Approaches to interdisciplinary mixed methods research in land change science and environmental management

Combining qualitative and quantitative methods and data is crucial to understanding the complex dynamics and often interdisciplinary nature of conservation. Many conservation scientists use mixed methods, but there are a variety of mixed methods approaches, a lack of shared vocabulary, and few methodological frameworks. We reviewed articles from 2 conservation-related fields that often incorporate qualitative and quantitative methods: land-change science (n= 16) and environmental management (n= 16). We examined how authors of these studies approached mixed-methods research by coding key methodological characteristics, including relationships between method objectives, extent of integration, iterative interactions between methods, and justification for use of mixed methods. Using these characteristics, we created a typology with the goal of improving understanding of how researchers studying land-change science and environmental management approach interdisciplinary mixed methods research. We found 5 types of mixed methods approaches, which we termed simple nested, informed nested, simple parallel, unidirectional synthesis, and bidirectional synthesis. Methods and data sources were often used to address different research questions within a project, and only around half of the reviewed papers methodologically integrated different forms of data. Most authors used one method to inform the other rather than both informing one another. Very few articles used methodological iteration. Each methodological type has certain epistemological implications, such as the disciplinary reach of the research and the capacity for knowledge creation through the exchange of information between distinct methodologies. To exemplify a research design that can lead to multi-dimensional knowledge production, we provide a methodological framework that bidirectionally integrates and iterates qualitative and quantitative methods

Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance?

This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how ‘adaptation success’ is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of ‘local’ vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with ‘vulnerable’ populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation

Understanding Water Policy as Agricultural Policy: How IWRM Reform is Reshaping Agricultural Landscapes under Climate Change in Piura, Peru

One billion people currently live in basins that are likely to require action to address climate change-induced water stress. Rather than blaming dwindling resource availability as the key culprit for this global water crisis, the United Nations has dubbed the water crisis a "crisis in governance." One of the key prescriptions promoted by multilateral funders and international water experts for addressing the looming crisis has been water policy reform that follows the principles of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). While there has been significant research on the IWRM model, few people have conducted empirical studies that examine how IWRM water reform generates changes within the agricultural sector. It is particularly important to study the tight coupling of agricultural and water policy in light of a changing climate, which poses substantial challenges to water availability and agricultural production. In this thesis, I explore the salient case study of the Piura River Basin in northern Peru. I employ semi-structured interviews with key institutional actors in the agricultural and water sector, participant observation, and technical document review to examine how the IWRM-based 2009 Water Resources Law is reshaping agricultural land use under climate change and globalization pressures. I argue that 2009 Water Resources Law formalized and limited public participation within the newly formed river basin council, while concurrently strengthening technocratic water allocation institutions that limit the agency of smallholder water users to make agricultural land use decisions. Additionally, I find that climate change adaptation discourse is being operationalized within river basin council to legitimize these reforms, but these reforms are explicitly enrolled in agricultural development policy aimed at converting traditional agricultural systems to export-oriented production. This study contributes to the fledgling scholarship on the implications of the 2009 Water Resource Law for Peruvian agricultural communities. More broadly, my findings offer insight into how IWRM reshapes the agricultural sector, how this is situated into the continually shifting role of the state, and how these policy reforms integrate and animate climate change adaptation

Envisioning, Implementing, and Sustaining Climate Change Adaptation: A Multi-Scalar Study of Adaptation Projects in Ecuador

The aim of this dissertation is to examine how climate change adaptation projects are envisioned, implemented, and sustained in Ecuador. This dissertation is guided by two key questions: at the national level, how do the organizations designing and implementing adaptation projects envision, define, and measure the success of their projects; and at the local level, how do beneficiaries envision, define, and actualize successful adaptation projects? In answering these research questions, this dissertation develops an analytics of adaptation that draws on Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality to examine the goals, imaginaries, knowledges, practices, and identities that constitute an adaptation regime. This research combines an institutional ethnography of climate change adaptation project governance in Ecuador with participatory mixed method research of the enduring impacts of a representative adaptation project. This dissertation finds that (1) climate change adaptation projects are forged out of a transnational bureaucracy but shaped by national and local politics and socio-environmental dynamics; (2) project implementors projects aim to produce new adaptive, resilient objects and subjects that correspond with -and respond to- the created knowledge about them, their practices, and their territories; (3) the adaptation regime is constituted of vibrant actors who shape the nature of climate change adaptation through their multi-faceted counter-conducts; (4) adaptation experts’ educational, professional, and emotive experiences shape the nature of adaptation in Ecuador and what constitutes adaptation expertise; (5) PACC, a representative adaptation project, has had varied outcomes based on community-based notions of success, but across the project it is unlikely that many of the sub-projects projects will still be functioning by 2025 without external support. This dissertation concludes with discussion of the implications for adaptation scholarship and practice, as well as future areas for research

Coexistence and Conflict: IWRM and Large-Scale Water Infrastructure Development in Piura, Peru

Despite the emphasis of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) on 'soft' demand-side management, large-scale water infrastructure is increasingly being constructed in basins managed under an IWRM framework. While there has been substantial research on IWRM, few scholars have unpacked how IWRM and large-scale water infrastructure development coexist and conflict. Piura, Peru is an important site for understanding how IWRM and capital-intensive, concrete-heavy water infrastructure development articulate in practice. After 70 years of proposals and planning, the Regional Government of Piura began construction of the mega-irrigation project, Proyecto Especial de Irrigacion e Hidroelectrico del Alto Piura (PEIHAP) in 2013. PEIHAP, which will irrigate an additional 19,000 hectares (ha), is being realised in the wake of major reforms in the Chira-Piura River Basin, a pilot basin for the IWRM-inspired 2009 Water Resources Law. We first map the historical trajectory of PEIHAP as it mirrors the shifting political priorities of the Peruvian state. We then draw on interviews with the newly formed River Basin Council, regional government, PEIHAP, and civil society actors to understand why and how these differing water management paradigms coexist. We find that while the 2009 Water Resources Law labels large-scale irrigation infrastructure as an 'exceptional measure', this development continues to eclipse IWRM provisions of the new law. This uneasy coexistence reflects the parallel desires of the state to imbue water policy reform with international credibility via IWRM while also furthering economic development goals via large-scale water infrastructure. While the participatory mechanisms and expertise of IWRM-inspired river basin councils have not been brought to bear on the approval and construction of PEIHAP, these institutions will play a crucial role in managing the myriad resource and social conflicts that are likely to result.US Agency for International Development, US National Academies of Sciences Project [PEER II 2-359]; NSF [DEB-101049]This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

The Impact of Climate Change on the Viticultural Suitability of Maipo Valley, Chile

This study uses the case of the Maipo Valley in Chile to examine how climate change will affect viticultural suitability. Using a geographic information system analysis of topographic, soil, land use, and climate data, a baseline assessment of viticultural suitability in the Maipo Valley was performed. The impact of climate change on viticultural suitability was modeled by overlaying downscaled global circulation model temperature data for two emission scenarios. The findings of this study suggest that the capacity of vineyard managers in the Maipo Valley to cultivate high-quality traditional grape varietals from cooler grape maturity classes might be limited in the future.Fondecyt [1120713]; Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) [CRN3056]; U.S. National Science Foundation [GEO-1128040]12 month embargo; Published online: 18 Feb 2016This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Resisting, leveraging, and reworking climate change adaptation projects from below : placing adaptation in Ecuador’s agrarian struggle

As climate change escalates, donors, international organizations, and state actors are implementing adaptation projectsEmbedded within these adaptation projects are imaginaries of rural resilience. These imaginaries, however, are contested by individuals and collectives targeted by such initiatives. In this article, we draw on Foucault’s notion of counter conducts to understand how beneficiaries in Ecuador resist, leverage, and/or rework adaptation interventions and towards what end. We identified five counter conducts: (1) negotiating for control, (2) setting the terms for participation, (3) opting out, (4) subverting the discursive frame, and (5) leveraging longevity. We argue that these counter conducts are generative, enacting multi-scalar counter-hegemonic politics of agrarian transformation

Governmentalities, hydrosocial territories & recognition politics: The making of objects and subjects for climate change adaptation in Ecuador

Adaptation to climate change has become a major policy and project focus for donors and governments globally. In this article, we provide insight into how adaptation projects mobilize distinct imaginaries and knowledge claims that create territories for intervention (the objects) as well as targeted populations (the subjects) to sustain them. Drawing on two emblematic climate change adaptation projects in Ecuador, we show how these objects and subjects are created through a knowledge production process that (a) creates a discursive climate change rationale; (b) sidesteps uncertainty related to climate change impacts; (c) fosters a circular citational practice that (self-)reinforces the project's expert knowledge; and (d) makes complex social variables commensurable based on the project's rationality, interests, and quantifiable indicators. The emerging hydrosocial territories 'in need of intervention' require subjects that inhabit, produce and reproduce these territories, in accordance with specific climate change discourses and practices. To manufacture and align these subjects, projects employ participatory practices that are informed by recognition politics aimed at disciplining participants toward particular identities and ways of thinking and acting. We analyze these distinct strategies as multiple governmentalities enacted through participatory adaptation projects seeking to produce specific climate change resilient hydrosocial territories and corresponding subjects.National Science FoundationOpen access articleThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Climate risk management and the electricity sector

The electric utility industry is an important player in the climate change arena, both as a significant emitter of global emissions and as an industry vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A climate risk management approach uses risk assessments and decision analyses to identify potential adaptation options. We review the existing literature on climate risk management in the electric utility industry, with a focus on four areas of interest: (1) climate change impacts; (2) measurements of risk; (3) stakeholder engagement and cross-sectoral collaboration; and (4) adaptation actions. Overall, we find significant emphasis on the identification of potential climate change impacts and opportunities for adaptation, but less attention paid to assessments of risk, stakeholder engagement, and cross-sectoral collaboration in climate risk management. We find considerable diversity in the types of adaptation actions, methods for measuring risk, and mechanisms for engaging stakeholders. We offer some suggestions to move beyond more fragmented approaches to climate risk management, including the adoption of more holistic approaches, heightened stakeholder and cross-sectoral engagement, and greater collaboration between researchers and electric utilities. Keywords: Electric utility industry, Climate risk, Adaptation, Stakeholder