Co-producing representations of summer rainfall in Bangladesh

Climate adaptation governance increasingly investigates the cultural capacities of communities to cope with climate variability and change. This paper reports on research of the symbolic representations of summer rainfall in the cultural repertoires guiding diverse institutionalised fields of activity in Sylhet Division. The research conducted interviews and co-created ‘cognitive maps’ with communities, to critically reflect on their changing seasonal symbols. The study revealed a common stock of summer symbols in Sylhet communities, which individuals reconfigure for strategizing and justifying particular practices. Symbols are stable but not static. As people’s uses of knowledge systems change—moving toward scientific representations—so too does their use of symbols. Moreover, environmental and climatic changes, such as a drying summer, are undermining long-held semiotic templates. Many local and traditional signs no longer hold, leaving communities without cultural templates for timely seasonal action. This work highlights the importance of cultural frameworks for organising communities’ seasonal adaptation, and the imperative for critically revisiting frameworks in rapid flux.publishedVersio

Drought-Ready Communities: A Guide to Community Drought Preparedness

Table of Contents Introduction to Drought-Ready Communities........................................................ 4 Section 1. Getting Started: Invite the Community to Participate, Commit to the Process...................... 7 1.1 Establish a leadership team that includes individuals with responsibility for monitoring, communication, and implementation .............................................. 7 1.2 Identify stakeholders or groups in the community that may need additional resources to participate in the Drought-Ready Communities process .................... 8 1.3 Include government agencies and regulators ....................................... 9 1.4 Develop a contact list ................................................................ 9 1.5 Gather community perceptions of drought .................................................. 10 Section 2. Information Gathering: Understand Water Sources and Uses, Develop a Drought History . 11 2.1 Identify water sources and uses ....................................................... 11 2.2 Learn how drought has affected the community in the past ........................ 12 2.3 Gather data on water and climate ................................................................. 13 2.4 List factors that affect the severity of drought impacts ..................................... 1

Bringing Indigenous and Earth Sciences, Knowledges, and Practices Together to Understand and Respond to COVID-19

COVID-19 is having specific and devastating impacts, yet it is spurring resilient responses among Indigenous populations due to unique histories, cultures, geographies, and capacities. The Working Group on Indigenous and Earth Sciences Knowledges and Practices in Response to COVID-19 came together to foreground Indigenous perspectives in defining research questions for potential intercultural collaboration between Indigenous and Earth sciences to drive urgent, culturally relevant, and appropriate responses to COVID-19. The Working Group included intercultural, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary representatives from the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences, a nation-wide network of scientists, educators, students, and community leaders and organizers. To identify priority research areas and emerging questions, the Working Group hosted a webinar discussion and fielded a questionnaire with the Rising Voices community as well as utilized their own perspectives and expertise. The results highlighted four dynamics that many Indigenous Peoples are presently facing with the COVID-19 pandemic, including food security and safety; pre-existing conditions; turning to resilience and wisdom; and emerging questions at the nexus of Indigenous wisdom and knowledge and Earth sciences. Valuing Indigenous observations, knowledges, wisdom, and practices equally with Earth Sciences, this work contributes to decolonizing Earth Sciences, disaster management, and public health. It works to mitigate the particular threats and impacts that Indigenous communities and populations face from COVID-19 and the increasing spread of infectious diseases. Doing so addresses injustices in Earth Sciences and disaster management and the disproportionately adverse impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous communities

Community profiles for West Coast and North Pacific Fisheries : Washington, Oregon, California, and other U.S. States

This document profiles 125 fishing communities in Washington, Oregon, California and two other U.S. states with basic social and economic characteristics. Various federal statutes, including the Magnuson-Stevens fishery conservation and management act of 1976 as amended and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 as amended and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 as amended among others, require federal agencies to examine the social and economic impacts of policies and regulations. These profiles can serve as a consolidated source of baseline information for assessing community impacts in these states.This project could not have been completed without the generous assistance of a number of people and institutions. The Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC), and Southwest Fisheries Science Center provided funding, staff time, and support services for this project. The Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission provided personnel and administrative support under a cooperative agreement with AFSC. The National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Regional Office, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Region RAM (Restricted Access Management) Division, and Pacific Coast Fisheries Information Network provided data and advice. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the California Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission provided an extensive amount of data through online sources and by filling special requests including advice and clarification when needed. Terry Hiatt and Patrick Marchman were instrumental in examining and organizing the data for analytical purposes, and Ron Felthoven spearheaded the Data Envelopment Analysis ultimately used in the community selection process. The University of Washington’s program in Environmental Anthropology and its School of Marine Affairs provided personnel and access to university resources. Additional personnel joined the project from anthropology departments at the University of Georgia and Oregon State University.Peer reviewe

The first climate refugees? Contesting global narratives of climate change in Tuvalu

Climate change effects such as sea-level rise are almost certain. What these outcomes mean for different populations, however, is far less certain. Climate change is both a narrative and material phenomenon. In so being, understanding climate change requires broad conceptualisations that incorporate multiple voices and recognise the agency of vulnerable populations. In climate change discourse, climate mobility is often characterised as the production of \u27refugees\u27, with a tendency to discount long histories of ordinary mobility among affected populations. The case of Tuvalu in the Pacific juxtaposes migration as everyday practice with climate refugee narratives. This climate-exposed population is being problematically positioned to speak for an entire planet under threat. Tuvaluans are being used as the immediate evidence of displacement that the climate change crisis narrative seems to require. Those identified as imminent climate refugees are being held up like ventriloquists to present a particular (western) \u27crisis of nature\u27. Yet Tuvaluan conceptions of climate challenges and mobility practices show that more inclusive sets of concepts and tools are needed to equitably and effectively approach and characterise population mobility

Weathering the waves: Climate change, politics and vulnerability in Tuvalu

This dissertation examines perceptions of climate change impacts and related atmospheric hazards as well as the governance of vulnerability to those impacts in Tuvalu, a Pacific Island country. Rising sea levels, increasing sea surface temperatures, ocean acidification, and extreme events including storms and droughts are among the challenges that Tuvalu faces as anthropogenic influences transform the nature of our global climate. Conclusions are based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Wellington, New Zealand, and Funafuti and Nanumea, Tuvalu. Archival, survey, and interview data complement insight gleaned from extensive participant observation among Tuvaluans living overseas, in the national capital, and on the northernmost outer island of the Tuvaluan Archipelago. Climate change demands attention at multiple scales of analysis. The potential for a Pacific Islands regional climate change regime is explored. Given successful regional precedents and characteristics of the problem, the formation of a regional climate regime is favorable. At the national level, the Tuvaluan government is concerned with preserving cultural integrity and promoting in situ development, while at the same time, needing to consider the possibility of population relocation. At the community level, recent policies of political decentralization are reviving and reinventing “traditional” island governance structures. On Nanumea, traditional governance is intrinsically linked to legends and genealogies that are used to navigate social and political life. Traditionally, leaders had specific responsibilities to maintain community safety and prevent disasters. Decentralization therefore carries important implications for community identity and safety in the face of ecological devastation. Already, local observations of environmental change indicate a climate signal that reflects expectations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for small island states. Vulnerability to climate change is differentially experienced and subjectively perceived. Research in Tuvalu grounded in political ecology demonstrates the importance of recognizing the political as well as environmental contributions to climate change impacts. The work underscores the need for adaptation to climate change to be driven by local aspirations and needs

The Role of Knowledge in Global Climate Change Governance: Modes of Legitimation in Tuvalu

The important role of knowledge about global climate change in environmental governance is investigated in this paper. The relationship between more and less ‘global’ and ‘local’ forms of knowledge in climate governance has implications for international norms of justice, national sovereignty and human and national security. This paper attempts to show how the simultaneous and seemingly contradictory trends of ‘globalizing’ and ‘localizing’ in climate governance actually serve to help legitimize different forms of knowledge. The discussion is grounded in a case study of Tuvalu, a low-lying atoll nation in the South Pacific. The Tuvaluan government’s engagement with discourses of global climate change and traditional environmental knowledge illustrate the nation’s attempts to maintain legitimacy in the face of undermining ecological devastation in the eyes of other nations and international investors as well as in the eyes of Tuvaluans. The paper brings together elements from a wider conversation in anthropology, science and technology studies, and political sciences

Tuvalu, sovereignty and climate change: considering fenua, the archipelago and emigration

Tuvalu is a Pacific atoll nation-state that has come to stand for predicaments implicating climate change, forced emigration and resettlement, and loss of territory and sovereignty. Legal and policy remedies seek to address such challenges by radically reframing how sovereignty is conceived. Drawing on literary and legal theory, we seek to extend such work in the terms of cultural geography and anthropology by considering how the archipelago and cultural practices known as fenua could be deployed as symbolic and material resources emphasizing mobility and connection, in contrast to normative ideas of sovereignty, whose orientation to territory imperils atoll states. Our fundamental argument is that legal and policy reforms addressing climate change emigration must be enriched by accounting for the emotional geographies that attend the changing real and conceptual borders of sovereignty and by creating alternative spaces of hope and action