Download ADVANCED ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHY AEnvG Project 1

ADVANCED ENVIRONMENTAL
GEOGRAPHY
AEnvG Project 1:
Variations in Approaches to Climate
Change Adaptation Planning in Asian
Cities
Supervisor: Eric Chu
Contact: [email protected]
Office hours: 15:30 to 17:00 on Tuesdays and Fridays (or by appointment)
Description: Local governments across the globe are recognizing the need to address emerging
climate change priorities in their policies, infrastructures, and communities. With the support of
different local, national, and international institutions, many local governments across Asia are
experimenting with policies and plans that combine climate adaptation goals with existing
urban development agendas. Despite these early policy advances, many local governments are
realizing that they often lack the internal staffing capacities to sustain these projects in the longterm, find it difficult to broaden meaningful engagement across different municipal sectors, and
fail to identify adequate local, intergovernmental, or multilateral funds to implement large-scale
adaptation interventions.
This research project focuses on understanding the patterns of policy institutionalization and
governance transformation in cities in Asia that have long histories of experimenting with
climate change adaptation and resilience-building efforts. Interested and motivated students
can participate in an ongoing globally comparative research project on urban climate
governance that engages four overarching research themes: (1) motivations and incentives for
public sector action, (2) institutional strategies for policy and plan integration, (3)
transformative pathways toward urban climate justice, and (4) multilevel financing and
network governance regimes. Students can choose to build on these preexisting research
domains or elect to ask additional innovative questions around issues of urban climate change
governance. Potential research methodologies include interviews, participant observations,
surveys, and mapping.
Locations: Students can participate in existing partnerships with local governments across Asia,
including those in India (Surat, Indore, Bhubaneswar), Bangladesh (Dhaka), Indonesia (Jakarta,
Semarang), Philippines (Metro Manila), and Thailand (Bangkok, Hat Yai, Udon Thani).
Knowledge of local language is a prerequisite for some cities.
Number of positions: 2
AEnvG Project 2: Climate Change Policy
and Human Capital
Supervisor: Joyeeta Gupta & Eric Chu
Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]
The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014) reviews
the literature on climate change and identifies several knowledge gaps. Chapter 5 of Working
Group III’s report examines the relationship between climate change and development and
notes the following critical gap: What is the relationship between countries’ human capital
levels and their national and international engagement in climate change policy?
Building on a study of the IPCC Policymakers’ Summary and Chapter 4 of the report, the key
question for this thesis project would be to study whether there is a relationship between
human capital (broadly defined as the skills, knowledge, and experiences of communities and
organizations) and national policy and international engagement. The idea would be to jointly
design a methodological framework for addressing this question and to apply it through case
studies of different countries, either in the country self or through a literature review.
Number of positions: 2
AEnvG Project 3: Urban Water
Challenges
Supervisor: Joyeeta Gupta & Eric Chu
Contact: [email protected] / [email protected]
The most recent IPCC (2014) report concludes that “reducing basic service deficits and building
resilient infrastructure systems (water supply, sanitation, storm and waste water drains,
electricity, transport and telecommunications, health care, education, and emergency response)
can significantly reduce hazard exposure and vulnerability to climate change, especially for
those who are most at risk or vulnerable (very high confidence, based on robust evidence, high
agreement). For most key climate change associated hazards in urban areas, risk levels increase
from the present (with current adaptation) to the near term but high adaptation can reduce
these risk levels significantly. It is less able to do so for the longer term, especially under a global
mean temperature increase of 4°C.” “Well governed cities with universal provision of
infrastructure and services have a strong base for building climate resilience if processes of
planning, design, and allocation of human capital and material resources are responsive to
emerging climate risks (medium confidence, based on medium evidence, high agreement).”
“Urban centers around the world face severe constraints to raising and allocating resources to
implement adaptation. In most low and middle-income country cities, infrastructure backlogs,
lack of appropriate mandates, and lack of financial and human resources severely constrain
adaptation action. Small urban centers often lack economies of scale for adaptation investments
and local capacity to act, as they have relatively low national and international profiles (medium
confidence, based on medium evidence, high agreement).”
Given these assessments, we would like you to develop a methodology comparing the adaptive
capacity of large cities and small cities to understand how the current constraints in dealing
with water challenges and how these cities can prepare for long term climate change impacts.
Number of positions: 4
AEnvG Project 3:
FISHERIES – SRI LANKA, GHANA, INDIA
3.1. International regulations for environmental sustainability: scrutinizing the EU ban
on seafood imports from Sri Lanka (2 positions)
Supervisors: Joeri Scholtens (in collaboration with Maarten Bavinck and Oscar Amarasinghe of
the University of Ruhuna)
Contact: [email protected]
Location: Sri Lanka
Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing is considered an important international
problem, contributing to the decline of ocean habitats and resources. It is in this connection that
the European Union has announced (2010) that it will import seafood only from countries that
are complying with international regulations against IUU fishing, as well as against fishing
companies that abuse international law by sailing so-called ‘flags of convenience’. Sri Lanka has
failed this test and was black-listed as of November 2014. This means that for the time being, Sri
Lanka seafood cannot be exported to the crucial European market.
This ban generates a number of important questions. One of our Master students conducted a
study (Jan-March 2015) on the effects of this ban on fishermen in one Sri Lankan port, and
discovered that the livelihood impacts are very substantial. This project would invite students
to dive deeper into this ban and deal with questions like the following (but you are also free to
pursue other questions, depending on your interests).
(1) Investigate the situation one year down the road; how have fishers and traded adapted to
this ban?
(2) Investigate how traders and exporters are handling the crisis (e.g. searching for new
Chinese/Japanese markets) which is going to last at least until the middle of 2016.
(3) Taking a more macro perspective, what are the origins of this ban from a critical political
ecology perspective? What made Sri Lanka to be selected for the ban? What were the various
interests at stake from within the EU? How was the evidence collected for installing this ban?
What other motives played a role? For this research, the student will move into the corridors of
the Fisheries Commission and other European Bureaucracies in Brussels. Europe’s hegemony in
setting fisheries standards far across its boundaries could be another analytical entry point.
(4) I could also be interesting to compare the case of Sri Lanka with other countries subjected to
such export bans in recent years (e.g. Belize).
3.2 Fishing for food security in city regions (2 positions).
Supervisors: Joeri Scholtens (with Maarten Bavinck and Edward Onubah – University of Ghana)
Contact: [email protected]
Location: Ghana, Tamil Nadu or Kerala (India)
City regions in developing countries are rapidly expanding and so are the food security
problems of their poorer inhabitants. The fisheries sector is crucial for many developing
countries’ food security, both because of the employment it generates, as well as making
available high value nutrition for a relatively low price. This project studies ‘low-price fish
chains’ that service low-income consumers in selected city regions of South Asia (India) and
West Africa (Ghana). These fishing chains – in which women entrepreneurs often play an
important role - derive their fish both from local small-scale as well as industrial foreign
fisheries, which adds a layer of controversy.
Possible questions include (but we are also open for different types of questions, depending on
your interests):
a) What strategic choices do women fish entrepreneurs make in deciding where to market
their fish? (Kerala, Tamil Nadu or Ghana).
b) Through which mechanisms do foreign fishing fleets contribute to or compromise local
food security in Ghana?
c) To what extent does the claim holds that fish is crucial for food security of the poor?
What is the contribution of various types of fish (frozen, tinned, dried, fresh) to food
security in different urban regions (e.g. coastal vs inland).
This project aligns with a research proposal that is currently being developed by a consortium
of Universities and NGOs and will be submitted to the Dutch Science Foundation for funding in
January 2016. In this stage, students can provide vital inputs to the research agenda through
their master thesis research.
3.3 Investigating governance arrangements in untamed transboundary maritime spaces
(2 positions)
Supervisors: Joeri Scholtens (with Andrew Song, Johny Stephen and Maarten Bavinck).
Contact: [email protected]
Location: not fixed.
Two-third of the globe is covered with oceans, providing vast spaces that are only partially
domesticated through various forms of law. Maritime spaces have historically been significant
for various interactions and trade. Over past decades, the demarcation of ocean boundaries has
complex implications for fishers and other users alike. The emergence of transboundary
maritime space is thus characterized by danger as well as opportunity. In this project we aim to
investigate marine interactions such as resource grabbing, transboundary fishing, piracy and
smuggling, and geopolitical manifestations in the maritime boundary regions. The analytical
approach can vary from political geography, political ecology, political economy, to social
anthropology.
An example of a particular challenge is provided by transboundary fishing fleets that cross
maritime boundaries with or without licenses searching for the best of fishing grounds. These
fleets provide challenges both for environmental sustainability and social justice and
governance. Transboundary fleets have been accused of engaging in illegal fishing, catching
much more than they actually report, have been frequently implicated in labour exploitation
accusations, and impacted local resident fishers. Yet they also deliver major economic services
to various economies. Governance efforts to regulate transboundary fishing fleets are
fragmented and often ill-equipped. There provides for a range of questions allowing both
distant research as well as on the ground fieldwork.