Doctoral Dissertation Research: Models of Socio-ecological Resilience in Response to Environmental Change

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Theories of socioecological resilience have attempted to understand how and why systems return to an equilibrium state after a disturbance. More recent research has demonstrated resilience to be more fluid, a dynamic and adaptive response that develops create capacities over time. Using a panarchy model of resilience, which recognizes the ongoing tensions between stability and change, this project seeks to understand how events of varied temporal and spatial and speeds can reciprocally influence produce unpredictable outcomes. The project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating findings to organizations engaged in modeling socio-ecological resilience and mitigating the impacts of environmental change. Emily Hite, under the supervision of Dr. Jerry Jacka of the University of Colorado at Boulder, will explore the processes by which a diversity of perspectives at multiple scales inform the development and implementation of policy, and the ways in which policy implementation relates to social-ecological resiliency and the production of space and place through time. The research will be conducted in Costa Rica, an ideal site for asking these questions because it is an international leader in renewable energy production and sustainable development, and a policy commitment to becoming one of the world's first carbon neutral countries. This plan relies on completing the Diquís Hydroelectric Project in southwestern Puntarenas Province. However, the Térraba indigenous peoples living in the area have conflicting perspectives regarding the project's potential social, environmental, and economic transformations on their culture, livelihoods, and landscape. The researchers will conduct anthropological research in Térraba and the capital, San José, to better understand the diversity of perspectives of and responses to climate policy, how they are formed, and how they inform policy development. The research team will collect social, ecological, and ethnographic data using participant observation, interviews, household surveys, focus groups, and surveys of plant and animal species used by Térraba peoples. The diversity of qualitative and quantitative data will provide a more comprehensive understanding of how local people are impacted by universal climate policy mechanisms and attempts at the nation-state level to implement those mechanisms.