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- All Subjects: Sustainability
Description
This dissertation is a detailed rhetorical analysis of interviews with rice farmers in central Java, Indonesia and documents published by the global NGOs United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and CGIAR. Using theories of materiality, literacies, and environmental rhetorics, I examine how seemingly distinct and disparate humans, organizations, and inanimates are actually entangled agents in a dynamic conversation. I have termed that conversation the discourse of rice farming. Studying local and global together challenges conventional dichotomous thinking about farming and food. Looking at this conversation as an entanglement reveals what Karen Barad has defined in Meeting the Universe Halfway as the intra-relatedness of all agents. I focus on rice farming because rice is a food staple around the world and a major component of global agriculture initiatives by FAO and CGIAR. I argue that farmers construct their jobs in terms of production, food sovereignty, and community. The NGOs construct agriculture in terms of consumption, food security, and poverty alleviation. In my project I emphasize the need for global agents to better account for how farmers construct agriculture. Accounting for how all agents impact the discourse of rice farming is the only way to come to an objective understanding rice farming's impact on local and global scales. My argument adds to the field of environmental rhetorics because most published case studies are about the United States and thus are limited in their applicability. And it enriches global conversations about food security and food justice because it shares accounts from actual farmers who are often conspicuously absent from literature on those topics.
ContributorsCooney, Emily (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Hannah, Mark (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This case study explores the institutions and governing strategies involved in the management of Rupa Lake in Kaski district in Western Nepal, particularly Rupa Lake Rehabilitation and Fishery Cooperative. Methods used for data collection include key informant interviews, household interviews, a focus group discussion and archival records. Institutions were examined for their effectiveness in sustaining natural and socioeconomic systems as perceived by community members. Based on a literature review and the results of the data collected, this thesis builds a case study highlighting Rupa Lake Rehabilitation and Fishery Cooperative's strategies for governing its local watershed and formulates a framework for commons institutions that aim to achieve sustainable outcomes. Based on findings, I argue that no single form of governance is a panacea for solving commons problems, governing strategies should be implemented on a case-by-case basis, and institutions should be involved at multiple levels and always include local input. Additionally, a sustainable institution should provide benefits to society that it can see, function democratically and with transparency, promote a biodiverse ecosystem, elevate marginalized groups, and collaborate with other institutions. These "clumsy" institutions create a series of complex interactions that are robust and adaptive to reflect the ever-changing systems they aim to govern.
ContributorsJenkins, Tayler Brooke (Author) / Chhetri, Netra (Thesis director) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Sense of Place, Place Attachment, and Student Perceptions of Sustainability in the Salt River Valley
Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate undergraduate sustainability students' engagement with sustainability in relation to their sense of place in the broader Salt River Valley community. The study was guided by two research questions 1) How do undergraduate Sustainability students explain their sense of place in the Valley with relation to their perceptions of sustainability? 2) Does residency in a different city, town, or state prior to entering the Sustainability program influence students' sense of place in the Valley? The study consisted of two distinct parts. In the first part, twenty students were interviewed using a narrative inquiry process to understand their perceptions of sustainability, their sense of place in the Valley, and how those two components influenced their engagement with sustainability in their communities. In the second part, these narratives were analyzed, synthesized, and samples of the stories were placed into a creative nonfiction collection to express an overall picture of sustainability in the Valley. Results showed that students generally relied on academic, professional, and social factors to identify places in which they could practice or engage with sustainability. Regardless of previous residencies, students expressed similar frustrations or limitations in expressing their sense of place, as related to sustainability, in the Valley.
ContributorsAllen, Emily Elizabeth (Author) / Broglio, Ron (Thesis director) / Goggin, Peter (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Despite similar climate, ecosystem, and population size, the cities of Hermosillo, Mexico and Mesa, USA manage their water very differently. Mesa has a stable and resilient system organized around state and federal regulations. Hermosillo, after rapidly industrializing, has not been able to cope with climate change and long-term drought conditions. Water distribution statistics, stakeholders, policy structure, and government organization were combined in an organizational framework to compare the practices of the two cities. These inputs were weighed against the outcomes and the sustainability of each system. While Mesa is part of a massive metropolitan area, Hermosillo is still developing into a metropolitan center and does not have access to the same infrastructure and resources. In Hermosillo local needs are frequently discounted in favor of broad political goals.
ContributorsMoe, Rud Lamb (Author) / Chhetri, Netra (Thesis director) / White, Dave (Committee member) / Robles-Morua, Agustin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Earth and Space Exploration (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Producing, transforming, distributing, and consuming food requires a multitude of actors, from the microbes in the soil to the truck drivers, from the salesperson to the bacterial life that supports digestion. Yet, the global food system – far from being neutral – unequally provides and extracts resources around the globe to serve and protect the needs of some, while excluding and/or oppressing others and producing trauma in the process. Drawing on feminist scholarship and permaculture research – two fields that discuss the importance of care but only rarely work together – and using social science methods, I explore how to integrate care into food systems, and what are the outcomes of such an integration. I first bring together the voices of 35 everyday experts from Cuba, France, and the United States (Arizona) and perspectives from ethics of care, creation care, indigenous scholars, and permaculture specialists, and I use grounded theory to develop a definition of care in food systems context, and a conceptual map of care that identifies motives for caring, caring practices and their results. I then discuss how caring practices enhance food systems’ adaptive capacity and resilience. Next, I study the relationship between a subset of the identified caring practices – what is recognized as “Earth care” – and their effect on well-being in general, and Food Well-Being more specifically, using three case studies from Arizona based on: (1) interviews of school teachers, (2) interviews of sustainable farmers, (3) a survey with 96 gardeners. There, I also discuss how policies and cultural transformations can better support the integration of Earth care practices in food systems. Then, I examine how urban food autonomy movements are grassroots examples of integration of care in food systems, and how through their care practices – Earth care, “People care” and “Fair share” – they can serve as a catalyst for social change and contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Lastly, I conclude with recommendations to strengthen a culture of care in food systems, as well as limitations to my research, and future research directions.
ContributorsGiraud, Esteve Gaelle (Author) / Aggarwal, Rimjhim (Thesis advisor) / Cloutier, Scott (Thesis advisor) / Samuelson, Hava (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
As one of the countries highly vulnerable to climate change, Nepal has developed climate adaptation policy objectives and integrated risk management strategies to avoid severe impacts from changing climatic conditions. The country has been developing local level adaptation initiatives to create synergy between the policy objectives at the higher levels and location-specific needs of communities. This dissertation analyzes how these initiatives have been shaped by the national and global level discourse on climate adaptation and how they translate into building resilience at the community level. More specifically, using the case of Nepal’s flagship adaptation programs - Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPA) and Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) - this dissertation seeks to understand institutional and technological innovations that contributed to the governance of climate adaptation initiatives in Nepal. Methodologically, this dissertation applies a mixed method. Quantitative data was collected by interviewing local level stakeholders using semi-structured questionnaires and from policy documents. The transcripts from the open-ended interviews with the regional and national level stakeholders form the basis for qualitative analysis. Overall, the findings from this dissertation reveal that most of the adaptation activities proposed by local communities were low cost, based on experiential learning, and could be implemented by mobilizing local resources. The case of LAPA shows that community-based adaptation activities are strongly connected to local development goals, revealing the synergy between adaptation policy objectives and development. Likewise, the case of CSA demonstrates how innovations, both technological and institutional, are fostered to co-produce locally specific knowledge required to adapt to changing climate. The collaborative efforts by different institutions operating at multiple levels for scaling CSA through the Climate Smart Village approach provide justification for working together to address the climate adaptation policy objectives. The findings of this dissertation also reveal that the distinction between local and scientific knowledge makes little sense at the community level as successful climate adaptation requires hybrid approaches. This dissertation makes a strong case to enhance the governance of adaptation initiatives through stronger collaboration between local to national and global actors.
ContributorsGhimire, Rajiv (Author) / Chhetri, Netra (Thesis advisor) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Crow-Miller, Brittany (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
Inequities and exclusions, compounded by the increasing intensity of extreme weather events, pose significant challenges to urban planning for low-elevation coastal zones (LECZ). Inclusive development (ID) and urban flood resilience (UFR) have emerged as widely endorsed solutions by scholars. Granting that they gain substantial support and enthusiasm, they have the potential to transform vulnerable urban areas. While their noble intentions are commendable, the intricacies of ID cannot be overlooked, as UFR often inherits and perpetuates the inequalities ingrained in conventional development paradigms. Given the critical importance of ID and UFR in contemporary urban planning, my dissertation research devolved into their fusion by answering my main research question, what constitutes inclusive urban flood resilience? This investigation was carried out through a series of four secondary research questions distributed over three academic papers, each contributing a unique perspective and insights to this burgeoning field. Through a systematic literature review and employing bibliometric and thematic analyses, Chapter 2 offers a comprehensive understanding of inclusive development and a refined definition of the concept. Subsequently, taking Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, as a case study, Chapter 3 estimates its UFR and employs dimensionality reduction by way of principal component analysis to present these findings in a transparent manner. Chapter 4 builds on the findings of the previous chapters, by first presenting a novel approach to evaluate inclusive development within the framework of the results of Chapter 2, and secondly, together with a systematic meta-analysis of flood resilience measurements, it offers an examination of the ID-UFR nexus. The findings suggest that the concept of inclusive development is nuanced by context-specific definitions, that flood resilience in Georgetown varies among its sub-districts, and that city dimensions (natural, built, social, economic, and institutional), as assessed by pooling global studies, do not share synergistic relationships, being a measure of inclusive development. These findings are critical to urban planning in Georgetown and similar contexts globally as they provide data-driven guidance for understanding these concepts and applying them toward developing inclusive and flood-resilient cities and communities.
ContributorsRenville, Dwayne (Author) / Cheng, Chingwen (Thesis advisor) / Vogel, Kathleen (Thesis advisor) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Zeng, Ruijie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Human migration is not a new phenomenon but present and future human-induced environmental changes pose new questions and challenges. In the coming years, both rapid and slow onset environmental changes will drive many people to migrate in search of improved security and livelihoods. Anthropogenic climate change in particular requires international institutions to determine how to best meet the needs of present and future migrants. I analyzed interviews with experts to identify institutional gaps for managing environmental migration and what potential, if any, the Warsaw International Mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts (WIM) might contribute to filling these gaps. Using these interviews and literature, I propose a framework to assess the capacity of existing institutions to address the breadth of migrant needs. Then, I identify gaps and challenges in order to illuminate strategies for future solutions.
ContributorsThompson-Ballentine, Katherine (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Hirt, Paul (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems (FMIS) are community managed and operated irrigation systems, celebrated for their successful governance of water resources for many decades and in several countries. Nevertheless, in the face of climatic, political, and social change, their future is uncertain. This dissertation utilizes household adaptive capacity, socio-ecological system (SES) robustness, and the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to structure a multi-scalar and multi-stressor analysis of changes experienced in Nepal’s FMIS. The dissertation documents irrigators’ perception of environmental change, impacts, and response; diagnoses the multiple disturbances impacting the robustness of the FMIS; and analyzes changes in the FMIS as an institution over time, in an effort to understand the major drivers of SES change. Fifteen FMIS from five districts of Nepal were selected for the study. Data were collected through field observations, household surveys, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. The status of the existing rules was compared with the data collected three decades ago in the Nepal Irrigation Institutions and Systems database. This study finds that FMIS’s robustness is threatened by uncertain water supply, inefficient infrastructure, scarcity of farm labor, weakening collective action, and natural disasters. Farm households, whose actions are necessary to sustain the management of FMIS, perceive environmental change differently according to their ecological region and position along the irrigation canal, leading to different adaptation strategies. Despite livelihood diversification, irrigators rely primarily on irrigation infrastructure management to respond to the impacts of environmental change. Institutional analysis demonstrates the evolution of FMIS in terms of working rules in the face of multiple stressors. In this study, payoff, information, and position rules have exhibited the most substantive change. However, boundary, choice, aggregation, and scope rules are less likely to change. The findings of this work point to the need for geographically differentiated adaptation support policies, and a need for closer attention to the dynamics of labor, environmental change, and institutional persistence in agriculture and irrigation sectors. FMIS being an exemplary institutional arrangement for the study of a SES, the research findings benefit similar institutions globally facing challenges to the sustainable governance of common pool resources.
ContributorsParajuli, Jagadish (Author) / Eakin, Hallie (Thesis advisor) / Chhetri, Netra (Thesis advisor) / Anderies, Marty (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This thesis is exploring the potential disconnect between the operational and cultural parts in the making of sustainability at Arizona State University (ASU) to find the disconnect in operational goals, student engagement, and thus student behavior in building sustainability at the university. To do so, I compare and contrast how ASU, Northern Arizona University (NAU), and the University of Arizona (UA) define, create, and demonstrate sustainability in their university’s culture and campus engagement programs. I first define what “culture” is in this study to provide context on how the word is being applied. Next, I assess how culture is reflected in the mission, vision, and/or goals of each university to set the tone for how the university intends to shape the culture of student experience through its services, as well as provide context where sustainability concepts may fit within. Then I assess what sustainability is demonstrated and defined as at each university. To thread each of these components together, I compare and contrast campus sustainability engagement programs at ASU, NAU, and UA based on the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) reports produced by The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE), as engagement programs are a reflection of the university’s vision, goals, and values brought from theory to practice. My findings are demonstrated in the form of a policy analysis, followed by recommendations on closing the gap where engagement programs and opportunities are potentially missing. These recommendations are intended to advance a stronger culture of sustainability on campus at ASU.
ContributorsMullis, Kailey Cheyenne (Author) / Goggin, Peter (Thesis director) / Jung, Kendon (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05