School of Geography - Theses
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ItemClimate justice: can we agree to disagree? Operationalising competing equity principles to mitigate global warming( 2017)With the Paris Agreement, the international community has agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 °C and to pursue efforts to stay below 1.5 °C (UNFCCC 2015a) to avoid dangerous climate impacts. Staying within these boundaries requires important emissions mitigation efforts from all countries (Rogelj et al 2015). Equitable distribution across countries of mitigation efforts, or equivalently of emissions rights, consistent with global mitigation objectives is a contentious issue that involves divergent interpretations of distributive justice (Winkler and Rajamani 2014a). The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report categorises equity approaches from the scientific literature in five groups (Clarke et al 2014). At climate negotiations, most countries tend to support the approach that requires the least efforts on their behalf (Fleurbaey et al 2014, Lange et al 2010). With the absence of consensus on an effort-sharing approach, current negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) follow a self-interested, or ‘bottom-up’, approach to target setting (Andresen 2015, Bodansky 2016) where each country decides its own effort following its understanding of fairness. As a result, the sum of all parties’ announced contributions is not consistent with limiting global warming to 2 °C, let alone 1.5 °C (Rogelj et al 2016a). Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to increase the ambition of their post-Kyoto climate pledges through a ratcheting-up process that begins in 2023. With the disagreement on effort-sharing approaches, the international community relies on diverging metrics to evaluate the adequacy of national pledges with the global warming thresholds. Since the beginning of climate negotiations under the United Nations, a rich literature has modelled allocations of emissions rights to countries using various effort-sharing approaches with uncoordinated parameterisation. At the start of this PhD work, no study modelled the effort-sharing categories presented in the last IPCC report under a common parameterisation. Additionally, the literature on the combination of effort-sharing approaches remained thin and consisted of averaging the emissions allocations of multiple effort-sharing approaches. This PhD thesis addresses these gaps with the modelling of a new emissions allocation framework, the ‘PRIMAP-Equity’ framework, and with the suggestion of a new combination of effort-sharing approaches. Firstly, this thesis quantifies allocations of emissions rights to countries in a manner that reflects the existing literature on distributive justice. An emissions allocation framework is developed to derive national emissions allocations that reflect the five equity categories of the fifth IPCC report. This modelling framework is applied to derive emissions allocations, under each of the five equity categories, consistent with the emissions mitigation goals of the G7 Elmau agreement signed in June 2015. The allocation framework is then used to derive national emissions trajectories aligned with the recent Paris Agreement goals of both well below 2 °C and 1.5 °C, consistently with the five equity categories . This work represents the first quantification of equitable national trajectories to achieve 1.5 °C goal and informs scientists and government experts in the preparation of the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C (IPCC 2017). The Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), countries’ national pledges, of 171 Parties are then evaluated in order to determine which, if any, categories of equity they are consistent with. As well, the thesis highlights the consistency of G20 countries’ pledges with equity allocations. This is discussed in the context of the statement on fairness contained in each pledge. This PhD thesis then addresses the apparent incompatibility between the global warming thresholds and countries’ self-interested visions of effort-sharing by suggesting a new quantitative approach. Doing so, this PhD thesis provides a new metric, inclusive of all international positions, to assess the ambition of the NDCs under the Paris Agreement. This new ‘hybrid’ allocation method reconciles the ‘bottom-up’ approach of equity with the ‘top-down’ climate threshold that they commonly agreed. Under this ‘hybrid’ approach, each country follows the least stringent effort-sharing approach – out of the five that reflect the equity categories presented in the last IPCC report – to achieve the Paris Agreement. The aggregation of current national pledges is found to align with such a ‘bottom-up’ combination of approaches and lead to a warming of up to 2.3 °C in 2100 (with a 50% chance). Conversely, an enhanced ‘bottom-up’ approach – ‘hybrid’ – of global emissions scenarios leading to 1.1 °C and 1.3 °C warmings results in the achievement of the Paris Agreement mitigation goals of 1.5 °C and well below 2 °C, respectively. Ultimately, this study quantifies a compromise where each country can choose an equity approach to determine its effort, but does directly use that approach to assess other countries’ pledges. Finally, the application of this ‘hybrid’ approach provides a temperature assessment for all countries’ climate pledges, indicating the consistency of countries’ ambition in light of the global temperature goals. The NDCs of India, the EU, the USA and China are in line with global ‘bottom-up’ situations leading to warmings of 2.6 °C, 3.2 °C, 4 °C and over 5.1 °C, respectively. The results of this thesis can inform public opinions and decision makers through the ratcheting-up process on what constitutes fair and ambitious pledges to achieve the Paris Agreement following a range or combination of equity approaches. Additionally, the assessments of the adequacy of countries’ pledges with international agreements can inform courts when ruling ‘climate cases’ where governments are sued for their lack of ambition in mitigating emissions (Sabin Center for Climate Change Law 2018).
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ItemBehind the scenes of land grabbing: conflict, competition, and the gendered implications for local food production and rural livelihoods in Cameroon( 2017)Large-scale land acquisitions or land grabbing are widespread – cutting across almost all parts of the developing world – Asia, Latin America and Africa. In recent years, this phenomenon has grown at unprecedented rates with Africa being the most targeted continent. In Cameroon, although land grabbing is raising prospects for national-level benefits, it is generating increasing tensions with local communities who suffer from dispossession of land and natural resources. This thesis examines the dynamics associated with the loss of land in a particular context in Nguti subdivision of the South West Region of Cameroon. It focuses on five communities in the region whose lands were earmarked by the state for the development of monoculture oil palm plantations. The main research objectives were to explore local perceptions and reactions to this phenomenon; but also to examine how it disproportionately affects men and women and its implications for local food production and rural livelihoods. This research is framed by studies of the ‘global land grab’; local communities’ livelihood strategies; womens’ access to land and forest resources; and land management and governance in Cameroon. Fieldwork included interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. To attain the above objectives, four stand-alone empirical chapters are included in this thesis, each addressing particular research questions. My research questions query: 1) ‘why do people contest the establishment of commercial oil palm plantations on ancestral land and in what ways do they struggle for incorporation’; 2) ‘Why and how does land acquisition generates conflict within communities and with the agro-company/state’; 3) ‘How do men and women perceive and react to land grabbing projects’; 4) ‘In what ways does land grabbing disproportionately affect men and women; and what implications does it have for womens’ food production in particular, and rural livelihoods in general’? Broadly, this thesis offers insights into the complexities and challenges that confront heterogeneous local communities as a result of the acquisition of land hitherto accessed by them to sustain rural livelihoods. Specifically, it a) demonstrates that local communities are not necessarily against large-scale investments in land; rather their concern is how they can benefit from it without detriment, particularly if they lose access to their most fertile agricultural lands, b) explores some of the complexities that the ‘elite-dominated’ and corrupt land deals have generated, with particular reference to cross-scale governance, inter-village conflicts and community resistance in the region, c) shows that amidst societal discrimination over land ownership rights, perceptual differences between men and women appears rational in the event of land grabbing – men follow their ascribed roles in overt reactions, while women tend to be much less active and vocal in contesting land acquisition, despite the fact that the land acquired were mostly used by women to generate household food security, d) demonstrates how pre-existing land tenure systems combined with contemporary statutory land laws to accord men greater power over land to the detriment of women; posing severe implications for womens’ food production and rural livelihoods, and e) proposes policy recommendations that if instituted will help benefit the state, local communities and land investors. While this study specifically targets individuals, whose livelihoods are strictly tied to land and forest resources in the region, I also emphasized the roles of other actors such as village chiefs, local politicians, NGO personnel, and government authorities in shaping and influencing the dynamics around land grabbing in Nguti subdivision.
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ItemMoney, markets and hydropower: Chinese dam construction in Africa( 2017)This thesis aims to clarify the formation of goals, practices and consequences of Chinese outward investment, through the lens of the Chinese government’s and corporations’ engagement in African dam construction. To achieve this aim, three research questions are addressed: 1 how do Chinese actors form their goals in investing in African dam construction? 2 how are the Chinese practices in Africa related to these goals? and 3 what are the consequences of the Chinese practices? Considering China’s (re-)emergence in the neoliberal world, this thesis probes Chinese overseas investment with an eye to their spending of money, energy and time; and posits the Chinese government and corporations as both central to address the research aim. Starting from a genealogy of the shaping of the Chinese dam construction industry, this thesis applies a technopolitical approach to disentangling the historical, technical, political, social and environmental complexity associated with dams and proceeds with a life cycle analysis of a specific project in Africa, which is financed and built by Chinese actors – the Bui dam construction in Ghana. Informed by qualitative data collected from open sources and fieldwork mainly in Beijing, Accra and Bui, the thesis finds that investing in African dam construction, the Chinese government and corporations have divergent priorities but interlocking goals, but the formations of the goals of Chinese actors affect each other; and that although their practices are mainly informed by their goals, the Chinese activities overseas are affected and challenged by the interplay with external technocratic and political influences which sometimes lead to uncertain consequences. Therefore, the Chinese overseas investment is an artefact of the world’s geographically uneven process of neoliberalization, which at the project level reflects not merely a matter of “China” or the “Chinese”, but of the sophisticated interweaving of relations and interactions between the Chinese, international and the recipient country actors, evolving in a path-dependent way.
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ItemPalaeofire activity in western Tasmania: climate drivers and land-cover changes( 2017)Under the current changing climatic regime, in which wildfires are predicted to increase in frequency and magnitude, it is important we gain a better understanding on past climatic trends and fire activity to properly manage fires and landscapes, preserve valuable natural ecosystems and protect human lives and properties. Fire activity is especially projected to increase in temperate regions, such as Australia’s southeast. In this context, western Tasmania represents a key region where the environmental impacts of wildfires can be disastrous for the remnant pockets of fire-sensitive vegetation. Climate influence on fire activity and vegetation dynamics operates at multiple timescales, from inter-annual to multi-millennial. Given the time limitation of historical records, we need to look at long-term records to gain a better understanding on what modulates fire activity and how changes in fire regimes influence ecosystem dynamics. This PhD project aimed to a) identify the climate drivers of short- and long-term fire variability in western Tasmania and b) quantify climate- and firedriven vegetation changes in this region throughout the Holocene. To understand the short-term drivers of fire activity in western Tasmania, I explored the relationship between the main climate modes of the Southern Hemisphere and a documentary record of fire occurrence from this region. This analysis suggested that the Southern Annual Mode (SAM) -an index for the position and strength of SWWis strongly correlated with inter-annual fire activity across western Tasmania during the last 25 years. Moreover, the persistent positive trend in SAM recorded during the last 500 years was found to be tightly coupled to increased biomass burning within the same region. To understand the long-term landscape changes in western Tasmania, I combined high resolution pollen and charcoal analyses, coupled with recently developed mathematical modelling of pollen dispersal and productivity. Within this Thesis, I applied pollen dispersal models to calibrate the pollen-vegetation relationship for the first time in Australia. This method involves two steps: (1) a modern pollen analysis coupled with distance-weighted vegetation data to calibrate the present-day pollen-vegetation relationships and (2) an application of these relationships to a fossil pollen record to produce past vegetation cover estimates. The application of pollen dispersal models proved the biases inherent in previous interpretations of pollen spectra from western Tasmania. Specifically, the results from these analyses showed that this region was mostly dominated by treeless moorland vegetation, supporting the identification of western Tasmania as a cultural landscape. Moreover, my results showed that land-cover changes throughout the Holocene occurred in response to climatic change and a shift in fire regimes due to ENSO/SWW interactions.