Transcript for Gail Achterman

I'm Gail Achterman.

I'm the director of the

Institute for Natural Resources

at Oregon State.

The Institute is one of the multi-campus

research institutes in the Oregon University

system. But it's housed at Oregon State

and investments by Oregon State University

really made it possible to create this

inter-disciplinary research center.

We do research on natural resource

policy and management and environmental

policy and management issues.

And we also work extensively on

integrated natural resource information systems.

We really work as a research group

that helps policy-makers in Oregon

answer their questions. And at the same

time we try to work with policy-makers

and the broader public to identify

high-priority problems that need to be solved.

So an example of the kind of work we do,

when policy-makers come to us,

is an evaluation we did of the effectiveness

of our statewide land use program,

which helped inform the legislative deliberations

on what kinds of changes might be needed

in that system.

One other reason that sustainable

development is so important is that

our current systems, and this is a

big part of what we study,

are very fragmented.

We have silos that split up how we

manage natural resources in the environment

even though we know that all of the

systems are integrated.

So we have a parallel set of federal

agencies that do all those things.

And so on both the information side

and the policy side of what the

Institute for Natural Resources

does, we're trying to figure out

how we can break down those barriers.

How we can put all the information

together so that we look at the whole

system, not the various

silos, so that you don't have to go to

one place to look for water information,

another place to look for forestry information.

And we're doing that in conjunction with

the OSU libraries, where we have developed

a series of web portals called

The Oregon Explorer.

And that allows people to learn about

their space across all those silos

by going one place instead of 15 places.

We've got to understand, like the

example with Clean Water Services or other

examples with the Oregon Department of Transportation,

how can we invest in new roads and highways,

how can we invest in our waste water infrastructure systems,

in a way that reduces the time and cost

delivering those solutions

and at the same time

improves the environmental outcomes.

And we're very fortunate that local

government agencies like Clean Water

Services, and state agencies like

the Oregon Department of Transportation

have been willing to partner with the

university system to invent

and test these new ways of doing

business. Which should get better results

in terms of development

at the same time that we get better

results for the environment .