Undergraduate Research on Vulnerability to Climate Change in Local ...

The HERO REU Experience: Undergraduate Research on Vulnerability to Climate Change in Local Places Cynthia L. Sorrensen Texas Tech University, Department of Economics and Geography Lubbock, Texas 79409 E-mail: [email protected] Colin Polsky Clark University, Graduate School of Geography and George Perkins Marsh Institute Worcester, Massachusetts 01610 E-mail: [email protected] Robert Neff University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Department of Geography and Environmental Systems Baltimore, Maryland 21250 E-mail: [email protected]

The Geographical Bulletin 47(2): 65-72 ©2006 by Gamma Theta Upsilon

HERO and REU Undergraduates are an integral part of many university research programs. We are very pleased to showcase the efforts of some of our undergraduate students in the papers that follow, and to introduce them within the larger context of our research, here in this introduction. The Human-Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) program is a five-year research program, funded by the National Science Foundation (through an infrastructure grant) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (through the Office of Global Programs). Our goal is to develop a research approach to monitor ongoing human-environment relationships at the local scale as they interface with the impacts of global climate change. Our work forms from a collaborative effort by geographers at four Universities (Clark University, Kansas State University, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Arizona), builds on previous work in the Global Changes in Local Places project (Kates and Torrie 1998; Wilbanks and Kates 1999; AAG 2003) and hopes to push the frontiers of collaborative learning (Pike et al. 2004; Yarnal and Neff 2004, 2006). The HERO research project takes three questions important in climate change research and addresses them at the local level: Who is vulnerable to global change?, How does vulnerability vary across place?, and How might adaptation best be accomplished? We believe that addressing these questions from a long-term monitoring approach is vital to forwarding a goal of local and global sustainability. Ongoing monitoring not only reveals to us dynamics of human-environment systems for a given period of time, but also provides us baseline information which future researchers can build from as they revisit sites and research questions. We approach this effort through design and testing of research protocols and data standards that can be used to monitor human-environment interactions in any locale; application and evaluation of these protocols/standards 65

Cynthia L. Sorrensen, Colin Polsky, and Robert Neff

through comparative research based on four study sites; infrastructure development that facilitates long distance collaboration among researchers; and organization of an intergenerational network of scholars (undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, junior and senior researchers) concerned with global change issues. Undergraduate research plays a key role to our efforts to apply protocols and methods in vulnerability studies at designated research sites and in determining which aspects of vulnerability are comparable across the sites and which are not. Our monitoring takes place in four very diverse sites: the Susquehanna River Basin (the Pennsylvania State University site), central and eastern Massachusetts (the Clark University site), the High Plains Ogallala aquifer (the Kansas State site), and the Sonora Desert border region between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico (the University of Arizona site). Through the National Science Foundation’s Research for Undergraduates (REU) program we have been privileged to integrate undergraduates into our fieldwork seasons each summer and their results have challenged us to think more thoroughly and complexly about the vulnerability of local places to global change. Each year since 2002, 12-16 students (3-4 from each site) have been selected through a competitive application process to participate in the HERO REU program. They attend a two-week short course on human-environment research at Pennsylvania State University, where they develop a familiarity with the HERO project as well as gain relevant theoretical background and practical skills necessary for conducting their research at their home institutions’ study sites. The REU students then return to their respective sites to begin a 6-week research period which includes data collection, data analysis, and a final report (for more detail on the HERO REU program, see Yarnal and Neff, 2006). To come to their findings, the students used qualitative research methods loosely associated with grounded theory (e.g., Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1998). Their research draws largely from text 66

analysis of in-depth interviews with pertinent stakeholders through saturating transcribed information with codes that can then be aggregated into larger themes of understanding. They build an understanding of their data from the “ground up,” developing a qualitative knowledge about vulnerability specific to their study site but which draws upon shared concepts within the larger human dimensions of global change literature. Because all students working in each study site use the same research protocol and methods, they create the initial baseline of information for our ongoing monitoring efforts that is internally consistent and therefore comparable across sites. Positioning HERO Work: Vulnerability, Adaptive Capacity and Climate Change We take our definition of vulnerability from recent climate change literature that has focused on characterizing vulnerability, developing measures of it, and comparing these measure across the Earth (e.g., Liverman 1990; Downing 1991; NRC 1998; Kelly and Adger 2000; McCarthy et al. 2001; Parry 2001; Turner et al. 2003; Polsky 2004; Schröter et al. 2005). In this work, the vulnerability of a coupled human-environment system is a function of the system’s exposure to climate (and other) stresses, its sensitivity to such stresses, and its capacity to respond and adapt to such stresses. For example, someone who has constructed his/her home in a floodplain would be more exposed to flooding during a period of unusually intense rainfall (the climate-related hazard) than their neighbor situated further from the floodplain. Given two residents equally exposed in the floodplain, the one whose house had a poor foundation made of porous materials would be more sensitive to that flood than the one who had fortified his/her house with retaining walls. And lastly, the resident who did not imagine the possibility of flood damage and carried no flood insurance would have a lower adaptive capacity to the impact of the flood than the resident who either anticipated possible flooding and prepared to mitigate it,

The HERO REU Experience: Undergraduate Research on Vulnerability to Climate Change in Local Places

or carried securities to increase his/her ability to rebuild or relocate afterwards. Drawing this example into a general context, then, to be highly vulnerable to climate change, a human-environment system would not only be exposed and sensitive to climate related hazards, but also have limited ability to respond to those hazards or adopt strategies that lessen the impact of those hazards in the future. All three dimensions are shaped by human-environment interactions, making vulnerability a complex process to examine and comprehend. Exposure may appear to be the easiest dimension to characterize, but its straightforwardness is deceiving. Exposure is an outcome of the physical conditions of a place, both climate and landscape, combined with specific human choices to be in such a place. Yet, understanding why humans choose to reside/work/be present in the places they do, is no easy task. In fact, climate change research often fails to ask this question, leaving the environmental justice and racism literatures to explain the relationships of hazards to population locations more fully (Pullido 2000). Indeed, the social context of exposure has been largely ignored in climate change research. Sensitivity and adaptive capacity are equally challenging to understand and not always easily decipherable through time. Sensitivity refers to social conditions within a specific time period that make individuals, populations, or even economic sectors more (or less) prone to harm from climaterelated hazard. Adaptation characterizes the potential for change within these individuals, populations or economic sectors that would mediate these hazards in the future. Yet, both are dependent on human choice, be it collective or individual, and the political-economic and cultural processes that influence human choice at all spatial scales (Rayner and Malone 1998). In addition, conscious adaptations put into place at one point in time can be interpreted in reduced (or heightened) sensitivity at a later point in time. This is evident in our example above, where the reduced sensitivity that comes with a stronger house foundation could have been

the result of adaptations previously made. Then, there are also unconscious decisions that produce change. They may turn out to be helpful adaptations or shift the realm of sensitivity or exposure altogether. Are these to be considered adaptations as well or just happenstance? The seemingly straightforward relationship of vulnerability becomes more complex the closer it is examined. Be that as it may, if some measure for or characterization of each dimension can be acquired, this framework accommodates application and comparison. An assessment of vulnerability, that is, an evaluation of the degree to which a particular human-environment system is vulnerable and in what ways, becomes an effective approach to examining the local impacts of global change. Assessments not only appraise the current situation, but by implication, they indicate what is missing and therefore can guide a plan of action. If systematically done, they also allow for comparison across sites, which may be beneficial in assessing most critical needs or in answering larger science questions about generalizable and place specific vulnerability processes. The HERO research will continue to work towards explanation and understanding, but considering that climate change is happening now, we also want our work to move towards action. Our definition of vulnerability may seem to vary from that found in critical hazards research carried out by other human geographers. Their work frames vulnerability as largely (if not completely) a social construction. Critical hazards scholars emphasize the historical political economic contexts that work to create vulnerable landscapes and populations (Watts and Bohle 1993; Blaikie et al. 1994; Sorrensen 2002; Few 2003), and the ways in which hazard impacts are constructed by policy, technology, and the discourses that experts promulgate (Harwell 2000; Mustafa 2005). For the HERO project, the contrast is largely a reflection of research orientation: global change research is interested in what is vulnerability and where it exists; critical hazards work focuses more on why vulnerability is present and why it is 67


often differentially felt. A sophisticated body of research on vulnerability is clearly apparent within the larger social sciences, and those engaged in research on climate and society increasingly acknowledge the relevance and explanatory power of this work (Kelly and Adger 2000; Eakin 2000; Vásquez-León et al. 2003). While admittedly the papers here do not fully engage in conceptual debates, they do not dismiss them either. Instead, we merely focus on a proactive approach through assessment, keeping in mind the complexity and soundness of social critiques and explanations. As you will see in the work in this special issue, the social subtlety and place-specificity of vulnerability are very much apparent in the students’ analyses. The REU Work: Structure, Agency, and Attending to a Binary in Human-Environment Research The papers presented here reflect REU efforts from summers 2003 and 2004. During these years, the research was specifically focused around sensitivities to hydroclimatic variation, in particular drought, and adaptive capacity of society to such variation. The students positioned their findings in terms of structural influences—defined here as manifestations of structure in the form of institutions pertaining to regulation, policy, and government organization at all spatial scales – and agency influences—defined here as strategies and decisions taken by individuals or coalitions of interest groups on their own initiative. While these specifications are by no means definitive, -- indeed enormous theoretical debate surrounds the constructs of structure and agency (Giddens 1984; O’Riordan and Jordan 1999) -- they did serve as practical operatives for our students, given the time limitations (six weeks each year for fieldwork, analysis, and write-up of findings) of the REU project. The theoretical nuances drawn from the students’ empirical work will be developed elsewhere in HERO research, but are briefly mentioned here. Human geographers, particularly as they try to comprehend the impacts of human68

environment interactions, have historically positioned structure and agency in a binary, often “either or”, framework (Chowdhury and Turner 2006). Cultural ecologists, one of the larger contingents in human environment research, argue that landscape evolution and change can not be understood fully without attention the individual behaviors of those engaged in land use practices (Vayda and Walters 1999). They favor agency, the capacity of individuals to act independently, as the key explanatory operative. Political ecologists, a second large bloc of geographers interested in human environment questions, have often swung the analysis pendulum in the opposite direction, claiming that individuals do not act in complete isolation, but are restricted, influenced or even aided by the larger political economic and historical cultural contexts of their realities (Watts 1983; Emel and Peet 1989). Structure then relates to a myriad of forces which hold society together through relations of power, economy, organization, institutions, and even more nebulous forces such as forms of communication and cultural norms. Yet, as O’Riordan and Jordan reiterate, a conundrum remains in this binary. If structure (in O’Riordan and Jordan’s context, institutions) is a manifestation of human choices, is it possible to say that individuals operate without choice (O’Riordan and Jordan 1999)? Where to draw the theoretical line between structural and agency influences is no easy feat. Our interest in asking how structure and agency influence sensitivities and adaptation to hydroclimatic variation springs from a desire to contribute a hybrid approach to the structure-agency binary and to bring that hybridity explicitly into global change research. Geographers are increasingly interested in integration of the two, as each on its own appears incomplete in explanatory power (e.g., Watts 1983; Vayda and Walters 1999). However, such hybrid approaches have opened a methodological can of worms. Some employ quantitative methods to model different structure-agency scenarios given the same research problem (e.g., Polsky 2004; Chowdhury and Turner 2006). In climate


change research, those engaged in vulnerability science and sustainability science often function within this methodological approach (Schröter et al. 2005). As such work leans toward a positivistic perspective, it is also open to critique by both cultural ecologists and political ecologists who see a modernist agenda within positivism, one that homogenizes and objectifies, and helps to sustain inequitable relations of power (Rocheleau et al. 1996; Forsyth 2003; Robbins 2004). Political ecologists of a more postmodern persuasion advance this critique and look to an integration of agency and structure through qualitative research. Some have directly engaged in the topic of global climate change, though rarely are their critiques aimed at specific empirical work or findings (Demeritt 2001, 2004). Yet, the qualitative approach does not always lend itself well to comparison across sites, and many research problems (including vulnerability to climate change) benefit from comparative understanding. The apparent theoretical and methodological tensions between structure and agency in many areas of human environment research push research in exciting and challenging ways. There is now a small cadre of humanenvironment researchers from these perspectives who are engaging global change issues (O’Riordan and Jordan 1999; Pelling and High 2005), though as yet, empirical work is limited. With few exceptions (e.g., Naess et al. 2005; Finan et al. 2003), those engaged in global change issues have yet to fully consider structure and agency (or the potential methodological and theoretical tensions between them), especially as they influence exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacities under the context of human vulnerability to climate variability and change. Through this research, we hope to push our global change colleagues further, to begin to tackle the structure/agency framework through qualitative methods which allow both place specificity and comparison across sites to expand our understanding. As you will see in the following papers, researchers at each REU site asked the same

question but took a different slant, considering different resources, different aspects of hydroclimatic variation, and/or different stakeholder populations. Their work produced interesting commonalities and differences. Findings in all papers indicate that forces of agency and structure can work to reduce sensitivities or enhance the adaptive capacity of a region or specific stakeholder population to climate change impacts but that this relationship is by no means straightforward nor is it always effective. In fact, there are instances where well-intentioned interactions between agency and structure backfired, impeding the adaptive capacity of local residents to global change impacts. From here, the geographic and cultural uniqueness of each site shows forth as revealing the intricacies of how such agency/structure interactions take place and what allows for beneficial vs. detrimental outcomes. Rorik Peterson’s paper is situated in the rural environment of southwestern Kansas where most livelihoods are directly tied to the land through agriculture and livestock practices, and where water resources come from a limited source, the Ogallala aquifer, given the semi-arid and variable features of the local climate. He sees farmer agency as a critical component to past and present adaptations to drought in the region perhaps because of this clearly defined relationship to the land. Although structural forces are present in the backdrop, Peterson finds that it is the individual decisions of farmers which ultimately determine how well they will be able to adapt to future climatic change. Hill and Polsky’s paper contrasts in many ways with Peterson’s. It looks at the urbanized and urbanizing central and eastern Massachusetts region, in particular in towns not on the ample Boston water supply system. In this region, agriculture is largely absent from the landscape, and suburban growth from the Boston area is the primary driver of landscape change and has significantly increased individual water consumption. Consequently, the state government has developed a binding water policy that restricts towns’ per capita consumption rates, and has 69


issued a set of directives making water supply expansion a difficult task. The result is frequent water shortages, despite the abundant rainfall of the region (whereas the southwestern Kansas region receives on the order of 10-20 inches of precipitation per year with substantial interannual variation, the central and eastern Massachusetts region receives on the order of 44 inches per year, with virtually no interannual variation). In contrast to the focus on agency in Peterson’s paper, Hill and Polsky find that structure plays a dominant role, as local and state regulations often clash, exacerbating rather than relieving water shortages. Lastly, our third paper, by Sorrensen, considers the adaptive capacity of residents in the Sonora Desert Border region. The geography of this site combines some of the features of the Kansas and Massachusetts sites. It exhibits both agricultural and urbanizing characteristics, but it is situated in a desert climate where water resource regulation assumes a uniquely important role with respect to satisfying basic human needs, and as such is critical to the adaptive capacity of the region. However, in sharp contrast to the other sites, the challenges of water resource management are exacerbated by the fact that the study site is located along the U.S.-Mexico border, thus bringing in to play all the legal and political difficulties associated with sharing transboundary resources. The sample of student research papers in the following pages is a fine demonstration of what undergraduates can do when integrated into a clearly defined research agenda, given careful guidance, and allowed to take ownership of their creative scientific work. We would like to thank NSF for their support, as well as all the mentors and researchers who have participated in the REU program and the larger HERO project, all of whom have contributed valuable insights to the work that inspired these young scientists. Finally, we hope that these papers spark further intergenerational collaborative efforts that further the intellectual agenda of global change research as well as its goals for sustainability in our world. 70

Acknowledgements The work reflected in these publications represents the efforts, energy, support and willing feedback of the whole HERO team. To this end we would like to thank Brent Yarnal, PI of the entire HERO team and the HERO research at Pennsylvania State University; Ola Ahlqvist, Chaoqing Yu, Jessica Whitehead, Rachel Kurtz, Bill Pike, and Steve Weaver, HERO team members at Pennsylvania State University; Max Lu, Lisa Butler Harrington, and John Harrington, HERO team and former REU mentors at Kansas State University; Billie Turner and Gil Pontius, HERO team members and former REU mentor at Clark University; and Andrew Comrie and Diana Liverman, PIs of the HERO team at the University of Arizona. We would also like to thank those students involved with the REU work developed in these papers, Rebecca Alper, Maatsi Angwafo, Yasmine Bowers, David Kent, Zohar Tobi, George Saliba, Dale Sherwood, Steven Eddy, Darci Paull, Andy Hopp, Miranda Leathers. References AAG (ed.). 2003. Global Change and Local Places: Estimating, Understanding, and Reducing Greenhouse Gases. Global Change and Local Places Research Group. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., Davis, I., and Wisner, B. 1994. At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability, and Disasters. New York: Routledge. Berkes, F. and Folke, C. (eds.). 1998. Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, W.C. and Dickson, N.M. 2003. Sustainability Science: The Emerging Research Program. Proceedings, National Academy of Sciences, 100(14): 8059-8061. Demeritt, D. 2001 The Construction of Global Warming and the Politics of Science. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 91 (2): 307-37.


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