O’Neill SchoolBloomington

Twenty-five members of the faculty and staff of the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington have successfully completed Mental Health First Aid Training.

The training is a nationally recognized curriculum that increases mental health awareness, decreases stigma, helps people understand signs of symptoms of mental health disorders, and provides guidance on how to help someone having a mental health issue.

“Just like traditional medical First Aid training, this Mental Health First Aid Training gives individuals the skills to recognize, respond, and react until a person suffering from a mental health crisis can get the professional mental health services they need,” said Megan Starnes, director of strategic initiatives at the O’Neill School.

Many of the school’s student services staff at the school have completed the training and are now certified to assist. Several other staff and faculty members also finished the training, which covered common signs and symptoms of both mental illness and substance use, how to interact with a person in crisis, and how to connect that person with the help they need.

The training teaches individuals to assess for the risk of suicide or self-harm, listen nonjudgmentally, give reassurance and information, encourage appropriate professional help, and encourage self-help and other support strategies.

Note: If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health emergency, please call the campus crisis telephone line at (812) 855-5711 (after-hours, choose option 1), go to your local hospital’s emergency department, or call 911.

Many faculty members and students from the O’Neill School will participate in the 42nd annual fall research conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). The meeting, which will convene virtually November 11-13, is organized around the theme “Research Across the Policy Lifecycle: Formulation, Implementation, Evaluation and Back Again.”

O’Neill School attendees will present research or serve as discussants for panels on topics like COVID-19, crime, energy justice, healthcare management and policy, racial inequities, policy design, public management, and organizational behavior. A full list of participants can be found in the APPAM online program.

Connect with the O’Neill School at #2020APPAM

Faculty

Sanya Carley, winner of the World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance
• 11/11, 11-11:55 a.m. – Unpacking Energy Justice in the U.S.: Who It Impacts? How It Impacts Them? and, How Is Government Helping?
• 11/11, 3-3:30 p.m. – APPAM Awards Ceremony
• 11/13, 1-1:55 p.m. – If Everyone Agrees We Should Modernize Energy Infrastructure, Why Is It so Hard to Do?

Aaron Deslatte
• 11/12, 11-11:55 a.m. – Designing Policy Tools for Effective Environmental Management
• 11/12, 2-2:55 p.m. – What Does It Take to Turn Around a Struggling Neighborhood?

Seth Freedman
• 11/11, 11-11:55 a.m. – Provider Networks in Medicaid, Small Group, and Individual Insurance

Alex Hollingsworth
• 11/11, 2-2:55 p.m. – Wednesday Poster Session 1: Crime & Methods
• 11/12, 3-3:5 p.m. – Thursday Poster Session 1: Crime & Politics

David Konisky
• 11/11, 3:30-4:30 p.m. – Opening Plenary: Racial Justice and the Policy Lifecycle: What Have We Learned from the Policy Response to Racial Inequities in the United States over Time?
• 11/13, 1-1:55 p.m. – If Everyone Agrees We Should Modernize Energy Infrastructure, Why Is It so Hard to Do?

Alberto Ortega
• 11/12, 1-1:55 p.m. – Empirical Research on Discrimination in Criminal Justice and Policing
• 11/13, 11-11:55 a.m. – Employment and Financial Security

Kosali Simon
• 11/10, 12:15-1:15 p.m. – Navigating the Academy as a Member of an Underrepresented Group
• 11/11, 11-11:55 a.m. – Spillover effects of the ACA on Health Care Use and Economic Outcomes
• 11/11, 12-12:55 p.m. – Exploring the Relationship Between Homelessness and Health Outcomes
• 11/11, 2-2:55 p.m. – Wednesday Poster Session 6: Health & Public Management
• 11/12, 11-11:55 a.m. – Panel – Policy Causes and Consequences of Substance Use: Timely Evidence on Opioid and Marijuana Use
• 11/13, 2-2:55 p.m. – COVID-19 and Evidence-Based Policymaking
• 11/13, 2-2:55 p.m. – Social Distancing Policies As Reactions to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Coady Wing
• 11/11, 11-11:55 a.m. – Spillover effects of the ACA on Health Care Use and Economic Outcomes
• 11/11, 11-11:55 a.m. – Provider Networks in Medicaid, Small Group, and Individual Insurance
• 11/11, 2-2:55 p.m. – Wednesday Poster Session 1: Crime & Methods
• 11/12, 1-1:55 p.m. – Panel – Design, Uptake, and Effects of Health Insurance
• 11/12, 3-3:5 p.m. – Thursday Poster Session 1: Crime & Politics
• 11/13, 2-2:55 p.m. – Social Distancing Policies As Reactions to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Doctoral Students and Recent Graduates

Ashley Bradford
Michelle Graff
Laura Helmke-Long
Patrick Hibbard
Danyao Li
Felipe Lozano
Trevor Memmott
Laura Montenovo
Johabed G. Olvera

Faculty and students from the O’Neill School will participate in the 49th annual conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), convened virtually November 11-13. The conference will bring nonprofit management scholars from around the world together to share their research and to discuss the theme “From Climate Change to Social Justice: How Citizens are Re-Shaping Nonprofits and Philanthropy in an Age of Disruption and Transition.”

More information about the conference, as well as the agenda, can be found on the ARNOVA 2020 conference website.

Connect with the O’Neill School at #ARNOVA20

Faculty

Jennifer Brass
• 11/13, 11:45 a.m. – State-Society Relations, Funding, & Service Provision

Brad Fulton
• 11/12, 12:15 p.m. – Retheorizing nonprofit capacity & aims: implications of research on access, human resources, identity
• 11/12, 1:45 p.m. – Politics, Purpose & Preferences in Religious Philanthropy
• 11/12, 1:45 p.m. – Environmental/Climate Change

Beth Gazley
• 11/13, 2:15 p.m. – Environmental/Climate Change

Kirsten Grønbjerg
• 11/12, 1:45 p.m. – Exploring Advocacy Venues, Tactics, and Organizational Characteristics

Jill Nicholson-Crotty
• 11/13, 11:45 a.m. – Advocacy, social movements, and identity based organizations

Allison Schnable
• 11/12, 3:15 p.m. – Institutional Impacts in International Development: NGO Resource, Life Cycles & Govt-NGO Relationship

Students and recent graduates

Noah Betman
Janet Jock
Renzo de la Riva Aguero
Wesley Zebrowski 

New research by scholars including Siân Mooney, dean and professor at the O’Neill School, shows that to keep climate change in check, CO2 emissions into the atmosphere must be curbed. Yet, the soil of terrestrial ecosystems has the capacity to store large quantities of carbon in the long term. An international team of scientists coordinated jointly by INRAE and the University of Bonn (Germany), and involving the CNRS in France, has shown that if this capacity were used more efficiently, it could cut CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by a third. Moreover, it would boost agricultural yields significantly in many parts of the world. This requires a transition toward sustainable farming practices and soil management: good news for both preserving soil functions and food security. Such a transition must be adapted to the environmental and socio-economic conditions of different regions of the world. In an article published in the October 27th issue of Nature Communications, some 20 specialists propose measures to develop a global strategy for storing carbon in agricultural soils.

Over the past ten years, carbon emissions caused by human activity averaged 4.9 gigatons a year. To keep climate change in check, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced. Thanks to the organic matter they contain (from plants and microorganisms), soils of terrestrial ecosystems store two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere. Increasing the annual carbon stock in agricultural soils by 0.4% (or 4 per 1000) in the top 40 centimeters of soil would, in theory, be equivalent to the increase of annual carbon emissions caused by human activity. This is the goal at the heart of the “4 per 1000” initiative launched by France during the COP 21 in 2015, which aims to promote increased soil carbon storage through sustainable farming practices.

Currently, the degradation of arable land has become a major risk factor for food security, particularly in developing countries, because overly degraded soils (poor in organic carbon) are no longer fertile. However, implementing sustainable farming practices (conservation agriculture, agroforestry, etc.) could put an end to the damage done. Adding organic matter to degraded soils would not only increase carbon storage, but would also lead to more stable and fertile land for an agriculture that stands up better to climate change. The authors of the study put the issue back on the agenda by analyzing the environmental and socio-economic conditions that must be taken into account in different parts of the world through concrete examples in Europe, the United States, Australia, and southern Africa. They also propose a strategy for using the potential of agricultural soils more efficiently in order to help combat climate change.

Increase soil carbon stocks in your own backyard

Rolling out a worldwide plan requires overcoming several hurdles: disparities in the quality and properties of soils in different sites and farming practices that vary widely. Such diversity requires that specific and local measures be taken to promote carbon sequestration in soil. Unfortunately, knowledge of the soil conditions is far from equal. That is why scientists recommend putting databases into place that would record a diagnosis of soil, modelling potential yield gains, and using the right fertilizers to achieve the desired result. While such data is available in European countries like Germany, France, and Belgium thanks to high-resolution soil mapping, there is a glaring lack of information in developing countries. In those countries, measures for restoring arable land can be taken locally by getting farmers and other stakeholders, who are generally well informed about the state of their soil, involved.

In order to promote sustainable soil management, the development of tools such as integrated platforms for measuring and predicting the evolution of carbon stocks will be key to help policymakers make the right decisions. In the U.S., a prototype is currently being developed and tested at the University of Colorado.

Policies and economic measures designed to get things going

The best economic and social measures for putting carbon storage programs into place are those that involve several stakeholders including NGOs, private companies and local players. Many multinational agrifood businesses have heeded the consumer call to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This way, major industrial players committed to the 4 per 1000 initiative can help bring about the transition toward sustainable agriculture on a large scale. Local initiatives are also important, like that of a Dutch foundation that developed some 20 camps throughout the world to raise awareness and train local players in a region in restoring ecosystems and adopting sustainable farming practices. After studying many examples, the scientists identified three factors to take into account to ensure that future measures are effective:
– Getting agricultural markets and related industries to commit to measures
– Encouraging small-scale action involving several local players
– Improving local capacity for managing soils.

Reference

W. Amelung*, D. Bossio, W. de Vries, I. Kögel-Knabner, J. Lehmann, R. Amundson, R. Bol, C. Collins, R. Lal, J. Leifeld, B. Minasny, G. Pan, K. Paustian, C. Rumpel, J. Sanderman, J.W. van Groenigen, S. Mooney, B. van Wesemael, M. Wander, and A. Chabbi*, Towards a global-scale soil climate mitigation strategy, Nature Communications 27 October 2020. DOI: doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18887-7

*These authors contributed in equal measure

Scientific contact:

Abad Chabbi – abad.chabbi@inrae.fr
Unité de Recherches Pluridisciplinaires Prairies et Plantes Fourragères.
AGROECOSYSTEM scientific division
Nouvelle-Aquitaine Poitiers INRAE Centre

Press contact :

INRAE press office : 01 42 75 91 86 – presse@inrae.fr

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Sanya Carley, professor and director of the Master of Public Affairs program at the Indiana University O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, will be awarded the World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM). The award, granted by David and Joy K. Peyton, honors research that focuses on “pathways to achieve measurable but as-yet unrealized gains in overall environmental performance, in particular to reduce consumption and waste,” according to the APPAM website.

“Writings about global climate disruption concentrate on what needs to be done,” observed donor and prize committee member David Peyton. “Dr. Carley has called attention to the who and the how, as a supplement to the what. What we can scarcely afford,” he continued, “is a division between objective analysis of our current conditions and needed remediation, on the one hand, and advocacy for disadvantaged people on the other. People, that is, who bear either an unfair share of today’s pollution, or the costs of transition to a clean-energy economy.”

Carley’s research focuses on policy and other efforts aimed at advancing the innovation of low-carbon and efficient energy technologies in both the electricity and transportation sectors. Her recent projects focus on the U.S. energy transition, including a study of vulnerable populations to the transition and a study of public acceptance of energy infrastructure. She and a team of O’Neill colleagues and students are currently analyzing the results of a first-of-its-kind survey of low-income households to study the effects of COVID-19 on energy insecurity, which has revealed that many U.S. households are being forced to reduce or forgo basic household needs, like medicine or food, to pay an energy bill.

“Sanya Carley has taken a lead in addressing justice and equity considerations using a serious academic lens,” added committee member and O’Neill School alumnus Daniel Matisoff of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Her research has become highly influential in this literature.”

O’Neill School Dean Sian Mooney offered her congratulations to Carley, who becomes the second-ever recipient of the award.

“This honor highlights the importance and timeliness of Sanya’s research, and we could not be more proud of her for this major achievement,” Mooney said.

The award will be presented virtually at APPAM’s annual research conference in November, which will take place entirely online.

More of Carley’s recent work can be found on her research team’s Energy Justice website.

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program has awarded a grant to a team of O’Neill faculty, scientists, and conservation practitioners to use farming data to improve nutrient management and water quality. The goal of their research is to offer farmers information on nitrate losses that can help inform their management decisions.

Dr. Landon Yoder will serve as the principal investigator alongside co-PIs Dr. Todd Royer and Dr. Adam Ward, Dr. Courtney Hammond-Wagner (Stanford University), Ben Wicker (farmer, Indiana Agriculture Nutrient Alliance), Lisa Holscher (Conservation Cropping Systems Initiative), and Hans Schmitz (farmer, Posey County Purdue Extension).

Applying fertilizer is critical to famers’ profitability. However, some synthetic nitrogen used in fertilizer is lost through subsurface leaching and surface runoff during heavy rainfall events, or to the air through volatilization. This costs famers money while also impairing water quality. Both farmers and the public would benefit from improving nitrate retention, through lower fertilizer expenses and safer water for drinking and recreation, respectively.

While farmers have cut soil erosion rates in half over the past 40 years, nitrate loss from fertilizers remains a challenging problem. Farmers do not have access to data on nitrate loss at a scale useful to making farm management decisions. With the data that is available, it can be difficult to connect decisions made at individual farms to downstream outcomes because most monitoring is done at a watershed level.

Yoder and his team will involve 25 farmers in their project to collect water samples that will be analyzed for nitrate. They will also seek farmers’ insights about what they see as the most effective ways to retain nitrate using the new data.

The project will begin in December 2020 and last through November 2022.