Doreen Stabinsky
207-801-5710 | dstabinsky@coa.edu | faculty website

Doreen Stabinsky received a B.A. in Economics from Lehigh University in 1982 and a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California at Davis in 1996. From 1983-1986 she did graduate work in Botany at Humbolt State University. Doreen has held several positions with Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International; she is currently a genetic engineering campaigner for Greenpeace International. Doreen has been active in activist and advocacy work around genetic engineering and environmental issues for almost twenty years. She served as co-director of the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA. in 1984. While in graduate school at UC-Davis she helped found three environmental organizations: the California Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, and the California Biotechnology Action Council. She served as the interim director of the latter organization in 1991. She also worked as a project coordinator for the Pesticide Action Network North America Regional Center from 1992-1994. In recognition of this work she was awarded a Switzer Environmental Fellowship in 1991. Doreen was also a member of board of directors of the Council for Responsible Genetics from 1991-2003.

Doreen's research, activism, and advocacy has taken her all over the world. She has given invited public testimony before the Government of India, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee; the New Zealand Royal Commission Inquiry on Genetic Engineering; the Republic of the Philippines Senate Committee on Agriculture; and the Pontifical Council on Peace and Justice. Doreen has participated as an NGO observer and advocate in the development and implementation of the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety, negotiated under the auspices of the UN of the Convention on Biological Diversity. She has attended and participated in over twenty UN negotiation sessions and meetings on five different continents. Doreen has published articles and reports in a range of publications, including: Race and Class, Human Environment, Journal of Environment and Development, Virology, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She was co-editor, with Steven Brush, of Valuing Local Knowledge: Indigenous People and Intellectual Property Rights, Island Press, 1996. In 1990-2000, Doreen was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for her project, "Contested knowledge, contested ownership: Struggles over intellectual property rights and rice in the Philippines." This fellowship enabled her to spend six months in the Philippines teaching and researching.

Doreen joined COA as a permanent, half-time faculty member in 2001. At COA she teaches classes on global environmental politics, agriculture and biotechnology, international studies, the politics of the world trade organization, and a class on activism. Doreen is proficient in reading and writing French and Spanish. Her other interests include ultimate frisbee, cooking, and gardening.

B.A. Economics, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, 1982
Post-baccalaureate study, Biology, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 1983-1986
Ph.D. Genetics, University of California, Davis 1996

Courses Taught

HS384Global Environmental Politics: Theory and Practice

This course will cover the politics and policy of regional and global environmental issues, including many of the major environmental treaties that have been negotiated to date (Montreal Protocol, Framework Convention on Climate Change, Convention on Biological Diversity). Students will gain both practical and theoretical understandings of how treaties are negotiated and implemented, through case studies of the climate change convention and the Cartagena protocol on biosafety. We will draw on both mainstream and critical theories of international relations when analyzing these negotiations. Students will become familiar with the range of political stances on different treaties of various nations and blocs, and the political, economic, cultural, and scientific reasons for diverging and converging views. We will pay special attention to the growing role played by non-governmental organizations in global environmental politics. We will conclude the course with discussions of some current controversial areas in international environmental politics. Level: Intermediate. Class limit: 15. Lab Fee $10.00 *HS*

HS445Introduction to Global Politics

This is an introductory level course that will expose students to basic concepts and controversies in international politics and serve as background for more advanced work in the area of international studies. Through historical readings and current events discussions we will answer questions fundamental to understanding global politics today, such as: What are the different roles that nation-states and non-governmental organizations play in international politics? How important are various international institutions (the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund ) in shaping the global political landscape? What exactly is civil society? Inequity defines many political relationships between actors in the global system: between developed and developing countries; between the rich and poor within those countries; between autonomous political groups and the nation-states in which they reside. To more deeply understand these relationships, we will examine some of the processes that have led to inequities in the current world political economy, touching on such topics as: colonialism and national liberation movements of the 20th century, the debt crisis, and the formalization of the international trading system. We will consider the topics from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, including political ecology, international political economy, and economic geography. Evaluation will be based on participation in class discussions, several short and long papers written over the course of the term, and a final project and its presentation to the class. Level: Introductory. Lab fee: $20. *HS*

HS546Agriculture and Biotechnology

This course will provide an introduction to global issues in agriculture today, with an emphasis on the controversies surrounding the use of genetic engineering in agriculture. We start with a careful study of critical issues facing agriculturalists and, indeed, all of us, to give students a broad overview of food production and agriculture globally. In the first half of the course, we will consider: the Green Revolution and technological developments over the last half-century; global trade in agriculture and impacts of major free trade agreements; famine, food aid, and food sovereignty; and neo-Malthusian perspectives on food production and critiques of those perspectives. In the second half of the course, we turn our attention to the science and politics of the new genetic technologies and potential social, economic, and ecological impacts of their use in agriculture. We will examine socio-political and ecological problems associated with transgenic soy production in South America and cotton production in India and China. We will also explore problems of contamination resulting from imports of transgenic maize into Mexico and canola exports from Canada to Japan. To conclude the course we will consider strategies of resistance throughout the world to the introduction of genetically engineered crops. Evaluation will be based on three written problem sets (8-10 pages each) and class participation. Level: Introductory/Intermediate. Limit: 20. Lab fee: $10.00. *HS*

HS748The Road To Copenhagen

In December 2009, representatives of the world?s governments, as well as business, labor, religious, environmental, and youth leaders will convene in Copenhagen, Denmark, for the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The event is significant, as government negotiators will likely be hammering out the final wording of an agreement on national and international actions to address the most serious environmental threat of our time: climate change. In this seminar-style course, students will prepare themselves to be part of this historic gathering. Using the actual negotiating texts, students will become familiar with the most important issues under negotiation. Each student, alone or in pairs, will also be responsible for becoming the class expert(s) on at least one of the issues ? understanding the negotiating history, the range of political positions being expressed in the negotiations, and the technical specifics of the various proposals being considered. Students will share their expertise throughout the term with the entire class through one or more formal presentations. Some attention will also be given throughout the term to the contributions of various non-governmental constituencies ? in particular, business, environmental NGOs, and youth ? to the global politics of climate change, examining how, and how effectively, they engage in the process to enable a meaningful outcome to the governmental negotiations that will culminate at the summit in Copenhagen. Students will be evaluated based on participation in class discussions, their formal in-class presentations, as well as contributions to a collective public blog that will document their experiences at the meeting in Copenhagen. Course level: Intermediate/Advanced. Pre-requisites: Signature of instructor. Lab fee: $10.

HS786Climate Justice

Climate change is one of the largest and most difficult challenges faced by contemporary societies. The challenge has multiple facets: environmental, social, political, economic - each with its own complexities. This course focuses primarily on the social, political and economic components of the climate problem, framed by the concept of climate justice. In the introductory section of the course students are introduced to basic conceptions of justice, the latest findings of climate science and possible impacts on regional scales, as well as the ongoing intergovernmental climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The main body of the course is dedicated to understanding the concept and implementation of climate justice: how the costs of climate change impacts and efforts to address climate change could or should be distributed between rich and poor, global north and global south, and what are the possible means whereby those costs might be collectively addressed through an intergovernmental agreement. Students will be evaluated based on regular quizzes, several short papers, class participation, and a final synthetic paper or project. Level: Introductory. Lab fee: $10. *HS*

HS821International Financial Institutions

International financial institutions (IFI) such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the regional development banks mobilize significant resources for both public and private sector investment in developing countries. Beyond this central role in lending and grant making to developing countries, the Global Environment Facility of the World Bank serves as the financial mechanism for major environmental treaties, including the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. What exactly are these institutions - how do they operate and who controls them? Why were they created and how have they come to be so powerful? The course will examine the history of the institutions, their governance structures, and their mechanisms of operation. Special attention will be paid to their role in the debt crisis and the subsequent era of structural adjustment lending, civil society critiques of the environmental and social impacts of bank lending, and the role and operation of the Global Environment Facility as financial mechanism for the environmental conventions. Readings will include primary documents of the IFIs themselves as well as decisions of the governing bodies of the UN conventions. We will also read both academic and civil society analyses and critiques of IFI lending. Evaluation will be based on class discussion as well as several problem sets assigned throughout the term and a final analytical paper. Level: Intermediate/advanced. Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. Students should have course background in international politics and/or economics. Class limit: 15. Lab fee: $10. *HS*

HS851Tutorial: Advanced Climate Policy

TBA

HS858Global Politics of Sustainable Development: 20 yrs after Rio

The Earth Summit that took place in Rio in 1992 defined the following two decades of global cooperation on environment and development issues. This course serves to review the history of those two decades and prepare students to be active participants in the UN review conference to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012. Students will read primary documents from the original conference and the 10-year review conference (the World Summit on Sustainable Development), and preparatory documents for the upcoming summit. They will examine positions of the main country blocs and the contributions of major UN specialized agencies (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN Development Program and UN Environment Program). A central axis for study and analysis of documents and positions will be the political economy of sustainable development. Evaluation will be based on class discussions, weekly written summaries of information contained in readings, and a final presentation or analytical paper on a topic of their choosing. Course level: Introductory/Intermediate. Prerequisites: none. Class limit: 15. Lab fee: none. *HS*