School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemThree ways social identity shapes climate change adaptation(IOP Publishing Ltd, 2021-12)Adaptation to climate change is inescapably influenced by processes of social identity-how people perceive themselves, others, and their place in the world around them. Yet there is sparse evidence into the specific ways in which identity processes shape adaptation planning and responses. This paper proposes three key ways to understand the relationship between identity formation and adaptation processes: (a) how social identities change in response to perceived climate change risks and threats; (b) how identity change may be an objective of adaptation; and (c) how identity issues can constrain or enable adaptive action. It examines these three areas of focus through a synthesis of evidence on community responses to flooding and subsequent policy responses in Somerset county, UK and the Gippsland East region in Australia, based on indepth longitudinal data collected among those experiencing and enacting adaptation. The results show that adaptation policies are more likely to be effective when they give individuals confidence in the continuity of their in-groups, enhance the self-esteem of these groups, and develop their sense of self-efficacy. These processes of identity formation and evolution are therefore central to individual and collective responses to climate risks.
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ItemClimate change and loss, as if people mattered: values, places, and experiences(Wiley, 2017-09-01)The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is seeking to prepare for losses arising from climate change. This is an emerging issue that challenges climate science and policy to engage more deeply with values, places, and people's experiences. We first provide insight into the UNFCCC framing of loss and damage and current approaches to valuation. We then draw on the growing literature on value‐ and place‐based approaches to adaptation, including limits to adaptation, which examines loss as nuanced and sensitive to the nature of people's lives. Complementary perspectives from human geography, psychology, philosophy, economics, and ecology underscore the importance of understanding what matters to people and what they may likely consider to constitute loss. A significant body of knowledge illustrates that loss is often given meaning through lived, embodied, and place‐based experiences, and so is more felt than tangible. We end with insights into recent scholarship that addresses how people make trade‐offs between different value priorities. This emerging literature offers an opening in the academic debate to further advance a relational framing of loss in which trade‐offs between lived values are seen as dynamic elements in a prospective loss space. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e476. doi: 10.1002/wcc.476
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ItemAdaptive capacity: exploring the research frontier(Wiley, 2017-07-01)In the past 15 years there has been rapid growth in research on adaptive capacity. This article critically reviews this literature, describing changes in the field over time, and highlighting the new frontiers in research. It explains how research on adaptive capacity began and remains heavily influenced by a one‐size‐fits‐all assets‐based theory that assumes that adaptation action is commensurate with the possession of capitals. It explains how this theory has been unable to explain how adaptation is actually practiced across diverse contexts and scales. The article then highlights new research, particularly that which extends analysis to include psycho‐social and institutional dimensions applied at smaller scales of analysis. This shift recognizes and helps overcome the limits of traditional approaches to adaptive capacity, but the field still lacks theories that can explain the relationship between adaptive capacity and adaptation outcomes. Drawing on findings from disaster risk reduction and behavioral science literatures, this article outlines a framework comprised of six factors that better explain how capacity is translated and mobilized into action, namely: risk attitudes, personal experience, trust in and expectations of authorities, place attachment, competing concerns, and household composition and dynamics.
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ItemThe dilemmas of normalising losses from climate change: Towards hope for Pacific atoll countries(WILEY, 2017-04)Abstract The idea that climate change may cause the loss of atoll countries is now taken for granted in much of climate change science, policy and media coverage. This normalisation of loss means atoll countries now face a future that is apparently finite, which is a grievous situation no other country has to contend with. This paper explains the dilemmas this presents to atoll countries. If there is a risk of forced migration, then strategic planning can minimise its social impacts. Yet, doing so may bring future dangers into the present by undermining efforts to facilitate adaptation to climate change, creating new identities and deterring investments in sustainable resource management. To overcome this dilemma, the paper argues for a more hopeful approach to the future of atoll countries, because for as long as the science of loss remains uncertain, and the limits to adaptation are unknown, forced migration cannot be taken as a matter of fact and could possibly be averted through emission reductions and a vastly improved and significantly more creative approach to adaptation.
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ItemFreshwater Supply to Metropolitan Shanghai: Issues of Quality from Source to Consumers(MDPI, 2019-10)Shanghai is experiencing drinking water supply problems that are caused by heavy pollution of its raw water supply, deficiencies in its treatment processes, and water quality deterioration in the distribution system. However, little attention has been paid these problems of water quality in raw water, water treatment, and household drinking water. Based on water quality data from 1979 to 2016, we show that microbes (TBC), eutrophication (TP, TN, and NH3–N), heavy metals (Fe, Mn, and Hg), and organic contamination (chemical oxygen demand (COD), detergent (Linear Alklybenzene Sulfonate, LAS), and volatile phenols (VP)) pollute the raw water sources of the Huangpu River and the Changjiang (Yangtze River) estuary. The average concentrations of these contaminants in the Huangpu River are almost double that of the Changjiang estuary, forcing a rapid shift to the Changjiang estuary for raw water. In spite of filtering and treatment, TN, NH3–N, Fe, COD, and chlorine maxima of the treated water and drinking water still exceed the Chinese National Standard. We determine that the relevant threats from the water source to household water in Shanghai are: (1) eutrophication arising from highly concentrated TN, TP, COD, and algal density in the raw water; (2) increasing salinity in the river estuary, especially at the Qingcaosha Reservoir (currently the major freshwater source for Shanghai); (3) more than 50% of organic constituents and by-products remain in treated water; and, (4) bacteria and turbidity increase in the course of water delivery to users. The analysis presents a holistic assessment of the water quality threats to metropolitan Shanghai in relation to the city’s rapid development.
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ItemInside-out: Chinese academic assessments of large-scale water infrastructure(WILEY, 2021-11)Abstract Little is known in the international academic community about Chinese‐language research on water management. To remedy this deficit, this paper reviews current mainland Chinese understandings of the role of large‐scale water infrastructures as tools of water resources management. We reviewed 461 papers published in mainland Chinese journals by Chinese scholars. This review suggests that the dominant approach to water management reflects the confines of government priorities—large‐scale, concrete‐heavy, infrastructure‐based means of moving water around the country so as to meet demands and stimulate economic growth. Suppression of critical voices means that infrastructure is generally rendered apolitical: the critiques are about practical issues, such as technological, managerial, or administrative problems. There are exceptions to this characterization that adopt more critical frames; however, they reflect on water management elsewhere or in the past rather than on contemporary China. While these more critical papers are interesting and important contributions to our understanding of the politics of hydraulic infrastructures, the literature as a whole says little about the politics of infrastructure in China now. In effect, much of the literature in Chinese on water management in China simply acts as an arm of a machine—a network of corporations, universities, international institutions, and arms of the government, together tasked with identifying and framing what are water management issues, formulating standardized procedures for tackling those issues, and then constructing solutions to them. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Planning Water Human Water > Water Governance
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ItemNo Preview AvailableAn Ill Wind? Climate Change, Migration, and Health(US DEPT HEALTH HUMAN SCIENCES PUBLIC HEALTH SCIENCE, 2012-05)BACKGROUND: Climate change is projected to cause substantial increases in population movement in coming decades. Previous research has considered the likely causal influences and magnitude of such movements and the risks to national and international security. There has been little research on the consequences of climate-related migration and the health of people who move. OBJECTIVES: In this review, we explore the role that health impacts of climate change may play in population movements and then examine the health implications of three types of movements likely to be induced by climate change: forcible displacement by climate impacts, resettlement schemes, and migration as an adaptive response. METHODS: This risk assessment draws on research into the health of refugees, migrants, and people in resettlement schemes as analogs of the likely health consequences of climate-related migration. Some account is taken of the possible modulation of those health risks by climate change. DISCUSSION: Climate-change-related migration is likely to result in adverse health outcomes, both for displaced and for host populations, particularly in situations of forced migration. However, where migration and other mobility are used as adaptive strategies, health risks are likely to be minimized, and in some cases there will be health gains. CONCLUSIONS: Purposeful and timely policy interventions can facilitate the mobility of people, enhance well-being, and maximize social and economic development in both places of origin and places of destination. Nevertheless, the anticipated occurrence of substantial relocation of groups and communities will underscore the fundamental seriousness of human-induced climate change.