Planning: CRISES: Climate Inequality and Integrative Resilience Center

University Of Massachusetts Boston, Dorchester MA

Investigators

Abstract

Inequality undermines communities' climate resilience - or their ability to adapt, self-organize, and transform in response to climate change-related disruptions. At the same time, climate change will magnify existing inequalities. The vicious cycle between climate change and inequality has multiple interacting causes and consequences that call for rigorous interdisciplinary research. This planning project will bring together researchers, community members, and practitioners to envision and build the Climate Inequality and Integrative Resilience (CLIIR) Center. The CLIIR Center will aim to advance scientific knowledge on the links between inequality and climate resilience to inform climate resilience policy decisions. To establish the CLIIR Center as an impactful center of excellence, we will carry out planning activities informed by convergence (a.k.a. transdisciplinary) research principles and practices. The planning activities will bring together academic and community collaborators for dialogues and structured activities. These activities will: 1) expand and deepen external partnerships; 2) build capacity for collaborative and transdisciplinary research; 3) clarify the new Center's thematic areas; and 4) develop resources and frameworks to establish the CLIIR Center as a hub for climate resilience decision support. The activities will include community conversations, theoretical / methodological dialogues prompted by research presentations, collaborative research skills training, climate justice workshops, and the collection of case studies in metro-Boston on the use of decision-support tools in climate resilience projects. With climate resilience and inequality as an umbrella, we will primarily explore three research themes: Indigenous Knowledge and Governance, Climate Migration, and Climate Change and Health. These themes will serve as test cases for future studies on models of, interactions among, and impacts in different resilience domains and their intersections with inequality. The planning activities will yield research questions and hypotheses on the mechanisms through which climate change impacts lead to disparate quality-of-life outcomes in communities.   This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.