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- Convenor:
-
Ilan Kelman
(UCL and UiA)
Send message to Convenor
- Stream:
- Climate Change
- Sessions:
- Friday 18 September, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
For decades, anthropology and geography have contributed separately to disaster and climate change research, notably to prevent adverse impacts. Based on this work, this session links the disciplines to show how climate change adaptation might be best suited as a subset of disaster risk reduction.
Long Abstract:
Both disaster research and climate change research from both anthropology and geography provide many theories, practical experiences, and approaches which are not often fully incorporated into the other discipline or topic. Given the basis of disaster risk being a combination of hazard and vulnerability (including exposure) with climate change substantially influencing some hazards, anthropology and geography in tandem provide recommendations about how to better connect disaster-related and climate change related work--and then with development.
This session seeks submissions on how the combination of anthropology and geography can and should contribute to linking disaster and climate change work. In principle, starting from basic definitions, climate change adaptation would be best suited as a subset of disaster risk reduction. In practice, this theoretical construct might or might not be sufficient to bring people and disciplines together, especially within current institutional structures. Other related topics, such as climate change mitigation and disaster response and recovery, also need to be incorporated through anthropology and geography joining forces, all placed within wider development and sustainability contexts.
For instance, although the theory of 'disaster risk reduction including climate change adaptation' is now well-established and published, theoretical challenges to this notion would be welcome. This session also solicits case studies--historical, ongoing, or proposed--demonstrating how much could be gained or lost by placing climate change adaptation within disaster risk reduction. One key is to ensure that emphasising climate change would not subsume the importance of anthropology and geography together explaining that vulnerabilities cause disasters.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 18 September, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Cognitive anthropology and cognitive geography could theoretically relate climate change to risk and vulnerability by way of a cognitive-cultural model.
Paper long abstract:
How do humans place climate change within the pile sort of risk, vulnerabilities and inevitabilities within their own respective "lifeworld?" Necessary and sufficient answers to these questions must be theoretically robust, necessary and sufficient. This paper proposes that Anthropology and Geography, two disciplines that at one time were one meta-disciplinary unit, can and perhaps should work together again in answering these questions by linking disaster and climate change within an overall risk ecology. Cognitive Anthropology, a subdiscipline of Sociocultural Anthropology, sits at the strategic juncture of culture and cognition and uses one of the most powerful mixed-methods techniques available, the cognitive-cultural model, to gain powerful insights into shared beliefs, values and understandings. These models are both empirical and ethnographic and relate the individual to a paradigm of shared understandings by way of cultural competence, cultural consonance and cultural distance. Cognitive Geography, a subdiscipline of Sociocultural Geography, on the other hand primarily focuses on map and landscape recognition and wayfinding and never fully embraced cultural-cognitive models as a practice in its engagements. Cognitive Geography does however add the potential to use Euclidian space to measure cultural distance between an individual and a cognitive-cultural model. Because ecological vulnerabilities create disaster risk and climate change is perhaps the biggest environmental and design risk of the Anthropocene, the best way of illuminating how people place climate change within their own respective "lifeworlds" might be found in the theoretical approach of cognitive-cultural models grounded in interdisciplinary engagements.
Paper short abstract:
Local contexts within Alaska and Trinidad are explored to indicate aspects of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation leading to connections between the two. The implications of enfolding climate change adaptation within disaster risk reduction at the local level are discussed.
Paper long abstract:
Starting from definitions, a conceptual model has been developed suggesting that disaster risk reduction already includes everything proposed by climate change adaptation. The fundamental ethos is that such topics work better when connected than when they are separate. This approach might work in theory, but has rarely been tested in practice. Here, two case studies are examined of the state of Alaska in the Arctic and the island of Trinidad in the Caribbean. Considering the local level, the specific contexts indicate specific aspects of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation leading to connections between these two processes. The implications of enfolding climate change adaptation within disaster risk reduction at the local level are discussed.
Paper short abstract:
In 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, a major global manufacturer of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. I focus on the case of saline IV shortages on mainland U.S. as a means to explore the intersection of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and contingency planning.
Paper long abstract:
Medical supply chains are geographically expansive, both reliant on carbon-intensive transport (e.g. ships, planes) and vulnerable to climate change impacts (e.g. hurricanes, floods). Many medical products are sourced globally in low-wage, low-tax regions with minimal consideration of potential climate impacts. Puerto Rico is a global pharmaceutical manufacturing hub: more than 20 companies create products from scalpels to pacemakers. Located in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico is vulnerable to more frequent and intense hurricanes due to climate change. In 2017, Hurricanes Irma (Category 4) and Maria (Category 5) hit. Locally, healthcare was severely strained due to power outages, but there were also global effects: widespread saline IV solution shortages on mainland U.S.; uncertainty about the availability of blood transfusion products in the UK; and antibiotic shortages that drove prices beyond the reach of low resource countries like Malawi. I focus on the case of saline IV shortages (for which the most data is available) as a means to explore the intersection of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and contingency planning. How do these approaches fit together in the case of saline IV shortages specifically and medical supply chains generally? Grounded in the mobilities scholarship and using Puerto Rico as a starting point (a U.S. territory that occupies a liminal geopolitical space between Global North and South), I explore the cascading global consequences of severe weather on vital mobilities: movements of goods, people and information that impact life chances.
Paper short abstract:
The goals of this study were to quantify the dependence of the population density on climatic factors over a territory. To identify tendencies of the population density redistribution in a warming climate by the end of the current century we applied the sharp climate change scenario RCP 8.5
Paper long abstract:
The goals of this study were to quantify the dependence of the population density on climatic factors over a territory. A paired GIS-analysis of the population density layer (a dependent variable) on climatic layers of warmth and water resources (independent variables) and climate severity over a territory was carried out. A significant linear regression was obtained that explained 32% the population density variation by climatic factors.
To identify tendencies of the population density redistribution in a warming climate by the end of the current century we applied the obtained regression to the sharp climate change scenario RCP 8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5). Over most Russia, the potential population density would increase on averageŠ± would remain low in permafrost regions and would decrease in fragments at the southern border by the end of the century.
However, sources of the population increase in the Russian Federation remain controversial. Using their regularities, demographes predict the population size to decrease down to 90-120 mln people by the middle of the current century and see the way to replenish labor resources in the replacement migration.
It seems to us that an alternative to the replacement migration involving Russia in "nescience economy" may serve automation and robotization declared by Industry-4.0.