In 2014 IAN visited India to help the Ministry of Environment and Forests develop the Chilika Lake Report Card in Odisha, and a Report Card for the Jamnagar Marine National Park and a Cumulative Environmental Impact Assessment for the Gulf of Kachchh in Gujarat. Report cards developed for India … This time we are back to Odisha, to Bhitarkanika National Park, in the northern part of the state.

"Growing governance in Guanabara Bay" (Portuguese translation by João Paulo Coimbra) Em 4 de Outubro, Dave Nemazie e eu viajamos para o Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, para a terceira sessão de reuniões para o desenvolvimento do Boletim de Saúde Ambiental da Baía de Guanabara.

On October 4th, Dave Nemazie and I traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the third set of meetings to work on the Guanabara Bay Report Card. We presented the draft report card and report card website at the INEA (State Environmental Institute) offices to Andre Correa, the Secretary of the Environment for the State of Rio. On October 5th, we met with the secretary and his cabinet as well as other groups working on Guanabara Bay Restoration.

In September, Simon Costanzo, Caroline Donovan, and I traveled to Edmonton, Alberta for a science communication course sponsored by the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI). Participants had a diverse range of backgrounds and expertise, including researchers, planners, GIS analysts, communicators, and managers.

Future Card: a report card that forecasts future ecosystem health grades based on alternate management strategies. The holy grail right? Well hopefully. This idea of a “future card” began 18 months ago while I was attending a meeting held by the Luc Hoffman Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for the LIVES’s project (Linked Indicators for Vital Ecosystem Services).

In Early August, Jane Hawkey and I traveled to Mérida and Sisal, to help initiate an ecosystem health report card for the Yucatán State coast of Mexico.

I had the great opportunity to represent IAN and UMCES as the institutional representative to the Future Earth's Coasts Scientific Steering Committee meeting in Taipei, Taiwan last week. Hosted by JC Lin at the National Taiwan University, the meeting brought together 15 representatives from all over the world to discuss the scientific direction of the group for the next five years.

This blog is part of the Basin Report Card Initiative: a partnership between the World Wide Fund (WWF) and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) The Orinoco River Basin report card was released on July 6th, 2016 in Bogota, Colombia. This is the first report card in South America, and the first report card developed as a part of the partnership between WWF and UMCES.

"Across and through the Bay: Rio, Niteroi, and Guanabara expeditions" (Portuguese translation by João Paulo Coimbra) Em 20 de Junho de 2016, Bill Dennison and Dave Nemazie, e eu viajamos para o Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, para a segunda seção do workshop com as partes interessadas para desenvolver o Boletim de Saúde Ambiental (Report Card) da Baía de Guanabara.

On June 20th 2016, Bill Dennison, Dave Nemazie, and I traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the next stakeholder workshop to develop the Guanabara Bay Report Card. We convened the workshop on June 23rd in neighboring Niteroi, a city across the Bay from Rio de Janeiro. There were some of the same participants as our first stakeholder workshop as well as a wider group of stakeholders from additional universities and municipal government offices.