Where Are They Now? Rod Dobell

The POLIS Water Sustainability Project is turning 20 this year! We couldn’t have made it this far without the support of our colleagues, partners, advisors, funders, water leaders, and many many supporters across B.C. (and beyond!) who give their time and energy and continually champion the necessary and crucial work of water sustainability and watershed security. To celebrate some of the people who have made this milestone possible, POLIS Communications Director Laura Brandes got in touch with several “POLIS alumni” to find out what they’ve been up to since leaving POLIS, and to ask if there are lessons from their POLIS days that they still carry with them…

Rod Dobell was an advisor to the POLIS Water Sustainability Project since its initial launch in 2003 until his retirement in 2022. In recent years, his research focused on regional oceans governance and costal and marine spatial planning through the Centre for Global Studies, the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy, and the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance at the University of Victoria. Rod has a PhD in economics from MIT and taught economic theory at Harvard for five years before returning to Canada as Professor of Political Economy at the University of Toronto. Subsequently, he alternated academic work with executive appointments at the Government of Canada, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and as President of the Institute for Research in Public Policy.

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Laura Brandes: What is your current job and how long have you been there? 

Rod: I was Senior Research Associate at the University of Victoria’s Centre for Global Studies (CFGS) and retired last year after 21 years in that position.

 

Laura: When did you work at POLIS?

Rod: I became associated with POLIS pre-conception, as a member of a committee recommending the appointment of Michael M’Gonigle as Tri-Council Eco-Research Chair in the University of Victoria Law School. Michael founded the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance (of which the Water Sustainability Project is one initiative) in 2000, and I was involved pretty much from that beginning, initially with Kelly Bannister on community-university engagement and the Clayoquot Alliance for Research, Education and Training.

 

Laura: Are there any skills or lessons from your POLIS days that you still carry with you today?  

Rod: Never underestimate the inertia of bureaucracy, perhaps especially in universities.

 

Laura: What adventures have you been on since leaving POLIS? Are there any major milestones—either personally or professionally—that you’d like to share? 

Rod: I guess the major milestone is the closing of my office in the Centre for Global Studies after 21 years at CFGS, and 45 at the University of Victoria.

 

Laura: Do you think POLIS is achieving what it should be? Where do you think we’re having the biggest impact? 

Rod: I think that the biggest impact has been with water sustainability, research ethics, and Indigenous engagement.

 

Laura: What was your biggest contribution to the work at POLIS? And what were the impacts of that work?

Rod: I’d like to think that my biggest contribution was successfully lobbying for the move of POLIS from University House 4 (and its institutional home with the School of Environmental Studies and Faculty of Law) to the Sedgwick Building, C Wing and its new home at the Centre for Global Studies, as part of the successful relaunch of CFGS into its great Phase II.

 

Laura: There are some big concepts that are central to our ongoing work at POLIS—like ecological governance and watershed security. What do these concepts mean to you? And, in particular, has your understanding of these ideas changed over time, based on where your career has taken you and what you’ve learned in the last 20 years?

Rod: Ideas about these concepts have certainly evolved, and become much more embedded in notions of “planetary sustainability” and “Earth stewardship.” But I like to think that three core papers were ahead of the thinking on these ideas and still as good a statement of the issue as any: a 1988 paper with Ted Parson on a World Atmosphere Fund; a speech/paper I gave in 1989 on the need to see national security as environmental security; and a 1993 conference paper articulating the need to see humanity as embedded in—rather than positioned to exploit—ecological systems or natural assets. I did bring some of these ideas into POLIS, but of course the understandings have evolved dramatically over the past twenty years (even if the public sense of urgency has not).

 

Laura: Do you have any favourite POLIS memories you’d like to share?

Rod: Any of several occasions of loud brainstorming sessions over odd food in University House 4! And the Watersheds 2014 gathering, which was held at the Quw’utsun Cultural and Conference Centre. I was invited to be a witness and offer a statement at this event, and I saw this gathering as a bit of a turning point in the working relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous neighbours around water challenges.