The act of accessing food is embedded within various systems of power. This dissertation problematizes our understanding of food access for vulnerable populations by making explicit ways that social constructions, including power, affect food access for vulnerable populations. This is accomplished across three manuscripts. The first manuscript presents textual analysis...
The majority of dam removals are small structures that are governed primarily by state and local bodies. The objective of this study is to characterize and evaluate the governance that has driven recent decisions to remove small dams. In the governance literature on small dam removals, three aspects remain unclear....
Globally, there are 40 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and 25.4 million refugees as of 2018. Of this global refugee population, 19.9 million are under mandate by UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, while 5.4 million Palestinian refugees are protected by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees...
Despite a history of leadership and creative approaches to environmental issues, Oregon has struggled to adequately prepare for the current and future impacts of climate change. Oregon faces barriers and limits to understanding, planning, and implementing climate adaptation that can be examined and quantified. Climate change makes for an additional...
At the urging of international scientists, large industrialized nations like the United States must transition away from fossil fuel energy and toward renewable energy by 2030 in order to stay the tide of climate change. To complete this energy transition citizens must take up responsibilities to change the known paradigms...
Forests face health threats from pests and diseases (e.g., mountain pine beetle, emerald ash borer, chestnut blight [CB], Swiss needle cast), and other issues such as climate change. Interventions such as genetic engineering (GE) have shown promise for mitigating some of these threats. CB, for example, has impacted most American...
Small-scale fisheries (SSF) around the world face many challenges. They are a highly dynamic, important sector for coastal communities in developing nations, playing a critical role in poverty alleviation and food security. SSFs generally have few resources to ensure their long-term sustainability. They are often fished and managed locally and...
The purpose of this project was to investigate the roles of different languages (namely Guaraní, Jopará, and Spanish) in the formation of Paraguayan cultural identity among Paraguayan migrants to the greater Buenos Aires region of Argentina. Though the Paraguayan community makes up the largest immigrant population in Argentina, outside of...
Understanding which factors motivate farmers to adopt certain practices is an important part of helping to solve many agri-environmental issues. This study uses 19 interviews with farmers along Oregon’s Willamette River, a statewide producer survey, and select interviews with organizations and agencies active in the farming community to examine the...
Commercial fishing is deeply embedded in the economy and culture of many coastal communities. Recent ecological, economic, and regulatory changes impacting fisheries are likely to have important consequences for this industry and the communities it supports. The objective of this study is to improve understanding of coastal community resilience through...
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is considered by many to be among the most powerful and most contentious environmental laws in the United States. Persistent challenges to the Act’s implementation make reaching conservation goals problematic. Most notably, the very nature of the law—providing protections for species already at...
Nepal’s community forestry has been internationally recognized as an example of successful case of collective action. However, many scholars argue that although it has been successful in protecting forests from degradation, it has not been able to create an inclusive platform for political decision-making process. Using historical analysis, comparative case...
Scientists say that climate change is very likely to cause more frequent and more severe weather events. In order to understand how communities respond to changing weather patterns, an exploration of the connection between extreme weather events and climate change awareness, collective action, and policy is warranted. This case study...
This research explores the experience of the growing number of students from Eastern Indonesia who attend universities on Java. It asks key questions about the challenges these often maligned students face as ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities exposed to the dominant culture of their republic during their years of education....
Twenty five years' worth of science indicates that the world can expect a number of climate change impacts. Increasingly, local municipalities, businesses and communities of people are becoming more concerned about what to do, yet they are looking for ways to best work together under these conditions. Communities must adapt...
Natural resource management and policy is ideally informed by the best available science. Natural resource researchers ideally participate in broader impacts activities to extend the reach of their best available research. However, there are many cultural, institutional, and practical barriers to participating in broader impact activities and to incorporating science...
Since the Wolf, Yoffe, and Giordano 2003 Basins at Risk study, examining human interactions with transboundary water resources through a lens of conflict and cooperation has been a dominant paradigm. The Basins at Risk (BAR) method involves categorizing events on a scale from most conflictive (e.g. war or extensive casualties)...
Commercial fishing research often focuses on ecological (gear, stock assessment, traceability) or economic factors. Truly understanding the social-ecological system requires considering the entire "human dimension" and this includes the social, cultural, and legal/policy aspects as well. An understudied yet important factor is women's contribution to fishing at the family and...
The VISualization of Terrestrial and Aquatic Systems (VISTAS) software development project began with the proposition that visualization would increase the ability of scientists to explore and communicate their data, especially complex datasets that span multiple spatial and temporal scales. A case study of VISTAS articulates how and why scientists intend...
Sexual assault in the military is prevalent, underestimated, and sadly overlooked. This is largely due to the inherent patriarchy and hegemonic masculine ideologies that set rigid power boundaries in the military. The roles of powerful and powerless are indoctrinated into Servicemembers from the first moment of training, and are reified...
Human security is a framework related to the stability and sustainability of political, environmental, economical, and socio-cultural areas of concern. Water resources around the world are under increased pressure from increased development, growing populations, pollution, and global climate change. Large-scale dam development while still popular for political and economic development...
Exploration and production of oil in the Gulf of Mexico has seen an astonishing increase since the first well was drilled in 1936. Much of the current exploration is occurring in waters greater than 5000 feet. The largest and most unprecedented oil spill in the United States occurred on April...
Health care providers, including complementary and alternative medical (CAM) practitioners, exert a significant influence on parental pediatric vaccination decisions. Use of CAM therapies is increasing in Oregon. Concomitantly, there has been a decade-long increase in parental vaccine refusal in Oregon, rising from 1 to 5 percent from 2000-2009. For example,...
The purpose of this study is to examine the lived experiences of women small-scale entrepreneurs in Qingdao, China by placing their collective experiences within relevant social and economic frameworks. This study, conducted in 2011 over a six-month period, applies an ethnographic approach based in modified grounded theory to bring together...
This ethnographic study explores the social aspects of agricultural land-use in the Marys River region. The study seeks to understand how farmers define sustainability and how their views on agricultural issues help to define a sense of place and identity in the Marys River region, within the context of the...
In 2008, China released a new green initiative, the Green Securities Policy, to increase the sustainability of Chinese capital markets. One of the integral components of the policy is the new environmental disclosure regulation which prescribes Chinese listed companies in the 14 highly polluting industries to report required environmental information....
This research explores differences in environmental worldviews and connections to the land globally and more specifically in a case study of NGOs working in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest. The aims of this project are to investigate different environmental worldviews expressed between western NGOs and non western local NGOs and to...
Chile has experienced great success in terms of economic growth in the last decades. This growing economy brings changes in the Chilean health care system. Its health care system was primarily funded by state sources until 1981, when a major reform was introduced that established new rules for the health...
Dams are often promoted as a tool to reduce poverty and spur economic development. Dam construction worldwide, and particularly in China, which has built nearly half the world's large dams since 1949, remains contentious due to the potential for negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Despite numerous case studies, there is...
Management of small dams may have profound implications for the health and integrity of small rivers and freshwater diversity. Global indicators suggest future growth in the small hydropower sector, particularly in developing countries. As a renewable energy source, it is often presumed that small hydropower entails fewer and less severe...
This dissertation focuses on a central question for six countries in Asia: what factors affect environmentalism? Numerous studies have proposed mixed theoretical explanations for the relationship between diverse values and beliefs regarding environmentalism. Although these diverse studies propose theories for the fast-growing and multifaceted environmentalism in Asia, here it is...
Since the 1952 Bolivian agrarian reform, farmer unions have sought to establish themselves as producers for regional markets. Development strategies led by the World Bank and IMF have largely jeopardized small farmers, and challenged farmers to meet market demands. At present, a new agrarian revolution is being implemented and is...
Oregon Sea Grant and its partner states have received a Sectoral Applications Research Project (SARP) grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to refine outreach methods for coastal communities with specific attention to climate change. This paper will focus on the SARP project and a related case study...
This ethnographic study examined some of the ways that global markets and the infrastructure of agribusiness affect local smallholder farmers in the Ten Rivers region who are transitioning toward more sustainable and traditional agricultural methods. The purpose of this research was to discover what barriers smallholder farmers face in developing...
In the context of expanding global food trade in which we import and consume a variety of foods from across the world, insuring food safety, an essential public health issue, has become a major concern in our food supply system. Over the past several years, food related scandals of Chinese...
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines female genital cutting (FGC) as “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons” (WHO, 2010). This practice has existed in Africa for thousands of years, but over the...
Port Orford is a small fishing community on the southern Oregon coast. Like many coastal towns in Oregon, Port Orford's main economy is the commercial fishing industry. As such, the community has a high dependence on its nearshore marine resources. Those who make their living from these resources know that...
The number of people traveling to other countries to volunteer for conservation or humanitarian projects has increased dramatically in the past three decades. Despite substantial interest in volunteer tourism, few researchers have examined: (a) the role of promotional material (e.g., brochures, internet websites) in motivating volunteers; (b) factors that attract...
The ever-increasing environmental degradation in China is leading people to pay more attention to environmental protection. Although Chinese government has made progress in dealing with environmental problems, the environment still gets worse. Thus, ordinary people began to take part in environmental issues, and make contributions to environmental protection. With increased...