Search

This paper makes a case for revisiting the understandings of translation to enhance the co-production of geographical knowledge on climate change. Specifically, it offers insights about the potential role that schoolteachers and students can have as knowledge producers in relation to climate change by drawing on a case study of collaborative research on El Niño in Sechura, northern Peru. We call for researchers to pay greater attention to how co-production can be achieved through the integration of research agendas and practice with curricula development and innovation in school education. We contribute to work on how a generational shift in understanding about climate adaptation can be achieved through exploring communities' knowledge of the lesser-known opportunities of the El Niño phenomenon in northern desert regions. We conclude by arguing that revisiting how geography engages in and with translation is an urgent priority in climate-challenged times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to report on the status and the development of education for sustainable development (ESD) and sustainability literacy (SL) in three Latin American (LA) higher education institutions (HEIs) business programs in Peru, Brazil and Colombia. The paper examines institutional efforts to both introduce and implement ESD curricula and provide SL. Design/methodology/approach: The methods used in this paper included reviews of university Web pages and course materials. Structured interviews were also conducted with program leaders, to examine the level of ESD, as input affecting the business programs curricula of the universities concerned. Findings: Initial findings suggest that, in the three HEIs surveyed, there is still a tendency to talk about issues related to ESD but actions that confirm this interest are not sufficiently advanced. The authors surveys a sample of business programs curricula and interviewed its leaders and a mixed and dated picture emerged. When compared to other regions particularly the USA and Europe, the findings show that the HEIs surveyed still have not developed enough work to distinguish conceptually between sustainable development, ESD and SL making the embedment of these concepts in the curriculum not fully developed. Originality/value: In LA HEIs, the ESD message seems to be slowly taking ground, equipping HEIs to respond to SL concerns. Implementation and practice in some HEIs are still at an embryonic and conceptually confused stage with regard to LA HEIs SL. This paper sheds light to help ESD delivery. It offers some strategies for moving on from this inception phase to a more structured SL provision and ESD outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture and water resource are highly threatened due to climate change, increasing the probability of backsliding on almost every aspect of sustainable development worldwide. For instance, water resource distribution throughout the Peruvian territory is not homogeneous. Hydrometeorological phenomena also threaten it, so it is crucial for the agriculture sector and water management to increase resilience against climate change. The study aims to understand the Peruvian conduct under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) regime. Its influence in the Peruvian adaptation regulation and public institutions over the years and the interaction with the latest commitment to the UNFCCC related to climate change agriculture - water resources. The methodology used for the study was qualitative, delivered throughout a documentary analysis, and narrative design among scientific papers, UNFCCC documentation, and Peruvian regulation to weave the experience occurred and the sequences of the events to set up a general narrative. The results show that Peru has active participation in the UNFCCC, particularly under a neoliberalism approach. The convention pushed institutional and regulatory development of the Peruvian Government constantly. Also, after the Paris Agreement, one of the most important influences was the implementation of Law N° 30754 on climate change, which articulates all the regulations related to it, providing a national, more substantial legally-binding commitment. Finally, it is important for Peru to analyze the achievement of current adaptation actions and keep studying the impacts of climate change at a local level to develop a bottom-up approach for an effective policy formulation-implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El Niño events are large climate disturbances which are originated within the equatorial Pacific, and occur in every 2 to eight years. The developed phase of El Niño is characterized by unusual warm waters at the ocean surface, from the coasts of Peru and Ecuador to the middle of the equatorial Pacific. This phenomenon is caused by strange weakening of the trade winds blowing westward, which allows warm surface waters to reverse their direction eastward. The climatic impacts of El Niño are amplifying throughout the planet which may show several effects on regional weather. it’s related with wide-ranging changes within the climate system and may cause prominent socio-economic impacts affecting infrastructure, agriculture, health and energy sectors. albeit El Niño appears within the region of tropical Pacific; it’s impact on the worldwide climate and weather phenomena like drought/flooding and tropical storms. the traditional status within the equatorial Pacific is modified due to the raise in greenhouse gases which in turn leads to El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) changes. we are able to assure that ENSO variations will endure and influence the worldwide climate within the coming decades and centuries. Hence, forecasting and interpreting ENSO conditions are essential to both the scientists and therefore the public. during this paper, the occurrence of El Niño and its impact on global climate and socio-economic status has been studied and reviewed from literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings advances in weather data collection and modeling, and developments in socioeconomic climate microsimulations to bear on the analysis of the implications of climate change (CC) in the design of public policies to combat food insecurity. It uses new downscaled predictions of future climate in 2050, derived from three Earth System Models calibrated with a new historical weather station dataset for Peru. This climate data is used in a three-stage socioeconomic microsimulation model that includes climate risk, and deals with the endogeneity of incomes and simultaneity of expected food consumption and its variability. We estimate the impact of CC on agricultural yields, and find results consistent and fully bounded within what the global simulations literature has found, with yields falling up to 13% in some regions. However, we show that these drops (and increases) in yields translate to much smaller changes in food consumption, and also surprisingly, to very minor impacts on vulnerability to food insecurity. The document explores what explains this surprising result, showing that in addition to characteristics that are specific to Peru, there are household and market mediating mechanisms that are available in all countries, which explain how changes in yields, and corresponding farm incomes have a reduced impact in vulnerability to food insecurity. Finally, in light of these findings, we explore which policies might have greater impact in reducing food insecurity in contexts of hunger prevalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change adaptation measures can generate long-term unintended consequences, as this paper demonstrates through an empirical case study of water conflicts at Lake Parón in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range. This decade-long struggle culminated in 2008 when a coalition of local groups (stakeholders) from the Cruz de Mayo and Caraz communities in the Callejón de Huaylas seized control of the Lake Parón reservoir from a private multinational corporation, Duke Energy. This clash over Parón's water in the Llullán and Santa River watersheds emerged much earlier than climatic-hydrologic models had predicted, and it occurred, this paper argues, largely because of previously successful climate adaptation measures. The drainage tunnel and floodgates originally installed at Parón in the 1980s to prevent a climate-related outburst flood led to unintended or perverse outcomes because these technological artifacts subsequently allowed a diversity of stakeholders--including rural subsistence farmers, urban residents, national park officials, tourism promoters, the state energy company Electroperú, and Duke Energy--to manage water differently depending on their priorities and the existing governance structures. Neoliberal reforms that altered state-society-environment relations in Peru played a key role in these changing stakeholder power dynamics that were reflected in the management of water infrastructure at Parón. Examining this water conflict that emerged from the unintended effects of climate adaptation demonstrates not only how technology and society are mutually constitutive, but also why the politics of technologies must be considered more carefully in the analysis of social-ecological systems, hydro-social cycles, and climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lima's environmental sustainability is threatened by increasing water scarcity, heavy rain events and limited attention for water vulnerability and climate change scenarios. In this paper we examine how knowledge construction and risk perception on water-related disaster risks and vulnerabilities affects decision-making and implementation in urban governance networks, specifically looking at some of the reasons behind high levels of risk tolerance and the lack of decision-making initiatives in putting adaptation and/or preventive measures in place. New forms of metropolitan governance have constructed spatial knowledge about water-related vulnerabilities using inclusive scenario-building processes. These unpack complexities, uncertainties and spatial inequalities in water governance, making them visible by mapping and spatial representations as strategic instrument for social and policy learning. This article analyzes two case studies, which either already are or can become disasters (scenario-building). The first, concerns the long-term plausible scenario of water scarcity and droughts analyzing population growth rates, water distribution and consumption through the Chance2Sustain research project and presenting spatial representations. The maps were used to define possible spatial intervention priorities to deal with future water vulnerabilities in Lima. The second, refers to short term extreme weather events that already manifest as mudslides and floods and El Niño in Chosica, eastern Lima. We investigate the first at the metropolitan city scale level and the second at the scale of vulnerable communities. The cases illustrate iterative spatial knowledge construction, in which processes of risk prioritization, normalization and tolerance occur, and the resulting [in-]action by a variety of actors so far. The methodology used collective and iterative mapping processes, using technical, organizational and geographical knowledge from a variety of governance, experts and practitioner networks in Lima. The main outcome is the social learning derived from bringing together different kinds of knowledge and integrating several dimensions through spatial representations. This has raised awareness, increased capacities for dealing with uncertainty and contributed to the approved metropolitan Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, but not implemented by the Lima Municipality yet. The main conclusions are two: 1) spatial planning is a quite political process (c.f. Flyvbjerg 1998), in which knowledge is contested or even when acknowledged, does not necessarily steer decision-making processes, either by local communities, authorities and private institutions. And 2) existing models linking knowledge construction to risk framing, risk tolerance and how these influence decision-making processes and actions to prevent disaster may ignore the issues of risk tolerance, through normalization and prioritization at their peril. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Collaboration is a risky engagement by which power relations may be (re)inscribed. • Adaptation struggles are often rooted in ontological and epistemological difference. • Adaptation as usual suggests the continuation of the coloniality of power. • Adaptation otherwise is a proposal for decolonial adaptation-development action. Climate change promises to bring forth a future of uncertain and challenging events in which divergent worlds collide, conflict, and collaborate for survival in transitionary times. Yet, collaborative adaptation responses remain not well understood, particularly in terms of the relational and political dimensions of this practice. This paper seeks to push beyond collaboration as an assumed good and contributes to deeper theorization and conceptualization of the arts of collaborating within the context of climate adaptation and sustainable development. The paper draws upon participatory and ethnographic engagements in the struggle for collaborative adaptation to rapid glacier melt in the Peruvian highlands between 2015 and 2018. Insights are derived from various qualitative methods that allowed for following through a network of local to global adaptation actors (State institutions, development NGOs, and campesinos) as they worked towards a common goal of becoming resilient to ensuing radical landscape changes. By paying attention to divergent adaptation imaginaries, as well as historically produced uneven geographies of power upon which current adaptation strategies are materializing, this study illuminates "frictions" that emerge from collaborative engagements and the systemic oppression of local ways of knowing and being. This study finds that, through a privileged adaptation discourse, State and transnational actors enact a techno-scientific and developmentalist-adaptation reality that is indifferent to the needs and preferences of highland inhabitants. I argue that, adaptation in this way performs a "coloniality of power" that perpetuates the erasure of social alterity from world-making projects. As a counter-proposal, I call for doing adaptation otherwise, that is, decolonially. This practice is informed by the relational ontology of highland campesinos, and strives to create an alternative approach to formal adaptation that allows for rights of self-determination and the empowerment of designs from "below". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper quantifies the impacts of climate variability and human activities on streamflow in the Chao River catchment near Beijing from 1986 to 1998. The year 1990 is found to be an inflection point for the impact of human activities. Streamflow is simulated for before and after 1990; monthly flow is simulated for the latter period. The contribution rate of climate to streamflow change in the catchment is found to be 17%; thus, the impact of human activities was far greater than that of climate variability over the entire period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glacier hazards threaten societies in mountain regions worldwide. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) pose risks to exposed and vulnerable populations and can be linked in part to long-term post-Little Ice Age climate change because precariously dammed glacial lakes sometimes formed as glaciers generally retreated after the mid-1800s. This paper provides an interdisciplinary and historical analysis of 40 years of glacier hazard management on Mount Hualcán, at glacial Lake 513, and in the city of Carhuaz in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range. The case study examines attempted hazard zoning, glacial lake evolution and monitoring, and emergency engineering projects to drain Lake 513. It also analyzes the 11 April 2010 Hualcán rock-ice avalanche that triggered a Lake 513 GLOF; we offer both a scientific assessment of the possible role of temperature on slope stability and a GIS spatial analysis of human impacts. Qualitative historical analysis of glacier hazard management since 1970 allows us to identify and explain why certain actions and policies to reduce risk were implemented or omitted. We extrapolate these case-specific variables to generate a broader socio-environmental framework identifying factors that can facilitate or impede disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Facilitating factors are technical capacity, disaster events with visible hazards, institutional support, committed individuals, and international involvement. Impediments include divergent risk perceptions, imposed government policies, institutional instability, knowledge disparities, and invisible hazards. This framework emerges from an empirical analysis of a coupled social-ecological system and offers a holistic approach for integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way newspapers frame infectious disease outbreaks and their connection to the environmental determinants of disease transmission matter because they shape how we understand and respond to these major events. In 2017, following an unexpected climatic event named "El Niño Costero," a dengue epidemic in Peru affected over seventy-five thousand people. This paper examines how the Peruvian news media presented dengue, a climate-sensitive disease, as a public health problem by analyzing a sample of 265 news stories on dengue from two major newspapers published between January 1st and December 31st of 2017. In analyzing the construction of responsibility for the epidemic, I find frames that blamed El Niño Costero's flooding and Peru's poorly prepared cities and public health infrastructure as the causes of the dengue outbreak. However, when analyzing frames that offer solutions to the epidemic, I find that news articles call for government-led, short-term interventions (e.g., fogging) that fail to address the decaying public health infrastructure and lack of climate-resilient health systems. Overall, news media tended to over-emphasize dengue as requiring technical solutions that ignore the root causes of health inequality and environmental injustice that allow dengue to spread in the first place. This case speaks to the medicalization of public health and to a long history of disease-control programs in the Global South that prioritized top-down technical approaches, turning attention away from the social and environmental determinants of health, which are particularly important in an era of climate change. • Analyzes 265 articles on Peru's 2017 dengue outbreak following El Niño Costero. • Finds that individualizing narratives are not as prevalent as seen in past studies. • However, calls for government action still emphasize short-term technical solutions. • In particular, eco-social approaches to prevent transmission were overlooked. • Concludes that this narrow view on public health still reflects medicalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]