Research

John O'Loughlin awarded NSF grant for the study on the relationship between climate change and support for violence in Kenya

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 19:11:35 +0000

John O'Loughlin awarded NSF grant for the study on the relationship between climate change and support for violence in Kenya Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/18/2024 - 13:11

Professors John O’Loughlin (Professor of Geography and Fellow, Institute of Behavioral Science), Terry McCabe (Fellow, Institute of Behavioral Science and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology) and Andrew Linke (Associate Professor of Geography at University of Utah and former PhD student in Geography) have been awarded $804,990 from the National Science Foundation programs in Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences (HEGS) and Cultural Anthropology for a study on the relationship between climate change and support for violence in Kenya.

Using a geographically-stratified representative sample of 3000 rural Kenyan households in 11 counties (map) for a 5 wave panel survey, guided by in-depth interviews and focus groups of key informants, the project will examine how households adapt to environmental stressors caused by weather changes? Adaptions include the sources of incomes and household contributions, intentions to move, actual migration, increased sharing of scarce resources and political mobilization including protests and violence. The effects of seasonal changes in the weather on attitudes and behavior regarding cooperation or conflict with members of the same group/locale and with other ethnic groups will be examined by looking at the changing roles of formal institutions (national and local governmental), as well as informal institutions (traditional customs and the role of elders). Especially focusing on the levels of food insecurity that vary greatly between livelihoods and counties, the project will also map the level of both governmental and non-governmental aid reaching the communities.

The topic of the effects of climate change in the Global South continues to gain both public and academic interest as its consequences become more evident. Among the expected effects on human livelihoods are growing food insecurity, deteriorating health conditions, increases in migration, and pressures on scarce household resources. Less evident are outcomes that might lead to changes in traditional livelihood practices, including arrangements for sharing of resources; such outcomes could lead to more reliance on cooperative customs. This project on climate change effects will focus on the differential impacts across societal groups and across different ecological and livelihood zones since rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa are highly vulnerable to climate and environmental change.

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John O'Loughlin: Growing number of war-weary Ukrainians would reluctantly give up territory to save lives, suggests recent survey

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 18:25:31 +0000

John O'Loughlin: Growing number of war-weary Ukrainians would reluctantly give up territory to save lives, suggests recent survey Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/18/2024 - 12:25

See full article linked here.

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John O'Loughlin: Who supports Putin? Men, older generations and traditionalists, study shows

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Dec 2023 20:46:59 +0000

John O'Loughlin: Who supports Putin? Men, older generations and traditionalists, study shows Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 12/03/2023 - 13:46

Daniel Strain

An international team of researchers has released an exhaustive look at support for Russia’s autocratic President Vladimir Putin across several neighboring countries.

The study, published Nov. 30 in the journal Political Geography, was a massive effort. From 2019 to 2020, researchers led by John O’Loughlin at CU Boulder contracted with local polling companies to survey more than 8,400 people face-to-face in six nations: Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Ukraine.

The team’s findings give a deep look at the type of people who support Putin, a former KGB spy who once held a photoshoot of himself riding a horse shirtless. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results reveal that Putin is more popular among men than women, and less popular among younger and more educated people.

“Our research has shown that Putin’s machismo and his authoritarian personality appeal to people who have more close-minded personalities, hold traditional values and don’t trust science,” said John O’Loughlin, professor in the Institute of Behavioral Science and Department of Geography.

In the former Soviet Union, Putin remains a complicated presence.

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Xiaoling Chen's essay published on China's healthcare workers

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 23:13:52 +0000

Xiaoling Chen's essay published on China's healthcare workers Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/29/2023 - 16:13

Xiaoling Chen's essay titled "‘They Want the Horse to Run but Without Providing Feed’: Labour Exploitation of Healthcare Workers in China" was published in the journal Made In China, as part of the issue "Out of the Fog". Completed in Spring 2023, this essay received generous support from the Gilbert White Doctoral Award granted by the Department of Geography at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder. This essay primarily draws from ethnographic research conducted at Ling County People's Hospital in Guangdong Province between 2021 and 2022. Xiaoling also extends gratitude to the Society of Woman Geographers, and the Geography Department, the Graduate School, and CARTSS at CU Boulder for supporting her research activities.

This essay is a part of Xiaoling's hospital monograph, which explores the healthcare provision and access landscape for older Chinese citizens affected by cerebrovascular diseases, the third leading cause of death in China. This monograph is distinct from Xiaoling's dissertation on China's Covid-19 response, which examines three biopolitical projects—digital surveillance (Chen 2023; Chen and Oakes 2023), vaccination campaigns, and online censorship (Chen 2020). Following the completion of her dissertation, Xiaoling intends to conduct follow-up research for this monograph, aiming to present both during- and post-pandemic perspectives within the public hospital space.

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Katie Clifford: CU Boulder geographer among inaugural group of public scholars

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 22:38:16 +0000

Katie Clifford: CU Boulder geographer among inaugural group of public scholars Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/08/2023 - 16:38

Katherine Clifford, a recent PhD and scientist at the Western Water Assessment, named to American Association of Geographers ‘Elevate the Discipline’ cohort

Katherine (Katie) Clifford, a researcher at the University of babyֱ��app Boulder, is among 15 geographers to be designated as “public scholars” in the realm of climate and society.

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) this month announced the first cohort in its new “Elevate the Discipline” program, which will train and showcase geographers in action—in the media, as voices for public policies and in advocating for change—on this year’s theme of climate and society.

The newly selected participants in 11 states and the West Indies “represent the rich and diverse range of practice within the discipline, including hydroclimatology, political ecology, climate and health, disaster geography, geoinformatics, soil science and more,” the AAG stated.

At the top of the page: Katie Clifford leads a discussion in a climate-adaptation workshop in Wyoming recently. Photo courtesy of Katie Clifford. Above: Katie Clifford

Clifford, who earned her PhD in geography at CU Boulder in 2019, is lead social scientist at Western Water Assessment, a research program funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that is under the auspices of the university. It supports “engaged science” to tackle real-world climate adaptation issues across babyֱ��app, Wyoming and Utah.

With a strong background in environment-society geography, Clifford is known for her research illuminating the regulatory challenges and uneven consequences of climate hazards and effects.

Clifford’s work focuses on how frontline communities are uniquely affected by climate hazards, and her findings help diagnose policy loopholes and develop equitable and just adaptation strategies in partnership with communities, the AAG stated.

Her research has explored how the U.S. Clean Air Act has in many ways failed to adapt to increasing dust storms, which often leave Western communities with unsafe air quality. She also is currently working with rural, low income, Latinx and tribal communities on issues of extreme heat, flooding, wildfire and drought.

Clifford said she is honored to be selected “alongside so many talented geographers and know this will make me a better engaged researcher. This fellowship shows that the field of geography invests in and values scholars who are doing work that is actionable and impactful for pressing societal and environmental issues—something that not all disciplines have embraced.”

She added, “This is why I chose to be a geographer: We tackle real-world issues, with a holistic approach that embraces complexity, engage with multiple scales and center questions of equity and justice. Climate change is one of the most pressing issues we face today, and this fellowship harnesses geography’s strengths to make important contributions to policy and practice.”

Fifteen geographers were selected through a competitive process. The program will train them over the next several months in leadership, media skills and policy strategies, and thereafter will promote their work in public discourse.

This is why I chose to be a geographer: We tackle real-world issues, with a holistic approach that embraces complexity, engage with multiple scales and center questions of equity and justice."

“It’s exciting to support the work of these scientists as they engage in community-oriented, justice-based work on climate change,” said Rebecca Lave, AAG’s 2023-24 president and a professor of geography at Indiana University Bloomington, where her specialties include critical physical geography and the political economy of stream restoration.

“We want to open up avenues to value and protect geographers’ opportunity to do public and engaged scholarship.”

The program will be launched this month, with frequent virtual meetings culminating in a week-long intensive training onsite at AAG headquarters in Washington, D.C. Thereafter, AAG will work with the participants and their institutions to continue promoting their public scholarship.

“Geography is essential to understanding and solving the world’s most pressing issues,” said Gary Langham, AAG executive director. “We created Elevate the Discipline to help geographers raise the profile of their work, showing how instrumental our discipline is to addressing climate change and critical social issues.”

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Diego Melo and Colleagues awarded ‘Right to the Discipline’ Grant by The Antipode Foundation

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 19:15:03 +0000

Diego Melo and Colleagues awarded ‘Right to the Discipline’ Grant by The Antipode Foundation Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/17/2023 - 13:15

Diego Melo (CU Geography), Bernardino Mosquera (Río Quito, Chocó) and Juan Diego Espinosa (National University of Colombia) have been awarded one of ten Antipode Foundation “Right to the Discipline” Grants. They will develop a community-based film with Black and White-Mestizo peasant-farmer communities living along the upper Atrato River basin in northwestern Colombia. The project is titled “Living in the wake of a mining disaster: Co-creating film narratives along the Atrato River, from the gold they mined to the skin we inhabit.”

Antipode Foundation “Right to the Discipline” grants are intended to facilitate creative intellectual and political interventions, inventive forms of collaboration, and tears in the fabric of extant orthodoxies in geography. There are many radical practices, ideas, and sites of knowledge production that do not receive support in the current funding environment. These grants encourage imaginative, daring, and unruly scholarship and praxis, including but not limited to workshops, scholar-activism, and conventional modes of research. The Antipode Foundation recognises movements and forces of social and spatial change already at work inside/outside the academy, and wish to amplify interventions that might otherwise not receive funding. In so doing, the Antipode Foundation wants to support attempts to go beyond, and reshape, the boundaries of established academic practice.

Diego and colleagues will facilitate a series of workshops to explore the non-conventional, contradictory, deeply affective, and embodied narratives of people who have been exposed to mining-induced riverine pollution. The 10,000 GBP grant will be used for travel expenses, walk-along interviews, body-territory workshops, a poetry circle, and a script-writing and video editing workshop. These activities will facilitate the tools for participants to build their own narrative and co-produce a film about the slow violence of mechanized gold and copper mining on communities’ bodies and territories.

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David Bachrach's research featured on YouTube channel of IAIPI

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 00:14:00 +0000

David Bachrach's research featured on YouTube channel of IAIPI Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/18/2023 - 18:14

David Fernando Bachrach was invited to visit IAIPI (a university in Bandung, Indonesia) and to share his experiences studying and researching abroad. He discussed these topics on the weekly recap youtube channel of IAIPI.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q03_QnVAEDQ]

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Mara Goldman: Why biodiversity matters and what the world is doing about it

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 20:44:21 +0000

Mara Goldman: Why biodiversity matters and what the world is doing about it Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/25/2023 - 13:44

On Dec. 19, more than 190 countries—excluding the U.S. and the Holy See—signed onto an agreement to protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030 and take 22 other measures to reduce global biodiversity loss this decade.

The agreement, signed at the United Nations Convention of Biological Diversity’s 15th Annual Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Montreal, is a particularly impactful one, said Mara Goldman, an associate professor in the Department of Geography who specializes in biodiversity conservation, indigenous knowledge and global development.

“They came together to redesign a new biodiversity conservation framework for post-2020, as there was global failure to meet any of the prior goals that were set for protecting biodiversity,” she said. “It’s a big achievement not only for biodiversity conservation, but for human rights.”

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Emily Yeh & Emma Loizeaux to attend world’s largest climate conference

Anonymous — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 22:38:24 +0000

Emily Yeh & Emma Loizeaux to attend world’s largest climate conference Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/03/2022 - 16:38

Starting Nov. 6, representatives from 197 countries and hundreds of activists, scientists and industry representatives will gather in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference.

This year’s event, known as COP27 (27th annual Conference of Parties), marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 by these 197 countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Four CU Boulder babyֱ��app—James Anaya, Colleen Scanlan Lyons, Max Boykoff and Emily Yeh—will join this year’s gathering to observe the negotiations and contribute valuable insights on the impact of climate change on human rights, the importance of forest conservation and trends in climate change communication. Also attending COP27 are Emma Loizeaux, doctoral student in geography, Emily Benton Hite, an affiliate babyֱ��app lecturer in continuing education and anthropology, and Rob Ross, project manager at the Consortium for Capacity Building.

James Anaya, CU Law

UN Human Rights and CU Boulder will host a news conference about the upcoming Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit on Nov. 8, led by summit co-chair James Anaya, Distinguished Professor and Nicholas Doman Professor of International Law at CU Boulder.

The virtual and in-person Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit on Dec. 1–4, 2022, will bring together experts on climate change and human rights, including youth activists, business leaders and journalists from around the world, to discuss tangible policy commitments and actions that people from all walks of life can take to address this global threat that disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable people.

“The Right Here, Right Now Summit and our participation at COP27 place CU Boulder at the center of the efforts to address the human rights impact of climate change,” Anaya said. “There are few issues as important as this one, and the summit will help to further commitments on a global scale to understand its multiple dimensions and forge solutions.”

Colleen Scanlan Lyons, environmental studies

Colleen Scanlan Lyons, associate research professor in environmental studies and project director for the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force, will attend COP27 for its second week (Nov. 13–18). The GCF Task Force, a project of CU Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science with a global secretariat hosted by CU Boulder and UCLA, facilitates subnational leadership to reduce deforestation and advance inclusive, equitable, low-emissions development in states and provinces and across entire regions. It’s the largest organization of its kind, working with 39 states and provinces in 10 countries.

As part of this work, Lyons is looking forward to meeting with newly elected government leaders at this year’s conference, including Indigenous leaders in Brazil and from around the world.

“We have a key moment to reach subnational governments, who can have quite a big impact on climate work,” Lyons said. “I'm super excited to sit down and engage with these governors and say: All right, you were just elected. Here's the (environmental) platform that you ran on. How are you going to put this into practice?”

Her biggest hope is that as a result of COP27, countries agree on concrete financing and policy solutions for forest conservation and livelihood generation.

Max Boykoff, environmental studies and CIRES

Max Boykoff, professor in environmental studies and fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), is leading CU’s delegation to COP27 this year and attending in person for its second week.

As a researcher of climate change communication and of media coverage of climate change as part of the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO), Boykoff plans to observe creative communications and engagements associated with climate policy action, and develop research looking at the politics of “climate emergency.” He also plans to participate in a panel discussion hosted by 10 Billion Solutions, a global communications consultancy group that focuses on climate and sustainability communications.

Boykoff said he is hopes COP27 will be the “implementation COP,” as Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs H.E. Sameh Shoukry declared—where productive negotiations can directly connect with significant implementation and action.

“I also look forward to observing creative ways in which observer organizations, businesses, nongovernmental organizations and other social movements will be creatively communicating about climate change in the many events and activities that surround the negotiations,” Boykoff said.

Boykoff also said he is eager to sample Egyptian food and culture on his first visit to the country.

Emily Yeh and Emma Loizeaux, geography

Emily Yeh, professor of geography and babyֱ��app affiliate at the Center for Asian Studies, is attending COP27 for its second week along with Emma Loizeaux, doctoral student in geography, who will be attending the first week.

They are eager to attend their first United Nations Climate Change Conference as both of their research practices are centered around elements of international relations, people and climate change. Yeh has researched various aspects of climate change, including Indigenous knowledge about climate change and vulnerability to climate change on the Tibetan Plateau, and teaches a graduate seminar focused on climate justice from a political ecology perspective.

Loizeaux’s doctoral research is on market and technical solutions to climate change, with a focus on China and the U.S. She is interested in how particular technologies are prioritized in terms of how people in power approach climate challenges.

They are part of a Collaborative Event Ethnography project, spearheaded by affiliate babyֱ��app lecturer Emily Hite and several collaborators, which will study the conference itself as a site of global governance. Yeh and Loizeaux want to better understand the role and priorities of Chinese state and non-state actors, and are particularly interested in observing how they might promote various carbon mitigation strategies, interact with other countries in the Global South and advocate for elements of global climate justice.

COP26: How this climate summit was different, and what needs to happen next (Nov 16, 2021)

Context for COP27

COP27 comes at an increasingly crucial moment for reducing emissions and limiting the impacts of climate change on the planet and its most vulnerable people. A report released by the UN climate office on Oct. 26 warns that the world is “nowhere near” hitting important climate targets—such as the 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius) 2015 Paris agreement target—and that instead, estimates predict that temperatures will rise to 4.5 degrees F (2.5 C) above pre-industrial averages by the end of the century.

Since the formation of the UNFCCC, vulnerable nations at the forefront of climate change impacts have also been calling on developed countries to provide financial assistance that can help them address loss and damage—permanent loss or repairable damage caused by the manifestations of climate change. Yet, last year’s conference, COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, failed to meaningfully address loss and damage or meet expectations for funding. If it is added to the agenda at COP27, parties will discuss how to raise, manage and distribute money to pay for loss and damage.

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Sarah Posner & John O'Loughlin: East Africa Climate Change

Anonymous — Wed, 11 May 2022 15:30:40 +0000

Sarah Posner & John O'Loughlin: East Africa Climate Change Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/11/2022 - 09:30

In 2008 and 2009, a severe drought swept through much of Kenya and Tanzania. Nomadic herders, or pastoralists, such as the Maasai people in Tanzania, pushed south in search of greener expanses, bringing tens of thousands of cattle with them.

What happened next was largely unprecedented: Locals from a region of Tanzania called Manyara, who were also Maasai, evicted the newcomers, beating some so badly they ended up in the hospital.

Terrence McCabe, professor of anthropology at CU Boulder, has lived and worked with pastoralist groups in the region for more than 30 years. For him, that sudden and shocking violence was a symbol of a changing East Africa—a warning sign that people such as the Maasai may not be able to move across the landscape as freely as they used to. Survey results from the last two years in central Kenya show that life for pastoralist peoples may be getting even worse. Herders are struggling to feed their families in the midst of a pandemic, a historic locust invasion and drought after drought.

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