TROPICAL RESOURCES
The Bulletin of the Yale Tropical Resources Institute
Baker, Dana, Sarah Tolbert, and Emily Zink. Reflections on Reading 30 Years of TRI
Bulletins.
30th Anniversary Special Issue, 2014, pp. viii–ix
Tropical Resources Institute
Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
301 Prospect St., Office 202
New Haven, CT 06511
environment.yale.edu/tri
Reflections on Reading
30 Years of TRI Bulletins
Dana Baker, Sarah Tolbert & Emily Zink
2013 – 2014 TRI Program Assistants
To commemorate the 30th anniversary
of the Tropical Resources Institute, we embarked upon a project to explore the evolution and history of the Institute. Delving into
past Bulletin articles, research and faculty
profiles, and past collaborative partnerships
from across the globe, we spent the fall of
2013 reading and cataloguing 260 articles
published from 1986 to the present. After
indexing each article, we pulled out the major and minor themes, and examined where
the research was conducted. The use of
wordles, or word maps, gave us the chance to
visualize how students’ research reflected the
changing challenges, understandings, and
pursuits in environmental studies. Although
this project started with the aim of understanding the history of TRI, our research
gave us insight into how conceptions of tropical resources have evolved over time.
In 1986, the publication, then known as
TRI News, began as a way to disseminate
news from research stations across the globe
before the time of internet and email. Now
the bulletin, known as Tropical Resources,
gives fellows the opportunity to publish and
share summer research findings. Tropical
Resources encourages fellows to think creatively about their research. The articles selected for this Anniversary Issue provide a
glimpse into the history of the Institute and
represent the breadth and diversity of research conducted by TRI fellows.
Thirtieth Anniversary Special Issue
For 30 years, TRI has given fellows the
space to creatively research social, political,
and environmental issues in the tropics. Fellows are allowed the freedom to move beyond orthodox science and thus have reshaped and collectively redefined ideas of
natural resources, from logging in Amazonia
(Nepstad 1989) to a study of whale shark
tourism in Belize (Quiros 2005). TRI’s
presence in this work has taken fellows all
over the world, with over 58 countries represented in the published Bulletins since 1986.
While the research articles we analyzed are
dominated by studies in Latin American
countries, fellows have increasingly expanded their research to include countries in Asia
and Africa.
One of the most significant transitions
we observed was the changing perception of
what a natural resource is. In 1986, most
student research was rooted in the natural
sciences. Research topics were dominated by
studies of material physical resources such as
forests, wildlife, and natural resource management. However, a noticeable shift occurred as students started to conceptualize
natural resources in increasingly abstract
ways. While many students continue to
study physical resources, current research
now incorporates social science frameworks
by blending traditional scientific methodologies with ethnographic and social studies.
Today, there is a greater emphasis on development and policy, ecological economics,
Tropical Resources Bulletin viii
Dana Baker, Sarah Tolbert & Emily Zink (2014)
indigenous knowledge, and climate change
in the tropics.
Yet the work does not end there. The
challenges facing our generation continue to
morph and our education and traditional
disciplines must follow suit. Like the fellows
before us, we continue to feel a sense of urgency as the breadth of challenges facing the
global community grows. Natural resources
continue to be extracted in unsustainable
ways, communities lack access to clean water
and healthy food, species are going extinct,
climates are changing, and poverty persists.
But as researchers, citizens, and expats who
have lived abroad, we remain cautiously op-
timistic. The boundaries of the environmental studies field are expanding and the silos
of traditional disciplines are being challenged. We now realize that scientific orthodoxy alone will not solve the social, political,
and environmental problems persisting on
the global scale. At the beginning of this
30th anniversary of TRI’s special edition, we
echo the words of TRI’s founder, Bill Burch,
at the 2014 TRI symposium: we challenge
both current and past fellows today to break
free from the frameworks of traditional scientific research to create new responses to
global problems that cross borders, traditional disciplines, and world cultures.
Countries represented in TRI News and TRI Bulletin research articles, 1986 - Present
Thirtieth Anniversary Special Issue
Tropical Resources Bulletin ix