Matching Items (3,357)
Filtering by
- Creators: Brahms, Johannes, 1833-1897
Description
Growing concerns over climate change and the lack of a federal climate policy have prompted many sub-national organizations to undertake greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation actions on their own. However, the interventions associated with these efforts are typically selected in a top-down and ad hoc manner, and have not created the desired GHG emissions reductions. Accordingly, new approaches are needed to identify, select, develop, and coordinate effective climate change mitigation interventions in local and regional contexts. This thesis develops a process to create a governance system for negotiating local and regional climate interventions. The process consists of four phases: 1) mapping the overall transition, 2) reconstructing the current intervention selection system, 3) assessing the system against principles identified in the literature, and 4) creating an improved system based on the assessment. This process gives users a detailed understanding of how the overall transition has progressed, how and why interventions are currently selected, what changes are needed to improve the selection system, and how to re-structure the system to create more desirable outcomes. The process results in an improved system that relies on participation, coordination, and accountability to proactively select evidence-based interventions that incorporate the interests of stakeholders and achieve system-level goals. The process was applied to climate change mitigation efforts underway in Sonoma County, California to explore the implications of real-world application, and demonstrate its utility for current climate change mitigation efforts. Note that results and analysis from interviews with Sonoma County climate actors are included as a supplementary file.
ContributorsCulotta, Daniel Scott (Author) / Wiek, Arnim (Thesis advisor) / Basile, George (Committee member) / Shrestha, Milan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
ContributorsBrahms, Johannes, 1833-1897 (Composer)
ContributorsBrahms, Johannes, 1833-1897 (Composer)
ContributorsBrahms, Johannes, 1833-1897 (Composer)
ContributorsBrahms, Johannes, 1833-1897 (Composer)
Description
Small-scale, peasant farmers are some of the most vulnerable people to the effects of climate change. They rely on a stable climate to support their natural ways of farming, which typically depends on consistent rainfall, temperate weather, and predictable season cycles. The perceptions of how successful coffee production is during shifting climatic disruptions is of key importance, if mitigation or adaptation efforts are to be successfully implemented. By using ethnographic methods with members of a coffee cooperative in Mexico, called Cafe Justo, I found that peasant farmers are very perceptive of the climatic changes and recognize forthcoming challenges as a result of changes in weather and precipitation levels. Rain-fed agriculture remains particularly vulnerable to coffee market demands, as coffee production for the majority of the cooperative members is the primary source of income. Through interpretive analysis of in-depth interview data collected from 19 coffee-famers in Chiapas, Mexico, I identified factors associated with perceptions of changing climate and weather conditions. Social identities, general perceptions of climate change, and impacts on livelihoods were investigated through the speaking-with model, as it was presented by Nagar and Geiger in 2007. These findings have rich implications for co-learning between the small-scale, coffee farmers and the scientific community so that mitigation and adaptation strategies are discussed. The findings also merit further investigation into future migration changes due to mass exoduses of climate refugees who are no longer able to successfully cultivate and harvest the lands to serve their needs and those of their community.
ContributorsVillarreal, Anisa (Author) / Keahey, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Murphy Erfani, Julie (Committee member) / Shrestha, Milan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This paper was born of the researcher's personal interest. As someone who commutes by bike and plans to continue to do so for the foreseeable future, the researcher was intrigued by the growing bicycle culture in Phoenix, Arizona, a city that can sometimes make commuting without a car quite difficult. The researcher aimed to uncover why cycling is becoming more popular as a mode of transportation in a city that can often be hostile towards cyclists. This paper first reviews some previous studies done on alternative commuting. Next, it details a commute-shed analysis conducted with the help of the US Census Bureau's On The Map program. After that, the researcher describes the methods used to gather qualitative data about attitudes from local commuters and discusses the results. Finally, suggestions and speculations are made about ways to improve the bikeability of the Phoenix metropolitan area. The research found that cyclists in the area are motivated to commute by bike by factors including cost-savings, health benefits, and others. This data is important because it shows that the target demographic, who are able to exert their desires politically, feel strongly enough about commuting by bicycle to go out of their way to do it.
ContributorsParma, Alexander John (Author) / Kelley, Jason (Thesis director) / Shrestha, Milan (Committee member) / Valandra, Patrick (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2014-05
ContributorsBrahms, Johannes, 1833-1897 (Composer)
Description
The purpose of this research was to address the viability of a monoculture to polyculture agricultural land-cover transition within the context of the palm oil industry in Malaysia and Indonesia. A lifecycle assessment was used as a framework in the Cradle-to-Gate methodology used to understand sustainability hotspots, develop four future scenarios, and to measure three chosen indicators for metric changes. The four scenarios included a business-as-usual, perfect world, and two transition scenarios highlighting greenhouse gases, bio-control chemicals, fertilizer-use, and crop yield as indicators. In the four scenarios, a 1000 ha of plantation land with 140,000 palm oil trees created the backdrop for investigating nutrient cycling, cultivation methods, and the economic trade-offs of a transition. Primary literature was the main source of investigation and a wide-variety of current polyculture research helped create tangible data across the four scenarios. However, polyculture failed to address the socioeconomic barriers present in the governance, business-state, and regulations within this industry and region. An institutional analysis was conducted to investigate the political, financial, and regulatory barriers in this industry and recommend changes. It was concluded that while polyculture is an important form of environmental sustainability and can increase crop yield, the socioeconomic structure of the industry is the largest barrier to change and implement polyculture. In order for this social structure to change, it was recommended that the regulatory institutions, such as the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), reframe their pressure points and instead focus on the interconnectedness of logging and palm oil companies with the regional governments.
ContributorsPhillips, Katherine Wasem (Author) / Clark, Susan (Thesis director) / Shrestha, Milan (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05