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The Woods Institute is playing an important role in helping leaders from the public and private sectors address sustainability challenges through a series of dialogues and workshops focused on key public policy issues. As a trusted and neutral source of research and information, Woods brings business, government and NGO leaders together with experts from Stanford and other academic institutions to create practical solutions.

Biofuels: This workshop explored the challenges and opportunities of biofuels adoption in five important areas: food, agriculture, and trade; land use and conservation; water resources; greenhouse gases and climate (including non-CO2 emissions); and air quality.

California Ecosystem Services: A one-day workshop on Dec. 3, 2008 to explore opportunities to use California's policy and regulatory framework to help better conserve the state's valuable ecosystem services. The workshop brought together a small group of leading conservation practitioners, policymakers, and academics.

Carbon Offsets: This October 2007 workshop focused on implementation of a voluntary carbon offset market in the United States.

Climate Change: The California Climate Change Policy Workshop brought together researchers and decision-makers to discuss key topics including: transportation emissions reduction strategies; promoting innovation and investment in clean technology; market-based approaches; and strategies for communicating about climate change issues. An upcoming climate change workshop will examine a range of issues associated with carbon offsets.

Climate & Conservation: This exploratory workshop brings together a small group of leading legal scholars, practitioners, and scientists in the conservation field. Through a series of presentations and discussions, the group examines new ideas and approaches, such as whether and how to modify existing conservation easements and other instruments to aide in adapting to a changing climate in the future.

Global Water Workshop: The impact of global change on water resource vulnerability. This workshop is part of a planning effort on global drivers of freshwater change funded by the Woods Institute. Our aim is develop a strategic research collaboration, based at Stanford University but involving experts from a variety of institutions, to explore drivers of water-supply vulnerability throughout the world and to use the resulting models and analysis to evaluate solution strategies.

Groundwater Dialogue: This Uncommon Dialogue will evaluate potential solutions for and novel approaches to the sustainable use of aquifers. Our goal is to examine global challenges to groundwater depletion and salinization, with the aim of developing a research agenda that contributes to finding practical solutions to sustainable groundwater use.

Pacific Salmon: This November 2007 workshop will explore opportunities to reform the Pacific Salmon Treaty and inform renegotiation of Annex IV. Participants will examine sustainable business practices for Pacific salmon stocks and identify models that provide the greatest potential for economic and environmental sustainability.

U.S. Farm Bill: This series of dialogues focused on the 2007 Farm Bill reauthorization, examining opportunities for converting U.S. farm subsidies into "green payments" that encourage farmers to engage in valuable conservation practices.

Workshop on the Economic and Policy Implications of Water Banking: The workshop served as a launching point for a long-term project to evaluate the costs, benefits and challenges of water banking, with a focus on California and the Kern River Fan aquifer in particular. Interest in water banking is growing, so an assessment of the replicability of the Kern Fan system is due.

Water, Health & Development: The goal of this Uncommon Dialogue is to develop a collaborative group of scholars and practitioners focused on the linkages between urbanization and land-use change, water and waste management, and public health in peri-urban zones of sub-Saharan Africa. Employing a workshop format, the event brought together individuals from a diversity of disciplines, organizations and backgrounds to create opportunities for new ideas and research directions to emerge.

Water in the West: These workshops focused on fostering collaboration between university researchers and water management, water users, and water policy decision makers to formulate a policy-relevant, multidisciplinary research program appropriate for the next century of the region's development.

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