Monday, April 20, 2015

What Makes a Place Habitable? Or Livable?

That was the title of a short article I prepared for the M.A. in Climate & Society Program "Hot Topics" page.  Thank you to Brian Kahn, Wed Editor at Climate Central (and C+S alum) for his fine editing assistance.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Atoll Habitability Thresholds

Its been four months since returning home from the Columbia M.A. in Climate and Society Program, and I am now doing field work to refine my thesis paper on atoll habitability thresholds with intentions to submit to my amazing team of advisors Michael Gerrard and Benjamin Orlove, PhD by July of this year. Wish me luck!

So some people have been asking what is this "habitability thresholds" thing? Well, the basic idea is that as ecosystems that make up areas of the world that different societies inhabit (e.g. atoll ecosystems for Marshallese) incrementally undergo physical and chemical changes due to climate change, the habitability of these ecosystems will incrementally diminish as well. Monitoring these changes and positively affecting their longevity is at the core of this idea.

One of the things I like about it so much is that it is very human focused, and reflects what society determines as acceptable. It is intentionally oriented to allow everyday citizens the opportunity to organize themselves around the process of understanding how climate change affects their lives and ecosystems, and then to act on that information. I believe that potential climate-displaced communities can be empowered in spite of the disempowering phenomena of climate change, and I believe it can be done by framing climate impacts, adaptation, and resilience around internationally recognized, locally refined, concrete measurements of habitability.

It is going to be a wonderful journey of discovery into climate science communication, and I am encouraging people with an interest to delve more into the concept and its demonstration in other settings (e.g. mountainous community settings in Nepal) as well.