Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Assessing The Impacts Of Increasing The Availability Of Non-Automobile Modes Of Transportation On Carbon Emissions And Accessibility In Worcester, William Schechter Jul 2023

Assessing The Impacts Of Increasing The Availability Of Non-Automobile Modes Of Transportation On Carbon Emissions And Accessibility In Worcester, William Schechter

Sustainability and Social Justice

Over-reliance on cars in Worcester, Massachusetts represents a significant barrier to the introduction of accessible and ecologically sound modes of transportation. Through increases in frequency, accessibility, and service area, bus transportation in Worcester can offer a viable alternative to personal vehicle usage. In conjunction with the changes to buses, improvements to infrastructure for non-motorist transportation modes such as cycling, walking and assistive equipment will further reduce reliance on personal motor vehicles. Additional policies discouraging the use of motor vehicles is also suggested, with limited traffic zones and vehicle weight restrictions being implemented. With the developments and policy outlined within this …


Narrating Agricultural Resilience After Hurricane María: How Smallholder Farmers In Puerto Rico Leverage Self-Sufficiency And Collaborative Agency In A Climate-Vulnerable Food System, Abrania Marrero, Andrea Lόpez-Cepero, Ramón Borges-Méndez, Josiemer Mattei Jun 2022

Narrating Agricultural Resilience After Hurricane María: How Smallholder Farmers In Puerto Rico Leverage Self-Sufficiency And Collaborative Agency In A Climate-Vulnerable Food System, Abrania Marrero, Andrea Lόpez-Cepero, Ramón Borges-Méndez, Josiemer Mattei

Sustainability and Social Justice

Climate change is a threat to food system stability, with small islands particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events. In Puerto Rico, a diminished agricultural sector and resulting food import dependence have been implicated in reduced diet quality, rural impoverishment, and periodic food insecurity during natural disasters. In contrast, smallholder farmers in Puerto Rico serve as cultural emblems of self-sufficient food production, providing fresh foods to local communities in an informal economy and leveraging traditional knowledge systems to manage varying ecological and climatic constraints. The current mixed methods study sought to document this expertise and employed a questionnaire and narrative interviewing …


Multiple Metals In Children’S Deciduous Teeth: Results From A Community-Initiated Pilot Study, Alexa Friedman, Julia Anglen Bauer, Christine Austin, Timothy Downs, Yorghos Tripodis, Wendy Heiger-Bernays, Roberta White, Manish Arora, Birgit Claus Henn May 2022

Multiple Metals In Children’S Deciduous Teeth: Results From A Community-Initiated Pilot Study, Alexa Friedman, Julia Anglen Bauer, Christine Austin, Timothy Downs, Yorghos Tripodis, Wendy Heiger-Bernays, Roberta White, Manish Arora, Birgit Claus Henn

Sustainability and Social Justice

Background: Characterizing retrospective exposure to toxicants during multiple early-life developmental periods is challenging, yet critical for understanding developmental effects. Objective: To characterize early-life metal exposure using deciduous teeth in a community concerned about past exposures. Methods: Naturally shed teeth were collected from 30 children ages 5–13 years who resided in Holliston, Massachusetts since conception. We estimated weekly prenatal and postnatal (up to 1 year of age) exposure to 12 metals by measuring dentine concentrations using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Multivariable linear mixed models were used to explore sociodemographic, dietary, and behavioral correlates of dentine metal concentrations. Results: Temporal trends …


Impact Pathways From Climate Services To Sdg2 (“Zero Hunger”): A Synthesis Of Evidence, James Hansen, Geneva List, Shauna Downs, Edward Carr, Rahel Diro, Walter Baethgen, Andrew Kruczkiewicz, Melody Braun, John Furlow, Kayla Walsh, Nitin Magima Jan 2022

Impact Pathways From Climate Services To Sdg2 (“Zero Hunger”): A Synthesis Of Evidence, James Hansen, Geneva List, Shauna Downs, Edward Carr, Rahel Diro, Walter Baethgen, Andrew Kruczkiewicz, Melody Braun, John Furlow, Kayla Walsh, Nitin Magima

Sustainability and Social Justice

Climate services can help address a range of climate-sensitive development challenges, including agricultural production and food security. However, generating empirical evidence of impact is challenging. In this paper, we synthesize published evidence of pathways by which climate services contribute to improved food security. A summary of key mechanisms by which climate risk drives food insecurity provides a context for understanding potential climate risk management interventions. Our review of available evaluation literature finds moderately strong evidence that climate services contribute to improvements in food security or its precursors through farmers’ risk management decisions and index-based agricultural insurance; and a weaker body …


Evaluating Agricultural Weather And Climate Services In Africa: Evidence, Methods, And A Learning Agenda, Catherine Vaughan, James Hansen, Philippe Roudier, Paul Watkiss, Edward Carr Jul 2019

Evaluating Agricultural Weather And Climate Services In Africa: Evidence, Methods, And A Learning Agenda, Catherine Vaughan, James Hansen, Philippe Roudier, Paul Watkiss, Edward Carr

Sustainability and Social Justice

Weather and climate services (WCS) are expected to improve the capacity of Africa's agricultural sector to manage the risks of climate variability and change. Despite this, a lack of evidence prevents a realistic analysis of whether such services are delivering on their potential. This paper reviews 66 studies that have evaluated outcomes and/or impacts of agricultural WCS in Africa, highlighting areas that have received relatively more attention as well as persistent gaps. While the evaluation of WCS outcomes is relatively straightforward, estimates of the number of people who access and use these services are uneven (covering a small number of …


Climate Services Can Support African Farmers' Context-Specific Adaptation Needs At Scale, James Hansen, Catherine Vaughan, Desire Kagabo, Tufa Dinku, Edward Carr, Jana Körner, Robert Zougmoré Apr 2019

Climate Services Can Support African Farmers' Context-Specific Adaptation Needs At Scale, James Hansen, Catherine Vaughan, Desire Kagabo, Tufa Dinku, Edward Carr, Jana Körner, Robert Zougmoré

Sustainability and Social Justice

We consider the question of what is needed for climate services to support sub-Saharan African farmers' adaptation needs at the scale of the climate challenge. Consistent with an earlier assessment that mutually reinforcing supply-side and demand-side capacity constraints impede the development of effective climate services in Africa, our discussion of strategies for scaling up practices that meet farmers' needs, and opportunities to address long-standing obstacles, is organized around: (a) meeting farmers' climate information needs; (b) supporting access, understanding and use; and (c) co-production of services. A widespread gap between available information and farmers' needs is associated with entrenched seasonal forecast …


Really Effective (For 15% Of The Men): Lessons In Understanding And Addressing User Needs In Climate Services From Mali, Edward Carr, Sheila Onzere Jan 2018

Really Effective (For 15% Of The Men): Lessons In Understanding And Addressing User Needs In Climate Services From Mali, Edward Carr, Sheila Onzere

Sustainability and Social Justice

The design of effective climate services requires the identification of a problem that might be addressed through the provision of weather and climate information, and the design and delivery of actionable information to a set of appropriate users. The utility of weather and climate information for a given user is shaped not only by exposure to particular weather, climate, and market shocks and stresses, but also the sensitivity of that user’s livelihoods to particular shocks and stresses and whether or not their adaptive capacity includes the ability to use such information. Therefore, effective climate services are very place-, time-, and …


Enhancing And Expanding Intersectional Research For Climate Change Adaptation In Agrarian Settings, Mary Thompson-Hall, Edward Carr, Unai Pascual Dec 2016

Enhancing And Expanding Intersectional Research For Climate Change Adaptation In Agrarian Settings, Mary Thompson-Hall, Edward Carr, Unai Pascual

Sustainability and Social Justice

Most current approaches focused on vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation to climate change frame gender and its influence in a manner out-of-step with contemporary academic and international development research. The tendency to rely on analyses of the sex-disaggregated gender categories of ‘men’ and ‘women’ as sole or principal divisions explaining the abilities of different people within a group to adapt to climate change, illustrates this problem. This framing of gender persists in spite of established bodies of knowledge that show how roles and responsibilities that influence a person´s ability to deal with climate-induced and other stressors emerge at the intersection of …


Understanding Women's Needs For Weather And Climate Information In Agrarian Settings: The Case Of Ngetou Maleck, Senegal, Edward Carr, Grant Fleming, Tshibangu Kalala Jul 2016

Understanding Women's Needs For Weather And Climate Information In Agrarian Settings: The Case Of Ngetou Maleck, Senegal, Edward Carr, Grant Fleming, Tshibangu Kalala

Sustainability and Social Justice

While climate services have the potential to reduce precipitation- and temperature-related risks to agrarian livelihoods, such outcomes are possible only when they deliver information that is salient, legitimate, and credible to end users. This is particularly true of climate services intended to address the needs of women in agrarian contexts. The design of such gender-sensitive services is hampered by oversimplified framings of women as a group in both the adaptation and climate services literatures. This paper demonstrates that even at the village level, women have different climate and weather information needs, and differing abilities to act on that information. Therefore, …


The Influence Of Gendered Roles And Responsibilities On The Adoption Of Technologies That Mitigate Drought Risk: The Case Of Drought-Tolerant Maize Seed In Eastern Uganda, Monica Fisher, Edward R. Carr Nov 2015

The Influence Of Gendered Roles And Responsibilities On The Adoption Of Technologies That Mitigate Drought Risk: The Case Of Drought-Tolerant Maize Seed In Eastern Uganda, Monica Fisher, Edward R. Carr

Sustainability and Social Justice

Gender-disaggregated, household survey data for Uganda are used to examine how gendered roles and responsibilities influence adoption of drought-tolerant (DT) maize, a new technology that can help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa adapt to drought risk. Multinomial logit (MNL) regression results indicate that, compared to men farmers, women farmers have much lower adoption of DT maize, mainly due to differences in resource access, notably land, agricultural information, and credit. Differentiation of women and men farmers by various characteristics reveals that whether a male farmer was younger or older, or poor or non-poor has no significant influence on DT maize adoption; …


"Is The Concept Of A Green Economy A Useful Way Of Framing Policy Discussions And Policymaking To Promote Sustainable Development?", Sheng Fulai, Gary Flomenhoft, Timothy Downs, Maángeles Grande-Ortiz, Dana Graef, Bert Scholtens, Arthur P.J. Mol, David Sonnenfeld, Gert Spaargaren, Rajeev Goel, Edward W.T. Hsieh, Serban Scrieciu, Reinhard Steurer, Christine Polzin, Genia Kostka, Tiho Ancev, Elke Pirgmaier, Frank Boons, Karl Henrik Robèrt, Christopher Bryant, Ke Zhou, Surya Raj Acharya, David Huberman, Denis Sonwa, Michelle Mycoo, Dabo Guan, Klaus Hubacek, U. Rashid Sumaila, Hector Lopez-Ruiz, G. Jason Jolley, Michael Dougherty, André Francisco Pilon, Ravi Prakash Jan 2011

"Is The Concept Of A Green Economy A Useful Way Of Framing Policy Discussions And Policymaking To Promote Sustainable Development?", Sheng Fulai, Gary Flomenhoft, Timothy Downs, Maángeles Grande-Ortiz, Dana Graef, Bert Scholtens, Arthur P.J. Mol, David Sonnenfeld, Gert Spaargaren, Rajeev Goel, Edward W.T. Hsieh, Serban Scrieciu, Reinhard Steurer, Christine Polzin, Genia Kostka, Tiho Ancev, Elke Pirgmaier, Frank Boons, Karl Henrik Robèrt, Christopher Bryant, Ke Zhou, Surya Raj Acharya, David Huberman, Denis Sonwa, Michelle Mycoo, Dabo Guan, Klaus Hubacek, U. Rashid Sumaila, Hector Lopez-Ruiz, G. Jason Jolley, Michael Dougherty, André Francisco Pilon, Ravi Prakash

Sustainability and Social Justice

In this article, the authors discuss the use of green economy to promote sustainable development. Research and Partnerships Unit Head Sheng Fulai states that sustainable development is composed of economic, social and environmental development. Furthermore, it features Research and Partnerships associate Gary Flomenhoft who believes that green economy is useful when it deals with factors such as distribution of wealth and throughput of materials and energy.


The Allure Of Technology: How France And California Promoted Electric And Hybrid Vehicles To Reduce Urban Air Pollution, David Calef, Robert Goble Mar 2007

The Allure Of Technology: How France And California Promoted Electric And Hybrid Vehicles To Reduce Urban Air Pollution, David Calef, Robert Goble

Sustainability and Social Justice

All advanced industrialized societies face the problem of air pollution produced by motor vehicles. In spite of striking improvements in internal combustion engine technology, air pollution in most urban areas is still measured at levels determined to be harmful to human health. Throughout the 1990s and beyond, California and France both chose to improve air quality by means of technological innovation, adopting legislation that promoted clean vehicles, prominently among them, electric vehicles (EVs). In California, policymakers chose a technology-forcing approach, setting ambitious goals (e.g., zero emission vehicles), establishing strict deadlines and issuing penalties for non-compliance. The policy process in California …


Sustainability Of Least Cost Policies For Meeting Mexico City's Future Water Demand, Timothy Downs, Marisa Mazari-Hiriart, Ramón Domínguez-Mora, Irwin Suffet Jan 2000

Sustainability Of Least Cost Policies For Meeting Mexico City's Future Water Demand, Timothy Downs, Marisa Mazari-Hiriart, Ramón Domínguez-Mora, Irwin Suffet

Sustainability and Social Justice

Meeting future water demand without degrading ecosystems is one important indicator of sustainable development. Using simulations, we showed that compared to existing policy, more sustainable water supply options are similar or cheaper in cost. We probabilistically forecasted the Mexico City metropolitan zone population for the year 2015 to be 23.5 million and total required water supply to be 106 m3 s-1. We optimized existing and potential supply sources from aquifers, surface water, treatment/reuse, and efficiency/demand management by cost to meet future supply needs; the applied source supply limits determined the degree of sustainability. In two scenarios to supply 106 m3 …


Risk Screening For Exposure To Groundwater Pollution In A Wastewater Irrigation District Of The Mexico City Region, Timothy Downs, Enrique Cifuentes-García, Irwin Suffet Jan 1999

Risk Screening For Exposure To Groundwater Pollution In A Wastewater Irrigation District Of The Mexico City Region, Timothy Downs, Enrique Cifuentes-García, Irwin Suffet

Sustainability and Social Justice

Untreated wastewater from the Mexico City basin has been used for decades to irrigate cropland in the Mezquital Valley, State of Hidalgo, Mexico. Excess irrigation water recharges the near-surface aquifer that is used as a domestic water supply source. We assessed the groundwater quality of three key groundwater sources of domestic water by analyzing for 24 trace metals, 67 target base/neutral/acid (BNA) organic compounds, nontarget BNA organics, 23 chlorinated pesticides, 20 polychlorinated biphenyls, and nitrate, as well as microbiological contaminants - coliforms, Vibrio cholerae, and Salmonella. Study participants answered a questionnaire that estimated ingestion and dermal exposure to groundwater; 10% …