My work focuses primarily on applying “Play-based learning” to improve educational experiences. I work with public and private organizations using design thinking and innovation to solve complex problems. I co-designed solutions for teachers to be more creative and innovative. I am a lecturer at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. I hold a Masters of Arts in Geopolitics and International Relations from Sciences Po Toulouse."

This episode's motto: "Teaching is easy when everyone is excited."

Links:

How I became a (pirate) university lecturer

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-became-pirate-university-lecturer-steven-asei-dantoni/

Episode 51: Veronika Chutska (https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronika-chutska-b6046b194/) is a second year Security Studies student at Leiden University. She is interested in the resources in relationship to security and the crisis management.

This episode's motto: "Security is relative to what you expect."

Links:

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2009/12/liquid-assets-the-review/

"Living in a post-water world"

https://ssrn.com/abstract=3435171

"Using prices to manage water scarcity"

https://ssrn.com/abstract=3435167

"Society, politics and desalination"

http://www.kysq.org/pubs/Desal_C18.pdf

"The political economy of land and water grabs"

https://www.kysq.org/pubs/C33.pdf

Episode 50.5: In this episode, I answer your questions in an Ask Me Anything format. It was really fun to do this, and I'll definitely do another episode after another 50 episodes with guests :)

A big thanks to Cornelia for voicing your questions!

This episode's motto: "Everyone finds their own way. Be creative, not regretful."

Links of interest:

Give people another passport

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2012/04/a-decentralized-path-to-development-and-freedom/

Re-organizing economics to make it useful

https://www.core-econ.org

My review of Doughnut Economics:

https://one-handed-economist.com/?p=82

Coachabamba vs the locally-managed water supply:

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2009/02/cochabamba-update/

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2011/11/why-cochabamba-failed/

Raj Chetty (using data to think about economics)

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/14/18520783/harvard-economics-chetty

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2012/11/are-models-useful/

Tax property to get the rich

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2016/07/the-political-economy-of-property-taxes/

Carbon tax and rebate

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2017/07/more-on-carbon-taxes/

The threat of climate change

https://kysq.org/lp2m/we-have-no-insurance-against-this-risk/

https://one-handed-economist.com/?p=1125

Improving water manager performance

https://kysq.org/aguanomics/2011/12/internal-performance-insurance-markets/

(and I'll write a paper in 2020 on this topic!)

Episode 50: Rutger Hoekstra (@Rutger_Hoekstra) is the author of “Replacing GDP by 2030: Towards a common language for wellbeing and sustainability” which is published by Cambridge University Press.

http://www.rutgerhoekstra.com/replacing-gdp-by-2030/

He has a PhD in environmental economics and is specialized in metrics for wellbeing and sustainability (“Beyond-GDP”). He has worked with/for Statistics Netherlands, United Nations, OECD, World Bank, European Commission, European Central Bank, various ministries, NGO’s, KPMG and large companies. He was the co-chair (together with Jan Pieter Smits) of the UN-ECE/OECD/Eurostat Task Force which developed the Conference of European Statisticians Recommendations on Measuring Sustainable Development. He was the project leader of the Sustainability Monitor for the Netherlands which was the predecessor of the current Monitor Brede Welvaart. He was also worked for the Dutch Parliament as an expert for the Commission for Broader Measures of Well-being.

Rutger has lectured at many universities and published numerous publications on sustainable development, natural and human capital, globalisation, circular economy, input-output analysis, decomposition analysis and big data applications. He was also Scientific Director of True Value at KPMG-Sustainability where he helped corporate clients measure their social and environmental impacts using the True Value methodology. In 2019, Rutger founded his own company, MetricsForTheFuture.com which advises companies, governments and international institutes for better metrics on wellbeing, sustainability and value-creation.

Picture: Sjoerd van der Hucht Fotografie

This episode's motto: "Life is too complicated for a single measure of progress"

Episode 49: Valera (https://twitter.com/valera_zakharov) helped create and currently works on the Mobile Developer Experience team at Slack. He tried feature (Android) development once, but quickly discovered that his passion lies in building tools and infrastructure for other engineers. Prior to Slack, he led the development of Android Espresso and contributed to the infrastructure that scaled test execution to support the gargantuan needs of Google.

This episode's motto: "Business productivity is about facilitating communications more than writing code."

Episode 48: Mark (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcgeemark/) lives in San Francisco, where he leads client solution design at CyberSource, a Visa company. Before joining Visa, Mark headed the product development team at TSYS that grew the payment gateway by 10X. Part of this success came from leading the Agile transformation of the IT, Product, PMO, Governance and Finance teams involved in the payment gateway business. Before that he managed a privately held web content management solutions start-up, where he founded a consulting practice that tripled revenues in two years. Prior to Quantum Art, Mark adventured in Germany, where he worked as senior product manager at Intershop Communications, and as a business analyst at Hewlett-Packard. While in Germany, Mark studied in the Euro*MBA program and founded Western Europe's first graduate education distance learning fraternity. Prior to Intershop, Mark was on board with Pacific Bell as they launched the first “Baby Bell” Internet service using Netscape 0.9. Mark’s first job out of college was at Franklin Templeton, where he got into public speaking through Toastmasters and Dale Carnegie. A lifelong learner, Mark studied Philosophy and Business Economics at University of California Santa Barbara. Mark’s passions are filmmaking and travel to film festivals. He attends South By Southwest every year and has been to Cannes and the Venice International festivals. With the Scary Cow filmmaker co-op, Mark produced and acted in independent films (e.g., https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1778349).

This episode's motto: "Settling down can be a wonderful thing."