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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Pakistan, India And The Indus River Basin, Muquadas Ilyas Jan 2023

Pakistan, India And The Indus River Basin, Muquadas Ilyas

Dissertations and Theses

Water is a fundamental need of all living things. The right to clean water is classified as a human right under United Nations Resolution 64/292.As such it is the responsibility of governments to ensure its citizens are not deprived of this essential resource. In doing so, effective water management is crucial to provide clean water that is accessible to everyone regardless of any challenges such as geographical constraints or political disputes. This thesis explores the water management efforts of Pakistan and India. These countries are facing a water crisis, whereby numerous citizens have died due to dehydration and diseases contracted …


Collaboration And Evaluation In Urban Sustainability And Resilience Transformations: The Keys To A Just Transition?, Liliana Elizabeth Caughman May 2020

Collaboration And Evaluation In Urban Sustainability And Resilience Transformations: The Keys To A Just Transition?, Liliana Elizabeth Caughman

Dissertations and Theses

Climate has changed and will continue changing; city populations are swelling as urbanization continues to accelerate; extreme environmental events like heat waves and floods are becoming more severe and more common; and the climate justice movement is rapidly gaining momentum. It in this context that municipal governments find themselves urgently seeking solutions to transition cities from extractive, vulnerable, and unjust to sustainable, resilient, and equitable. The task is complex and will require systemic transformations across interconnected social, environmental, and economic infrastructures. Emerging theories regarding how to govern such massive changes suggest Transition Management strategies and the values of a just …


Scientists, Uncertainty And Nature, An Analysis Of The Development, Implementation And Unintended Consequences Of The Northwest Forest Plan, Gilbert David Miller Feb 2019

Scientists, Uncertainty And Nature, An Analysis Of The Development, Implementation And Unintended Consequences Of The Northwest Forest Plan, Gilbert David Miller

Dissertations and Theses

The conflict in the Pacific Northwest between competing visions of how federal forests should be managed resulted in a political stalemate in the early 1990s. The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was initiated to resolve the demands for maintaining ecosystem processes and biological diversity with the social and economic needs for timber harvest. The foundation for the plan rested with the development of ecosystem management. The intent of this research is to explore the events which led up to the adoption of the NWFP, how it was implemented by the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management and the subsequent …


Recognizing And Addressing Risk Ambiguity In Sea Level Rise Adaptation Planning: A Case Study Of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Mary Ann Rozance Jan 2019

Recognizing And Addressing Risk Ambiguity In Sea Level Rise Adaptation Planning: A Case Study Of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Mary Ann Rozance

Dissertations and Theses

As coastal cities around the world identify and implement adaptations to sea level rise, they are faced with competing interests around what should be done and how to prioritize actions. Often, environmental problems--like confronting the challenge of sea level rise--are posed as requiring expert driven, technical solutions to identify and mitigate risks across the landscape. This framing, however, ignores the way in which diverse knowledge can help inform long-term planning horizons that address complex ways that sea level rise affects communities. The failure to integrate diverse knowledge into sea level rise adaptation can result in barriers to implementation and outcomes …


Between A Rock And A Hot Place: Economic Development And Climate Change Adaptation In Vietnam, Khanh Katherine Pham Jul 2018

Between A Rock And A Hot Place: Economic Development And Climate Change Adaptation In Vietnam, Khanh Katherine Pham

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores 1) the ways that three Vietnamese infrastructure development projects undermine their cities' climate change adaptation goals and 2) the political and economic forces driving these developments. In-depth interviews highlight four main perspectives of planners and decision makers, which explain why these infrastructure projects often undermine cities' climate resilience goals. I describe how the mainstream climate change adaptation planning approach, with its emphasis on participatory planning, good governance and green growth, implicitly reinforces the neoliberal growth model, even as it seeks to ameliorate the inequality and ecological destruction that such a growth model creates. My research reveals how …


Reducing Arsenic Exposure From Private Well Water In The United States: The Use, Effect, And Potential Of Testing Requirements, Sara Flanagan Jan 2018

Reducing Arsenic Exposure From Private Well Water In The United States: The Use, Effect, And Potential Of Testing Requirements, Sara Flanagan

Dissertations and Theses

Over 45 million Americans drink from unregulated private well water of unknown quality. Arsenic is the most concerning groundwater contaminant for health because of its toxicity and widespread natural occurrence. Most residential wells in arsenic-affected areas have not been tested for arsenic; the success of community programs and efforts to motivate testing is limited by a range of psychological, situational, and socioeconomic barriers. However, testing only acts as screening and does not reduce exposure without effective and consistent actions to follow. Given the limitations in relying on individual well owners to be aware, willing, and capable of testing their water, …


The Political Water Web Of The United States, Omar Hammad Jan 2017

The Political Water Web Of The United States, Omar Hammad

Dissertations and Theses

The United States’ water systems are interstate in their nature; these systems are governed by Congressional compact agreements. Water compacts have been influenced by common factors that have reverberated throughout the water-web of the country. These impacts varied in their scale, national level federal regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and recent concerns about climate change are macro-scale influences. Localized drivers such as regional economics and population change are localized impacts. While these concepts and issues influence water compacts as a whole, their impacts occur at different periods, albeit for the same reason. As such, we see …


Presidential Domain: An Exploratory Study Of Prospect Theory And Us Climate Policy Since 1998, Hal T. Nelson Nov 2002

Presidential Domain: An Exploratory Study Of Prospect Theory And Us Climate Policy Since 1998, Hal T. Nelson

Dissertations and Theses

The Bush administration's decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol can be explained by prospect theory. The change in federal climate policy between the Clinton and Bush administrations was due to the difference in domain that each president operated under. President Clinton operated under a domain of losses as he associated continued fossil fuel use with future socio-economic and environmental damages from climate change. This domain of losses increased President Clinton's risk tolerances and explains his pursuit of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Conversely, President Bush operated under a domain of gains where he did …


An Implementation Analysis Of The Water Resources Development Act Of 1986, James Joseph Rich Jan 1993

An Implementation Analysis Of The Water Resources Development Act Of 1986, James Joseph Rich

Dissertations and Theses

Implementation research, an area once largely ignored in favor of policy design and impact assessment, now constitutes a significant portion of the policy analysis literature. One of the key issues addressed by the theory building portion of that literature is the necessity of precisely identifying implementation variables, conditions, or actions that measurably contribute to the success or failure of implementation efforts over a broad range of policies and programs, and to then suggest some order of significance. In order to test the validity of a variable set proposed by the literature, a multivariate implementation model was employed as the basis …