Matching Items (4)
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- All Subjects: Environmental Studies
- Creators: Chhetri, Netra
Description
With the ongoing drought surpassing a decade in Arizona, scholars, water managers and decision-makers have heightened attention to the availability of water resources, especially in rapidly growing regions where demand may outgrow supplies or outpace the capacity of the community water systems. Community water system managing entities and the biophysical and social characteristics of a place mediate communities' vulnerability to hazards such as drought and long-term climate change. The arid southwestern Phoenix metropolitan area is illustrative of the challenges that developed urban areas in arid climates face globally as population growth and climate change stress already fragile human-environmental systems. This thesis reveals the factors abating and exacerbating differential community water system vulnerability to water scarcity in communities simultaneously facing drought and rapid peri-urban growth. Employing a grounded, qualitative comparative case study approach, this thesis explores the interaction of social, biophysical and institutional factors as they effect the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of community water systems in Cave Creek and Buckeye, Arizona. Buckeye, once a small agricultural town in the West Valley, is wholly dependent on groundwater and currently planning for massive development to accommodate 218,591 new residents by 2020. Amid desert hills and near Tonto National Forest in the North Valley, Cave Creek is an upscale residential community suffering frequent water outages due to aging infrastructure and lack of system redundancy. Analyzing interviews, media accounts and policy documents, a narrative was composed explaining how place based factors, nested within a regional institutional water management framework, impact short and long-term vulnerability. This research adds to the library of vulnerability assessments completed using Polsky et al.'s Vulnerability Scoping Diagram and serves a pragmatic need assisting in the development of decision making tools that better represent the drivers of placed based vulnerability in arid metropolitan regions.
ContributorsZautner, Lilah (Author) / Larson, Kelli (Thesis advisor) / Bolin, Bob (Committee member) / Chhetri, Netra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Climate change impacts are evident throughout the world, particularly in the low lying coastal areas. The multidimensional nature and cross-scale impacts of climate change require a concerted effort from different organizations operating at multiple levels of governance. The efficiency and effectiveness of the adaptation actions of these organizations rely on the problem framings, network structure, and power dynamics of the organizations and the challenges they encounter. Nevertheless, knowledge on how organizations within multi-level governance arrangements frame vulnerability, how the adaptation governance structure shapes their roles, how power dynamics affect the governance process, and how barriers emerge in adaptation governance as a result of multi-level interactions is limited. In this dissertation research, a multilevel governance perspective has been adopted to address these knowledge gaps through a case study of flood risk management in coastal Bangladesh. Key-informant interviews, systematic literature review, spatial multi-criteria decision analysis, social network analysis (SNA), and content analysis techniques have been used to collect and analyze data. This research finds that the organizations involved in adaptation governance generally have aligned framings of vulnerability, irrespective of the level at which they are operated, thus facilitating adaptation decision-making. However, this alignment raises concerns of a neglect of socio-economic aspects of vulnerability, potentially undermining adaptation initiatives. This study further finds that the adaptation governance process is elite-pluralistic in nature, but has a coexistence of top-down and bottom-up processes in different phases of adaptation actions. The analysis of power dynamics discloses the dominance of a few national level organizations in the adaptation governance process in Bangladesh. Lastly, four mechanisms have been found that can explain how organizational culture, practices, and preferences dictate the emergence of barriers in the adaptation governance process. This dissertation research overall advances our understanding on the significance of multilevel governance approach in climate change adaptation governance.
ContributorsIshtiaque, Asif (Author) / Chhetri, Netra (Thesis advisor) / Eakin, Hallie (Thesis advisor) / Myint, Soe W (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
The most recent decision of the 2012 Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognizes that in order to create climate policies that respond to the different needs of men and women a more balanced representation of women from developed and developing countries is needed. National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) provide a process for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to “identify priority activities that respond to their urgent and immediate needs to respond to impending threats from climate change.” Since 1997, the United Nations has agreed to gender mainstreaming- a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality by ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities in the all UN systems.
Due to the gender division of labor climate change will affect men and women differently. Policies and programs that do not take into account the needs and capacities of both men and women will fail to be effective and may worsen preexisting conditions that historically favor men. My research investigates the UN’s commitment towards gender mainstreaming. More specifically my objective is to understand how and to what extent the NAPAs from 49 countries integrate a gender dimension into their national climate adaptation policy. For the purpose of this research, I consider three interrelated issues: whether gender-specific needs and vulnerabilities were identified by the NAPA; if these needs and vulnerabilities were addressed by proposed adaptation projects; and in what forms women participated in the formulation of the NAPA. The scope of this research begins with an overview assessment of 49 NAPAs followed by a comparative assessment of NAPAs from four countries- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Niger, and an in-depth analysis of Nepal’s NAPA, which incorporates field study. Nepal was chosen as a focus country due to its identification as being both inclusive and gender sensitive.
The method of inquiry consists of both quantitative and qualitative analysis, utilizing the quantitative measures of HDI and GII and the qualitative methods of content analysis and case study. The findings suggest that the response to the gender dimensions of climate change found in adaptation policies vary widely among the LDCs and the level of response is dependent upon social, cultural, economic, and political contexts within each LDC. Additionally, I find that gender mainstreaming techniques have not been fully integrated into the NAPA policy and processes, and have not been effective at promoting gender equality through adaptation strategies. Recommendations are provided in order to help mainstream gender in NAPAs as they continue to be developed, revised, and implemented.
Due to the gender division of labor climate change will affect men and women differently. Policies and programs that do not take into account the needs and capacities of both men and women will fail to be effective and may worsen preexisting conditions that historically favor men. My research investigates the UN’s commitment towards gender mainstreaming. More specifically my objective is to understand how and to what extent the NAPAs from 49 countries integrate a gender dimension into their national climate adaptation policy. For the purpose of this research, I consider three interrelated issues: whether gender-specific needs and vulnerabilities were identified by the NAPA; if these needs and vulnerabilities were addressed by proposed adaptation projects; and in what forms women participated in the formulation of the NAPA. The scope of this research begins with an overview assessment of 49 NAPAs followed by a comparative assessment of NAPAs from four countries- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Niger, and an in-depth analysis of Nepal’s NAPA, which incorporates field study. Nepal was chosen as a focus country due to its identification as being both inclusive and gender sensitive.
The method of inquiry consists of both quantitative and qualitative analysis, utilizing the quantitative measures of HDI and GII and the qualitative methods of content analysis and case study. The findings suggest that the response to the gender dimensions of climate change found in adaptation policies vary widely among the LDCs and the level of response is dependent upon social, cultural, economic, and political contexts within each LDC. Additionally, I find that gender mainstreaming techniques have not been fully integrated into the NAPA policy and processes, and have not been effective at promoting gender equality through adaptation strategies. Recommendations are provided in order to help mainstream gender in NAPAs as they continue to be developed, revised, and implemented.
ContributorsAnagnostou, Sotiria (Author) / Chhetri, Netra (Thesis advisor) / Hackett, Edward (Committee member) / Hibner-Koblitz, Ann (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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