Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Climate Change, Gender and Migration

Recently finished the first draft of a book chapter for UNESCO, collaboratively with Emmanuel David, a post-doc researcher with PhD from CU-Boulder. Our chapter explores the intersections of literature on gender/livelihoods/migration and disaster/gender. The intent is to consider the ways climate-change related migration may be differentially experienced by men and women. It was a fascinating project -- a hard one since there's little scholarship combining these factors. Much work remains to be done.

Click here for our working paper.

I hope to soon undertake original research making use of a gender lens to consider migration-environment connections.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Pop-Env at Colegio de Mexico

Certainly scholarly interest in the connection between demographic dynamics and environmental context is on the rise -- I can only hope it’s in response to the real need of solid research to inform policy response to critical issues such as climate change!

There are exciting new developments at Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. In Dec 2009, the Population Center at the “COLMEX”, in collaboration with UNFPA and CONAPO, organized an international workshop on “The Demographic Factor in the Contemporary Environmental Crisis.” Check out the program here!

The meeting was fascinating – covering a wide range of topics including theory linking demography-environment, health, inequality, livelihoods, and gender.

I contributed two presentations – the first representing more of a “think piece” based on a chapter drafted for UNESCO, in collaboration with Emmanuel David. The topic was “Climate Change, Migration, and Gender” and the work brings together several disparate, but complementary, bodies of literature to consider future research and policy needs.

The second presentation offered a summary of results from my collaborative several projects undertaken with Wayne Twine of the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. These projects, focused on the natural resource implications of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, have been situated at the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance Site. In general, they reveal the importance of natural resources as a “safety net” among AIDS-impacted households

Carrying Capacity Dialogue at Steinbrenner Institute

In Nov 2009, I was honored to be an invited speaker as researchers at the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research, at Carnegie Mellon University, continue their consideration of research on population-environment topics. The two-day dialogue explored three main topics:

1) Measures of U.S. resource consumption, including rates, amounts and origins of the resources.

2) Measures of U.S. food production and implications of population growth.

3) Measures of impacts of population growth on resources and quality of life.

My own presentation encouraged CMU scholars to move past simplistic representations of population-environment associations and to include more nuanced consideration of demographic and social processes. As examples, more careful consideration of the environmental aspects of immigration could yield more fruitful policy response as compared to building yet-higher border walls. Also, culture and environmental values as forces shaping consumption deserve central attention in consideration of society's ecological footprint.