Environmental Studies Commons^™

Slow Speed Rail: The Social, Psychological And Environmental Benefits Of Long-Distance Train Travel, Vincent Gragnani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Long-distance train travel in the United States is slow, inefficient and woefully underfunded. Trains are routinely delayed for freight traffic. Many major cities are served in the middle of the night, or not at all. And the cost of a sleeping compartment is far out of reach for most Americans. This is all in stark contrast to the reliable services offered across Europe and parts of Asia. But for the 3.5 million people who ride Amtrak’s long-distance trains every year, the experience can be a fulfilling one. This web-based project, slowspeedrail.com, explores these benefits, namely, an intimacy with the landscape …

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

Democratic Processing Of Waste: European Federalism And Decentralized Waste Management In Navarra And Basque Country, Michael Stinavage

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Every country, regardless of regime-type, produces garbage. Waste is a significant contributor to the climate crisis, and its management requires the participation of society at large. The competency for waste management falls on the most decentralized forms of governance. The local government, however, faces a tremendous difficulty in that it may not be able to realign economic and political incentives to make the sustainable management of post-consumer material a viable option. Using waste policy as a lens to assess climate crisis readiness and federal governance, this study considers Navarra and Basque Country, two of Spain’s most decentralized regions, and creates …

Cooperation Or Competition With China: Interest Groups And Us Policy On Climate Change, Lucia G. Green-Weiskel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the existence of two constellations of political forces, emphasizing their relationship to each other and the link between their interests related to China and climate change. It argues that two China-related alignments on climate issues are driven by their opposing approaches to US China relations in general in such a way that the latter predicts the former. These broad but opposing coalitions of political forces—one favoring and one opposing cooperation with China—are made up of think tanks, NGOs and industry groups, which have demonstrated a convergence in policy preferences over the course of two presidential administrations, democrat …

Alternative Food Production In Cauca, Colombia: The Value Of Agroecological Food Systems For Local Small Producers And Consumers, Andrea Negret

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis intends to offer an integral view of the reality of food production and distribution in the Cauca Department in Colombia, observing the different practices that have caused deep social and environmental struggles including systemic violence, displacement and environmental degradation. The first two chapters will offer a global and national context of food production to better understand the many challenges that rural populations endure in rural Cauca. Chapters four and five will explore some resistance strategies and movements that rural communities in Cauca and other Colombian regions have developed to fight against corporate agro-industrial dominance so they can protect …

Climate Change And Corporate Behaviors, Lei Lei

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of several chapters that span corporate disclosures on climate change-related impacts, environmental performance, common institutional ownership, and financial analyst coverage.

Chapter 1 This chapter briefly introduces this dissertation, including the motivation and structure.

Chapter 2 In this chapter, I exploit the oral and communicative nature of earnings conference calls to explore whether the discussions on climate change influence corporate environmental performance. I find strong and robust evidence that communications make firms engage more actively in environmentally beneficial investments, and thus, have better environmental profiles. Further evidence shows that mandatory disclosure may unexpectedly crowd out communications, and this …

Air Pollution, Climate Change, And Our Health, Kathia Vargas Feliz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Climate change is a subject that is creating a lot of controversies nowadays. From newspapers to researchers, there are big efforts going on trying to bring awareness about the effects of air pollution and climate change over time. It is recommended that governments all over the world, and people from all communities act by taking care of the environment because the situation might turn out to be irremediable. There is a quote by Leonardo Dicaprio stating, “Climate change is real. It is happening right now; it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to …

Peru's Fishmeal Industry: Its Societal And Environmental Impact, Angel Vizurraga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Peru is the biggest fishmeal-producing country in the world. It has exported millions of tons of fishmeal to various parts of the world since the 1960s. However, this industry has created many problems for the Peruvian people and their environment. Past research done on this topic has failed to include the negative impacts of the fishmeal industry. My project aims to exhibit the main issues that are affected or created by the fishmeal industry. I will talk about its impact on socioeconomic matters such as malnutrition and employment, as well as its impact on the environment and the wildlife population …

Avocado Mania: The Rise And Costs Of Our Obsession With Avocados, Rosa C. Lourentzatos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The past two decades have seen a surge in global demand for avocados, which have become popular among middle- and high-income fractions of society in developed regions of the world. Avocados are predominantly consumed far from their centers of origin and out of their traditional cultural context. The United States imports 87 percent of its avocados from a single region in Mexico, Michoacán. The systems of production and provision that have risen to meet the demand for this fashionable fruit have had devastating social and environmental effects, including deforestation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, pollution, displacement of indigenous populations, food insecurity, …

Connecting Communities To Coastal Resilience: Enhancing Sustainability Through Public Participation In Salt Marsh Management And Restoration In Suffolk County, Ny, Jennifer L. Mcgivern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coastal resiliency is becoming significantly more critical to the livelihood of coastal communities as the frequency and intensity of storm events increases and is exacerbated by rising sea levels due to climate change. In October 2012 Superstorm Sandy impacted the New York-New Jersey area costing over $70 billion in storm damages and 147 lives lost, as storm surges surpassed record highs for the region. Protruding more than 100 miles into the Atlantic Ocean with over 1,000 miles of shoreline, Long Island is particularly vulnerable to the increasingly ferocious and numerous storms as well as the rising sea levels that climate …

The Victims’ Voices: A Routine Activity Approach To Jail And Prison Victimization, Victor St. John

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study explores the occurrence of victimization while incarcerated in American jails and prisons. Consistent with the Routine Activity Approach – which explains that victimization occurs due to the convergence of a suitable target and a motivated offender in time and space, and the absence of a capable guardian, handler, and place manager –, this study investigates the applicability of the approach within the correctional setting, namely the influence of place management, access to informal guardians, and the victims’ perception of correctional officers’ capability on preventing victimization (the formal guardian). A mixed methods design was employed, analyzing 87 semi-structured interviews …

The Grid Elegies, Pamela A. Kallimanis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Immigrants are a key component in New York City’s pandemic. Historically, New York is a city of immigrants and their children. In the latter part of the 20th Century, more immigrants arrived due to changes in migration policy. There was also an increased outmigration through second and third generations, which mirrors an economic trajectory seen in previous points in history, mainly in the 1970s. At that time, there was the lure of government policies – from federal mortgage agencies that graded white suburban areas as safer areas for banks to make loans than racially mixed urban areas, to road construction …

Contemporary Human Displacement: A Comparative Analysis Of Syria, Yemen, Honduras, And Venezuela, Rav Carlotti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What is causing the surge in human displacement around the world? Large-scale displacement in Syria, Yemen, Honduras, and Venezuela has generated unprecedented humanitarian crises in Latin America and the Middle East as millions of displaced people end up as refugees or immigrants. Humanitarian organizations like the UNHCR and host countries have had their resources overextended by these ongoing crises, and there is no end in sight. This thesis shows that contemporary human displacement is rooted in the increasing inability of governments to manage their societies amid great political demands and socio-economics strains. These causes are difficult to tackle because they …

The Rainforest Is Burning: Trials And Triumphs Working Towards Conservation In Rural Madagascar, Kathryn Alessi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In late 2019, I spent almost four months in Ranomafana, Madagascar, a region in the southeast that houses tropical rainforest. The research I conducted is not analyzed in this capstone. Instead, I decided to write about my personal experience through a series of reflections that explore the difficulties I faced, as well as the moments of joy. Much of the information presented in this capstone and white paper come from my own experience and copious conversations I had with other people in Madagascar. Several of these conversations were recorded in my diary and fieldnotes, but most were recounted from my …

The Lodge In The Wilderness: Ecologies Of Contemplation In British Romantic Poetry, Sean M. Nolan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that contemplation is often overlooked in studies of British Romantic poetry. By the late 1700s, changing commercial and agricultural practices, industrialism, secularization, and utilitarianism emphasizing industriousness coalesced to uproot established discourses of selfhood and leisure, and effected crises of individuation in Romantic poetry and poetics. Closely reading poems and writing about poetry composed between the 1780s and 1830s by William Cowper, George Crabbe, Robert Bloomfield, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Stuart Mill, I probe the relationship between aesthetic, ethical, and emotional responses to depictions of toil, idleness, and leisure. I argue that ecologies …

The Material Culture Of Temperature: Measurement, Capital And Semiotics, Scott W. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperature was invented in the 17th century. While cosmologists affirm that fluctuations in heat are as old as the universe, the intensive quantified scale marking these fluctuations has a relatively short history. This dissertation analyzes why temperature developed when it did and what temperature does for and to its users. I demonstrate that the ubiquitous and quotidian epistemological artifact temperature epitomizes capitalized methods of seeing, measuring, and knowing. At its broadest, the concern of this dissertation is the material culture of knowledge production among capitalizing populations—those that believe in and practice the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth.

In this …

The Emergence Of Ecosystems-Based Fisheries Management From The Groundfish Crisis In New England: An Actor-Network Theory Analysis, Catherine King

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research investigates the emergence of ecosystems-based fisheries management (EBFM) for New England's marine fisheries in the context of the "crisis" that is escalating in its groundfish fishery. Close observations of the practices of fisheries scientists in coordination with managers at the New England Fisheries Management Council, with focus on how knowledge is being produced and employed, allows for understanding EBFM as an emergent construction produced by networks of associations between actants, human and non-human, material and semiotic, and not strictly as a policy prescription informed by experts on biology, ecology, and socio-economics. This analysis identifies and elucidates the multiplicity …

Many Forms Of Black Death: Coal Extraction, Transnational Activism And The Value Of Life In Colombia, Oscar H. Pedraza Vargas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After the murder of the president and vice president of the coal union by paramilitaries in the department of Cesár, Colombia, the union is left adrift. Its fragility is only heightened when the person who decides to take over, is killed six months later. The union has been vocal on their critique of environmental destruction produced by coal and argues that their criticism is part of the reasons why they were targeted. Not far from there, in the department of Guajira, the conglomerate in charge of Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine of South America, wants to divert a creek …

Data And Information As Our New Transport Infrastructure: An Exploration Into How The Modern Transport System Is Being Shaped By Information Communication Technology, Adam Davidson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is focuses on the role that data and information has in creating and altering behavior related to transportation. To do so, it lays out a theoretical model of technological transition and then follows it up with three case studies. The theoretical model provides a structure to consider how different actors in our transportation ecosystem – users, firms, policy actors – mix with technological evolution to uphold or incrementally recreate our transportation landscape. The case studies stand on their own to highlight important findings about how data and information are impacting transportation scenarios, but collectively reinforce the theoretical models. …

A Comparison Of Tribal Sovereignty, Self-Determination, And Environmental Justice At The Epa’S Onondaga Lake And Tar Creek Superfund Sites, Thomas Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program mandates that Native American tribes are afforded the same treatment as states in the implementation of environmental remediation projects; however, the degree of coordination and consultation between the EPA and sovereign tribal governments varies widely between sites. Two of the Superfund program’s highest profile sites with Native American interest, northeast Oklahoma’s Tar Creek and central New York’s Onondaga Lake, are characterized by such a disparity in tribal participation. While Oklahoma’s Quapaw Tribe would ultimately enter into a number of cooperative agreements with the EPA for direct control over remedial projects, New York’s Onondaga Nation …

Campus Design And The Community College Experience: An Exploration Of Stress, Belonging And Scholarly Identity, Vanita Naidoo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This mixed methods research study examines factors that influence the development of scholarly identity at a community college campus. It uses survey methods and a focus group with undergraduate students at the Bronx Community College (BCC) campus to examine how campus design relates to a sense of belonging, the process of reflection, and the development of a scholarly identity. Academic attrition and low performance are challenges at urban community colleges. The study aims to address how campus design, specifically green space, impacts undergraduate students at a community college. It seeks to better understand the experience of the diverse student population …

Commmunity, Ecology, And Modernity: Faunal Analysis Of Skútustaðir In Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, Megan Hicks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the archaeofaunal remains from Skútustaðir, a middle to high-status farm in Mývatnssveit, Northern Iceland, to understand the experience of rural communities and their ecologies during Iceland’s transition from regulated colonial exchange to a capitalist economy during the 17^th through 19^th centuries. Archaeofaunal analysis is used to reconstruct changes in the ways that people herded, hunted, and fished, providing insights into how they managed their local environments for subsistence and novel contexts of exchange. In addition to archaeofaunal analysis, primary textual sources are explored to assess how the Skútustaðir household and its rural community mobilized long-term …

Cyborgs For Environmental Justice: East Asian American Stories From The 1991 People Of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Lisa Ng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this paper is threefold: to serve as an oral history archive of the East Asian American experience at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to analyze the role of East Asian Americans in the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM), and to fill an ideological and political vacuum that exists in East Asian American communities. This work analyses the experiences of East Asian Americans who were present at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit--an event scholars have attributed to igniting the EJM. The paper argues that East Asian Americans act as “Cyborgs”—both as their ascribed …

Imagined Futures: Feminist Science Studies In An Era Of Climate Change Denial, Emily K. Crandall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What space is there for critical approaches to science in a context where the authority of science to say anything meaningful, or to prescribe, appears to be somewhat tenuous—in other words, in a moment of rampant climate change denial? To answer this question against the backdrop of the common refrain that the problem is one of capitalism vs. the climate (e.g. Naomi Klein 2014), I examine cases where debates about science, economistic organizational arrangements, and political clashes between neoliberals and environmentalists come together, while insisting on the view, following critical engagements with the sciences, that the sciences and their societies …

Cultural Heritage Preservation In The Context Of Climate Change Adaptation Or Relocation: Barbuda As A Case Study, Martha B. Lerski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This case study introduces an arts camp methodology of engaging communities in identifying their key cultural heritage features, thus serving as a meta study. It presents original research based on field studies on the climate-vulnerable Caribbean island of Barbuda during 2017 and 2018. Its Valued Cultural Elements survey, enabling precise identification of key tangible and intangible art forms and biocultural practices, may serve as a basis for further studies. Such approaches may facilitate future research or planning as climate-vulnerable communities harness Local or Indigenous Knowledge for purposes of biocultural heritage preservation, or towards adaptation or relocation. I report on findings …

Resisting Industrial Food Systems On The Web: How Non-Profit Organizations Use Digital Technology For Sustainability Education, Aleksandr Segal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the link between how community-based organizations use digital tools with the fundamentally resistance-based philosophy that these organizations have at the core of their mission. It aims to uncover how non-profit organizations (NPOs) that work in community development through food and agriculture use digital tools, and how their digital communication strategies relate to issues of resistance to neoliberalism and industrialization in the food and agriculture sectors.

Using a foundation of existing literature on food and agriculture, climate change and waste management, critical theory, and technology in pedagogy, this thesis will contextualize how non-profits resist neoliberal regimes of de-traditionalization …

The Threats Of Sea Level Rise: An Eco-Geopolitical Visual Analysis, Jorge L. Nowell-Enriquez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This eco-geopolitical research produces information about the sea level rising, and the analyst explains and projects global effects, and further problems and consequences of the phenomena in a five-minute-long video clip.

The focus is coastlines floods as a consequence of the sea level rising produced by glaciers melting. The floods will affect regions where over a billion persons are living, mainly coastal cities. Therefore, the sea level rising will produce or ease gradual destruction and sudden catastrophes. Moreover, these catastrophes will spur mass migration that might change the lives of a billion persons by 2045.

Merging Subsistence Perspective And Buen Vivir: An Alternative To Damming The Mekong, Aaron B. Eisenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will examine the planned development on the Mekong by looking at the historical, political, and economic reasons why largescale hydroelectric dams are now being pushed upon the river. It will then critique the international state sovereignty system focusing directly on the Mekong River Commission and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) for their inabilities to mitigate environmental impact while pursuing development. I analyze how the “global city” discourse cannot rationally be applied to Southeast Asia and how the urban-rural divide in Southeast Asia creates only greater problems as dam production on the Mekong accelerates. I propose an alternative …

Essays On Environmental Conditions In Cuba, Gonzalo Cordova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cuban environmental conditions have not attracted the attention received by otherareas of Cuba's economic performance. Chapter 1 examines selected ambient air pollutants and the use of fossil fuels in Cuba, indicators for which there are relatively better available data, as of the “Special Period” extending into recent years. In contrast with prior anecdotally-driven approaches, the empirical examination aims to specifically identify Cuba's performance and international standing on these indicators through the use of a heterogeneous individual country adaptation of the income-pollution relationship known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve. In response to critiques in the literature, extensive testing of the panel …

The New American Slavery: Capitalism And The Ghettoization Of American Prisons As A Profitable Corporate Business, David A. Liburd

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The labor of enslaved Africans and Black Americans played a large part in the history of colonial America, with the American plantation being the epicenter for all that was to be produced. While the two have never been completely tied together, capitalism and modern day slavery have been linked with one another. Some analysis sees slavery as a remote form of capitalism, a substitute, to an antiquated form of labor in the modern world.

Slave plantations adopted a new concentration in size and management, referred to by W.E. DuBois as a change "from a family institution to an industrial system."1 …