CSIRO welcomes Fulbright Scholarship recipient Dr Drew Bennett to the Sustainability Program and the Valuing Sustainability FSP
Researchers with CSIRO’s Valuing Sustainability FSP (VS FSP) and the A&F Sustainability Program are looking forward to welcoming Fulbright Scholar Dr Drew Bennett in January 2025.
Dr Bennett is currently the Whitney MacMillan Professor of Practice of Private Lands Stewardship at the University of Wyoming’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, and his work focuses on strategies to balance agricultural production and the conservation of wildlife and other natural resources on private lands in the American West.
Earlier this year, it was announced that Dr Bennett had been awarded a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research on natural capital investment jointly with CSIRO.
The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, fostering connections between the United States and more than 160 other countries. Recipients are selected for their academic and professional achievement, as well demonstrated leadership in their field.
Dr Bennett’s project, ‘Investing in Natural Capital: Rural Livelihoods and Resource Conservation in Australia and the U.S.,’ aims to compare the approaches the two countries take in investing in sustainable land management practices. The initiative is expected to yield valuable insights and foster collaborative learning between Australia and the United States.
Dr Bennett will be working closely within the Agriculture and Food (A&F) Sustainability Program and the VS FSP’s Local Provenance project research team, which is co-led by Katie Ricketts and Cathy Robinson. Dr Bennett will be supporting the Local Provenance Team’s work to develop and systematically integrate locally defined co-benefits into emerging sustainability markets and across international contexts.
“Our work aims to develop processes that define and integrate community-identified values and support place-based sustainability. Dr Bennett’s expertise will significantly contribute to advancing our understanding and implementation of these processes,” says applied economist Katie Ricketts, a VS FSP project co-lead and Principal Scientist at CSIRO. Her research interests include food systems and sustainable agricultural transformation.
Dr Bennett has worked closely with several CSIRO researchers and has provided external feedback on the portfolio of projects currently underway within the VS FSP. Through this work, he has come to believe that Australia and the American West face many similar economic and environmental challenges, including diversifying economic opportunities in rural communities and conserving iconic biodiversity.
“Australia and the United States have invested significantly in ecosystem restoration to enhance natural capital, such as forest thinning to prevent catastrophic wildfires,” he explains. “These investments support habitat conservation and create economic opportunities through increased restoration jobs and incentives for sustainable land management practices. The distinct implementation approaches in both countries offer an ideal situation for shared learning.”
“Given so many parallels, it seems like a fantastic opportunity to develop a partnership between the University of Wyoming and CSIRO,” Dr Bennett continues. “Later this summer a CSIRO postdoctoral researcher will join our team in Wyoming and visit several field sites in and around Wyoming. The researcher will also spend time with regional partners at Colorado State University to look at differences across American states.”
When Dr Bennett joins the VS FSP in January 2025, he will spend five months based in Canberra. However, his project will also involve fieldwork in rural Queensland and other regions of Australia.
“It’s the unfortunate case that most socio-economic indicators used in ESG reporting, natural capital management disclosure, and across sustainability frameworks are lagging” says CSIRO’s Katie Ricketts.
“We can’t ignore the mounting evidence that says that there are real consequences for sidelining social co-benefits. We must be inclusive of community values and priorities, otherwise we are putting nature-based and/or decarbonisation outcomes in peril. This is true in Australia and it’s true in America too. We’re excited to work with Drew to understand the science behind measuring what matters.”
Author – Ruth Dawkins