Christopher Scott, PhD, Morris K. Goddard Chair in Penn State’s Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, will present the EEEP Seminar Series, “The Science-Policy Interface: Field Research and Board Room Experience” on March 1, 2023.
Abstract: This EEEPI dialogue is intended to convey that evidence-based policy is one of multiple impact pathways. Based on an eclectic sampling of experience from several dozen countries across five continents and as many decades – including water-energy economic modeling in the US, Mexico and India where he has lived and worked plus current Penn State work on the water-energy-food nexus in the Americas, South Asia and Africa – Chris Scott invites students, faculty, and decision-makers to have an open and frank discussion of what works, what doesn’t, and how the academy can move beyond research “that’s just an academic exercise.”
Read full paper: Science-Policy Dialogues for Water Security: Addressing Vulnerability and Adaptation to Global Change in the Arid Americas
Speaker Bio: Christopher Scott is a Professor and holds the Maurice K. Goddard Chair in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Pennsylvania State University. His transdisciplinary research focuses on the water-energy-food nexus, water security, U.S. – Mexico and South Asia transboundary water resources policy, with emerging interests in linked transboundary energy policy. From 2006 – 2021 he was at the University of Arizona, where he served as 2017-21 Director of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and Professor of Geography, Development and Environment. He earned his PhD and MS at Cornell University, BS and BA at Swarthmore College, and attend K-12 at Woodstock School in India. He speaks Spanish, Hindi, and conversational Portuguese and Nepali.
Outside the academy, Dr. Scott has worked fifteen years for NGOs, government agencies, and applied-research institutes around the world. From 1997 – 2005, he led water policy research at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), including for three years based at the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo in Guanajuato, México, and for four years as IWMI Asia Regional Director based in India.
Dr. Scott served as 2019-21 Chair of the Consensus Study on Drylands Sustainability Partnerships of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) and the Mexican Academy of Science. He was a 2021-22 Fulbright Scholar in Argentina, 2020-22 Mountain Chair of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Nepal, in 2020 was named a Fellow of the International Water Resources Association, and 2018-19 Fellow of the Leshner Leadership Institute of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2011, he was founding co-director of the AQUASEC Center of Excellence for Water Security, a virtual science diplomacy center for the Americas.