Environment, Resources and Sustainability

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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Browsing Environment, Resources and Sustainability by Subject "adaptation"

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    The Ecological Economics of Resilience: Designing a Safe-Fail Civilization
    (University of Waterloo, 2011-04-29T19:04:08Z) Stanley, Conrad B. J.
    There is mounting evidence that sustainable scale thresholds are now being exceeded worldwide and environmental resource shocks (e.g. climate change, water and oil shortages) may be inevitable in some regions of the world in the near future. These could result in severe economic breakdowns, welfare loss, and in the worst-case, the collapse of modern civilization. Therefore, a pre-eminent challenge of our times is to determine how to design a resilient (safe-fail) economy – one that can endure, adapt to and successfully recover from breakdowns when they occur. Surprisingly, while ecological economic theory relies heavily on natural science concepts such as thermodynamics, insufficient attention has been paid to the important ecological concept of resilience, particularly as it applies to economic design. The three major policy goals of current ecological economic theory (sustainable scale, just distribution and efficient allocation) focus instead on preventing environmental resource shocks and breakdowns, but given their unpredictability prevention may not always be possible. How resilience can inform the blossoming field of ecological economics is thus explored in this theoretical, transdisciplinary paper. Drawing on literature as diverse as archaeology and disaster planning, it develops six key principles of economic resilience and applies them to analyze the resilience of key societal systems including our money, electricity, water, transportation, information/communication and emergency response systems. Overall, economic resilience appears to be a unique concern that is not readily subsumed under any of the three existing ecological economic policy pillars. In fact, efforts to build in resilience have the potential to both complement and at times contradict the other three goals, especially efficiency. The need to further study these possible tradeoffs provides strong justification for adding a fourth distinct policy pillar, namely “Resilient Design”, to core ecological economic theory. Indeed, ecological economist’s longstanding criticism of economic growth meshes readily with the Resilience Alliance’s own figure-8 adaptive cycle theory critiquing the resilience costs of growth, providing significant opportunities for the future collaboration of these two fields in broadening global system theory.
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    Examining the relationship between climate change and migration and its socio-economic implications in Dhaka, Bangladesh
    (University of Waterloo, 2023-08-10) Sharmin, Dilruba Fatima
    Climate change and migration are two urgent global issues of our time, and their relationship is complex and unpredictable. Understanding the nature and implications of this relationship is crucial for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars seeking to devise effective responses and policies to tackle these “wicked problems.” Drawing on emerging scholarship and primary research, this dissertation sheds light on three interlinked issues related to climate change and migration nexus. First, earlier efforts to reconcile diverse conceptualizations of the climate change and migration nexus have had limited success. So far, despite significant research efforts by a few scholars to develop conceptual frameworks, challenges remain in our ability to gain a holistic understanding of diverse perspectives, knowledge domains, dimensions or scales, and drivers or factors that lead to differing migration decisions under climate change. Current limitations include inadequate comprehension of the migration patterns driven by climate change (e.g., who migrates, who remains, and the underlying reasons behind these choices). Second, our current knowledge about the effectiveness of migration as an adaptation strategy is inadequate, stemming from limited conceptual and empirical investigations conducted on this issue. As such, the extent to which migration can effectively serve as an adaptation response and any potential drawbacks associated with it remain unclear. Third, the significance of gender in shaping migration decisions under climatic conditions remains under-theorized and less comprehensively explored, even though gender plays a crucial role in shaping migration decisions and patterns. The specific ways in which climate change may shape gendered migration in varied contexts are not well understood, as there is no comprehensive review of empirical studies on gender and climate migration. This dissertation aims to contribute to the evolving knowledge of the complex relationships between climate change and human migration by addressing these interlinked issues. Chapter 2 is dedicated to developing an expanded, more holistic, and generally applicable conceptual framework that can be applied to understand migration decisions and different migration patterns in diverse contexts and regions worldwide. Building upon the identified limitations of existing conceptual frameworks and covering extensive theoretical and empirical grounds, this chapter develops a conceptual framework that integrates diverse perspectives and concepts (e.g., vulnerability, agency) to provide a more nuanced understanding of the complex nature of the relationships between multi-faceted climatic conditions and varying migration decisions and their effectiveness. This framework seeks to lay a foundation for further research examining climate migration in diverse forms and sets the tone for the rest of the dissertation. Chapter 3 presents the findings of an empirical case study on post-migration vulnerability situations of climate migrants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to gain insights into the effectiveness of migration as an adaptation strategy. Based on large-scale household (n = 2,000) survey data and applying principal component analysis (PCA), this chapter assesses the socio-economic vulnerability of the climate migrants and compares that with other migrants and long-term residents by developing a composite vulnerability index (CVI). This chapter also analyzes and compares the longitudinal recall (perception) data on different aspects of their before and after migration situations. Chapter 4 conducts a systematic review of the empirical evidence (n = 33) in South Asia to fill out pertinent gaps in the empirical scholarship of the gender-climate change-migration nexus. This chapter identifies and characterizes different gender-differentiated migration responses under varying climatic conditions, assesses the agency involved in differentiated migration decisions, identifies emerging theories and methodological considerations, and examines how well ideas are distributed among disciplines through a bibliometric analysis. This chapter also highlights pathways through which gendered inequalities in climate migration may occur. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the emerging field of climate migration by offering theoretical, methodological, and empirical insights into these complex issues. By doing so, this dissertation advocates for further transdisciplinary and sustainability-oriented research and expects to guide future research and policy-making efforts aimed at developing effective and sustainable policies and practices for communities affected by climate migration.
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    What the wild things do: The use of crop wild relatives in public international breeding programs and implications for conservation
    (University of Waterloo, 2015-01-23) Smith, Chelsea; Jennifer Clapp, 1963-; Jennifer Clapp, 1963-
    Wild species related to agricultural crops make agricultural systems around the world more resilient. Crop wild relatives (CWR) represent the largest pool of genetic diversity from which to draw when new variation for desired traits is required in domesticated varieties. They contribute towards the development of new crop varieties, particularly those adapted to predicted climate change scenarios. Although CWR are generally inedible, are not used for fuel or fodder, and very few have documented medicinal properties, they support global food production systems from behind the scenes. Placing an economic value on their contributions has had the effect of pulling CWR onto centre stage, and wild species are in fact beginning to garner international attention. The question is whether or not estimating their value in terms of the development of new varieties adequately represents their total value, and in particular the adaptive capacity they provide to agroecosystems. What are the implications of exclusively measuring their direct use value? This thesis explores the space where agrobiodiversity, climate change, advanced crop breeding and economics meet in order to address this question. Two distinct but related research questions are discussed in sequence. The first asks: to what extent are CWR being used today within crop improvement programs under the auspices Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)? The main findings are that CWR are being used to a greater extent today than ever before, and that a positive trend is likely to continue in light of both technological advancements and intensifying environmental pressures. Research findings are relevant to the conservation community advocating for increased investment and will help inform policy decisions involving trade-offs and priority setting among conservation objectives. The second question arises in light on the first: what are the implications of increased use of CWR in breeding? Implications include increased conservation investment and an emerging conservation paradigm that is focused exclusively on facilitating future use of selected species closely related to socio-economically important crops rather than the breadth of diversity that exists today. This diversity is threatened with extinction by range of environmental and anthropogenic forces. The positive feedback between use and conservation will continue to the extent that required genetic variation is available. This thesis argues that increased use will likely not incite sufficient levels of conservation. Conservation is a reflection of the way humans value biodiversity. CWR are valued for their instrumental use in crop breeding but less so for the resilience they lend to agroecosystems, and not at all for their intrinsic value. Understanding the dynamic between valuation and conservation is useful for making projections into the future and will help inform course corrections at the relatively early stage of the conservation investment game. Policy recommendations stem from a greater recognition of the resilience value provided by the breadth of CWR diversity, agrobiodiversity more broadly defined, and the importance of conserving it both in situ and ex situ. The availability of genetic variation for agricultural crops in the long term and by extension any meaningful contributions towards achieving sustained food production, depend upon it.
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    Women and Environmental Change: A Case Study of Small-Scale Fisheries in Chilika Lagoon
    (University of Waterloo, 2017-01-24) Khan, Fatima Noor
    In recent decades, many lagoons around the world have experienced environmental degradation resulting from impacts of various drivers of change (e.g., natural disasters and aquaculture). This has created adverse consequences for lagoon ecosystems (e.g., habitat and species loss) and human societies (e.g., loss of fishing livelihoods and commons rights). Asia’s largest lagoon, Chilika lagoon, situated along the eastern coastline of Odisha, India, is no exception. This thesis investigates the gendered implications of environmental change in the small-scale fishery system of Chilika lagoon. It focuses on fisherwomen’s perspectives about changes in the fishery commons in relation to processes of adaptation. Three main research objectives frame this study: 1) to examine fisherwomen’s perspectives about drivers of change within the social-ecological system of Chilika lagoon and resulting changes in the fishery commons; 2) to analyze how environmental change (i.e. objective one) is impacting the livelihood of fisherwomen and how fisherwomen are responding; and 3) to examine how fisher communities are adapting to the ongoing process of environmental change, with a focus on the gendered implications of out-migration. As a result, this thesis addresses an important research gap by conducting a gender sensitive analysis of environmental change in Chilika that highlights often neglected perspectives of fisherwomen. Adopting a gender lens on environmental issues in the context of this research is crucial. This is because of the differential risks women experience as individuals, groups, community members, and in relation to men, and the specific knowledge and insights they have on processes of change. This research applied a participatory and qualitative case study based approach. A combination of research methods were employed including document review, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. Additionally, an integrative conceptual framework was utilized to explore women’s narratives in relation to the uncertainty and complexity of environmental change, drawing on theories and concepts associated with social-ecological systems, drivers of change, the commons, and adaptation. Research findings demonstrate that gender is one of the primary social constructs that mediates resource use and community relationships. For example, traditionally, fishermen engage in catching fish in the lagoon, whereas fisherwomen participate in fish processing activities within their homes. An analysis of findings reveals that fisher communities in Chilika lagoon face a commons crisis that presents gender differentiated impacts and challenges for livelihoods to respond and adapt to environmental change. As fisher communities experience fishery resource access issues, rights infringements, and institutional rearrangements, fishermen are forced out of fishing and many fisherwomen show to bear the brunt of change. The results of this research provide useful insights and recommendations for practitioners and policy about sustaining the commons through collaborative approaches and decision-making that actively engages the fisher communities of Chilika lagoon–particularity the experiences and knowledge of fisherwomen.