Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Teaching & Learning Guide For Disability And Climate Justice, Molly M. King, Maria A. Gregg, Ana V. Martinez, Emily Y. Pachoud

Sociology

Disability is widespread: nearly one in four Americans has a disability (Taylor, 2018) and disability cuts across demographic categories. Among individuals aged 15 and over, 12.6% had some type of mobility disability; above age 65, it is nearly 40% (Brault, 2012). Mobility disabilities heighten vulnerability to climate change and climate-related disasters (UNHCHR, 2020). Reduced information resources and mobility, increased health risks, and a lack of visibility in climate change discourse put people with disabilities in a more vulnerable position in the climate crisis. However, this vulnerability can be mitigated through relevant and sufficient access to information, risk mitigation …

Disability And Climate Change: A Critical Realist Model Of Climate Justice, Molly M. King, Maria A. Gregg

Sociology

Existing literature on climate change as an issue of environmental justice documents the heightened vulnerability of people with disabilities to the effects of climate change. Additionally, there are numerous studies showing that access to information is a prerequisite for perceiving risk and taking action. Building on this work, our review seeks to understand how physical disability relates to perceptions of climate-related risk and adaptations to climate-related events. We introduce a critical realist model of climate justice to understand the relationships between the environmental features that disable, risk perception and information seeking, and adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change. In …

Engaged Communication Scholarship For Environmental Justice: A Research Agenda, Chad Raphael

Communication

As a discipline of crisis and care, environmental communication needs to address questions of environmental justice. This article argues that the most appropriate approach to studying environmental justice communication is engaged scholarship, in which academics collaborate with community partners, advocates, and others to conduct research. The article reviews prior engaged communication scholarship on environmental justice, and proposes four streams of future research, focused on news and information, deliberation and participation, campaigns and movements, and education and literacy.

Engaged Scholarship For Environmental Justice: A Guide, Chad Raphael

Communication

This guide was written for distribution at the Environmental Justice and the Common Good Conference, hosted by Santa Clara University’s Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education in May 2019. The conference convened representatives from Jesuit and other universities with a broad range of community organizations to strengthen our common understanding and advancement of community-engaged scholarship for environmental justice (EJ). Given its immediate audience, the guide focuses primarily on the U.S. context, although it also discusses the major global causes and impacts of EJ, and how Americans have been inspired by engaged scholars around the world, from whom we have much to …

Turning On The Lights: Transcending Energy Poverty Through The Power Of Women Entrepreneurs, Leslie C. Gray, Alaina Boyle, Victoria Yu

Miller Center Fellowship

Solar lanterns offer affordable, high-quality lighting in developing countries. A number of organizations, including social enterprises, make solar lanterns available to rural households as an alternative to candles or kerosene lamps. One of the most successful of these organizations is Solar Sister.

Solar Sister, a social enterprise operating in Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria, is dedicated to eradicating energy poverty through the economic empowerment of women. In addition to economically empowering its women entrepreneurs, the business model of Solar Sister also cultivates sales networks built on trust in last-mile distribution methods.

While Solar Sister has previously conducted research regarding its many …

Introduction To Deliberation, Democracy, And Civic Forums: Improving Equality And Publicity, Chad Raphael, Christopher F. Karpowitz

Communication

Innovative forums that integrate citizen deliberation into policy making are revitalizing democracy in many places around the world. Yet controversy abounds over whether these forums ought to be seen as authentic sources of public opinion and how they should fit with existing political institutions. How can civic forums include less powerful citizens and ensure that their perspectives are heard on equal terms with more privileged citizens, officials, and policy experts? How can these fragile institutions communicate citizens' policy preferences effectively and legitimately to the rest of the political system? Deliberation, Democracy, and Civic Forums proposes creative solutions for improving equality …

Darfur: Rainfall And Conflict, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Data on rainfall patterns only weakly corroborate the claim that climate change explains the Darfur conflict that began in 2003 and has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced more than two million persons. Rainfall in Darfur did not decline significantly in the years prior to the eruption of major conflict in 2003; rainfall exhibited a flat trend in the thirty-years preceding the conflict (1972-2002). The rainfall evidence suggests instead a break around 1971. Rainfall is basically stationary over the pre- and post-1971 sub-periods. The break is larger for the more northerly rainfall stations, and is less noticeable for En …

Land Tenure And Rental In Western Sudan, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

This paper reports on aspects of land tenure in western Sudan, especially the nature of tenure insecurity and the functioning of the land rental market. The active land rental market accounted for about one-third of cultivated land. Patterns of land rental transactions, and tests of the importance of insecurity in renting land, where the owner may not be able to reclaim land rented out, do not support the presumption that rental markets perform poorly. The role of the sheikh as administrator of village land, and the claims of large landowners to vast tracts, are, however, important political problems that must …

Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women And Land Tenure In Sub-Saharan Africa, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Increasing commercialization, population growth and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases where rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to …

The Buzz About Sustainability, John S. Farnsworth

Environmental Studies and Sciences

I wear sweater vests, I never split infinitives, I trim my beard close, and I read a poem at the beginning of every class. More to the point, as a member of the English faculty at a distinguished university, I distrust any word that had not been coined by the time my father—himself formerly a professor at a Jesuit university—completed his undergraduate studies.

So what am I doing as the faculty director of a Residential Learning Community (RLC) organized around the theme of “sustainability”?

In the past 18 months, the university that employs me hired its first sustainability coordinator, held …

Importing Extended Producer Responsibility For Electronic Equipment Into The United States, Chad Raphael, Ted Smith

Communication

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that holds manufacturers accountable for the full costs of their products at every stage in their life cycle. EPR typically involves requiring that producers take back their products at the end of their useful lives, or pay a recycling contractor to do so, thereby internalizing the costs of recycling or disposal in a manufacturer’s bottom line. When companies know that they will bear the costs of product return and recycling, they are more likely to redesign their products for easier and safer handling at each step in the life cycle. This approach …

Evolving Tenure Rights And Agricultural Intensification In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Popular and official representations of the environment in Burkina Faso present soils as fragile and potentially subject to catastrophic collapse in fertility. In the cotton growing zone of southwestern Burkina Faso, researchers and policy makers attribute changes in land cover and land quality to population growth. This paper presents evidence questioning the dominant "population-degradation narrative" as applied to Burkina. We find that farmers are intensifying their production systems. While population has led to land scarcity, farmers are responding to both the resulting uncertainty in land rights and reductions in soil quality by intensifying the production process. Investments are used both …

A Woman's Field Is Made At Night: Gendered Land Rights And Norms In Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Gendered social norms and institutions are important determinants of agricultural activities in southwestern Burkina Faso. This paper argues that gendered land tenure, in particular, has effects on equity and efficiency. The usual view of women as holders of secondary, or indirect, rights to land must be supplemented by a more nuanced understanding of tenure. Women's rights are in fact considerably more complex than the simple right to fields from their husbands. First, women's rights to property obtained from men may be coupled with other rights and obligations. In many ethnic groups, women have share rights to the harvest of their …

Local Politics In The Time Of Turabi's Revolution: Gender, Class And Ethnicity In Western Sudan, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

In one small village in western Sudan local political struggles over power and resources are enmeshed in discursive struggles over representations of gender, ethnicity, class and community. Analysis of two specific conflicts illustrates this point. In one conflict over control of a village grain co-operative some villagers sought to exclude women, West African immigrants and the poor from participating in political decision-making. In a second conflict over a roadside market these same villagers, empowered by the divisive rhetoric and policies of the National Islamic Front regime, again mobilised dominant representations of class, gender and ethnicity in an attempt to prevent …

For Whom Is The Rural Economy Resilient? Initial Effects Of Drought In Western Sudan, Leslie C. Gray, Michael Kevane

Economics

This discussion piece addresses two recent debates: entitlement theory and the resilience of rural systems. The authors find that in western Sudan entitlement theory provides a specific and useful framework for understanding the nature of the crisis confronting the society. Arguments about the resilience of rural systems, however, need to be more closely examined and will depend on site-specific factors. The rural economy and society of western Sudan were not found to be resilient.