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- Genre: Academic theses
Description
Climate adaptation has not kept pace with climate impacts which has formed an adaptation gap. Increasingly insurance is viewed as a solution to close this gap. However, the efficacy and implications of using insurance in the climate adaptation space are not clear. Furthermore, past research has focused on specific actors or processes, not on the interactions and interconnections between the actors and the processes. I take a complex adaptive systems approach to map out how these dynamics are shaping adaptation and to interrogate what the insurance climate adaptation literature claims are the successes and pitfalls of insurance driving, enabling or being adaptation. From this interrogation it becomes apparent that insurance has enormous influence on its policy holders, builds telecoupling into local adaptation, and creates structures which support contradictory land use policies at the local level. Based on the influence insurance has on policy holders, I argue that insurance should be viewed as a form of governance. I synthesize insurance, governance and adaptation literature to examine exactly what governance tools insurance uses to exercise this influence and what the consequences may be. This research reveals that insurance may not be the exemplary adaptation approach the international community is hoping for. Using insurance, risk can be reduced without reducing vulnerability, and risk transfer can result in risk displacement which can reduce adaptation incentives, fuel maladaptation, or impose public burdens. Moreover, insurance requires certain information and legal relationships which can and often do structure that which is insured to the needs of insurance and shift authority away from governments to insurance companies or public-private partnerships. Each of these undermine the legitimacy of insurance-led local adaptation and contradict the stated social justice goals of international calls for insurance. Finally, I interrogate the potential justice concerns that emerged through an analysis of insurance as a form of adaptation governance. Using a multi-valent approach to justice I examine a suite of programs intended to support agricultural adaptation through insurance. This analysis demonstrates that although some programs clearly attempted to consider issues of justice, overall these existing programs raise distributional, procedural and recognition justice concerns.
ContributorsLueck, Vanessa (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Eakin, Hallie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Massive gaps exist within and across climate efforts, which are often siloed, inequitable, and ineffective within and across local, national, and global community contexts. Climate justice was defined in this study as the need for activism and advocacy to address the disproportionate crises, impacts, and intersectional needs that communities experience due to climate crises. The intent of the “Climate Justice Collaborative Toolkit” and co-development process that I developed and examined in this dissertation was to improve intersectional collaboration, capacity building, and reciprocal agreements that would ensure better mitigation and adaptation of climate crisis events. The purpose of this study was to answer this research question: What are community participants' perceptions of this toolkit and collaborative co-development process for purposes of climate and racial justice? The purpose of this study was also to assess the impacts of the toolkit and accompanying process among members involved in climate justice and action groups, and develop case study stories to help revise and finalize the toolkit and surrounding co-development process for inclusive purposes. I asked these questions via a mixed-methods action research study, in which participants completed a pre-survey instrument, engaged in group orientations and toolkit meetings, participated in group leader interviews, and completed a post-survey instrument. Mixed-methods data suggested the near-unanimous need for greater participation, as well as representation, in climate efforts in order to create more equitable and racial justice outcomes. Additional findings involved to what extent collective groups, organizations, and other entities might better focus on the significant impacts of gender inequality within climate change crises. Another finding evidenced was that the toolkit was also used by participants as a decision-making system that helped enhance participants’ communication efforts and subsequent identifications of climate and racial justice issues, as well as potential solutions. Future iterations from these findings will include more detailed toolkit versions to effectively promote collaboration as linked to case studies presented as stories in the toolkit. This supports that a diverse range of community members’ lived experiences and intersectional issues considered in any climate effort can lead to more equitable, intersectional, and systems changing processes and outcomes.
ContributorsPeel, Michael (Author) / Amrein-Beardsley, Audrey (Thesis advisor) / Morris, Vernon (Committee member) / Kinslow II, Anthony (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This research explores Western society’s inability to address climate change substantively and the pathology of modernity. This dissertation resulted in two deliverables: (1) a persuasive critical literature review that defined and framed the pathology of modernity, and (2) an autoethnography on the pathology of modernity. Paper one showed the connections linking climate change and colonization by drawing on political ecology, Indigenous studies, environmental justice, sociology, postcolonial studies, and decolonial studies. After building a case for Western society’s responsibility for climate change, depth psychology was used to examine why many of contemporary society’s Western leaders tend to deny or ignore climate change and related systemic issues. This mindset is proposed to be an expression of a societal illness I define as the pathology of modernity. In paper two, the pathology of modernity is described through an autoethnography of my community organizing. This research used both a decolonial methodology as well as was inspired by grounded theory. Methods for the deliverables included a critical argumentative literature review and autoethnography. This research intends to change the conversation around climate change, addressing the structural power-based issues and mentality in Western society that prevents climate justice and climate action.
ContributorsTekola, Sarra (Author) / Cloutier, Scott (Thesis advisor) / Swadener, Beth (Committee member) / Amira de la Garza, Sarah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022