Involuntary movement, also known as forced displacement, has affected millions of people worldwide. At the end of 20th century, approximately 80 million people had been displaced due to hydropower projects, including approximately 22.5 million people in China. Dam-induced migration not only causes material loss, such as loss of homes and...
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...
Through researching CBOs across Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and British Columbia, it is evident that there are need gaps in the organizational capacity in CBOs and other environmental groups for outreach and communication support to collaborate. A dedicated online space where environmental organizations and other conservation-focused groups can share their...
In the process of building international water policies and management institutions, like international treaties and River Basin Organizations, States simultaneously signal the values that they view as most important in these different institutions. Examining expressed and acted-upon values for transboundary freshwater management are currently under-explored areas where overlapping lenses of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 language of water policy both suggests and enforces the relationship that the public should have with water. Differences in language use between policy institutions and the public suggest that the understanding of water promoted through policy may be incongruent with the understanding of water held by the public. Semi-structured...
Nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners control a significant portion of forestland nationwide. Even though women own or manage NIPF lands, we know very little about how women manage forestland and what barriers women face in forest management. In addition, while there are several forestry organizations available to NIPF owners, few...
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....
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...
Improved cookstoves have been designed and disseminated for several decades in an effort to address the human health and environmental issues caused by the inefficient, traditional biomass cooking and heating methods used by 40% of the world’s people. Engineers and designers working on these improved stoves have tended to focus...
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...
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...
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....
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 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...
In the last twenty years, human trafficking has gained attention in government agendas and media coverage, while anti-trafficking projects have burgeoned worldwide. Anti-trafficking efforts, however, have almost exclusively addressed the issue of sex trafficking with a focus on rescuing women, while overlooking other types of exploitation. This is noteworthy, given...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
China's Minqin Oasis once welcomed traders along the ancient Silk Road with rivers, lakes, and lush forests, yet today the region's farmland and grassland are increasingly being engulfed by the sands of the Gobi Desert. The severity of this incremental catastrophe for a declining population of 300,000 residents has brought...
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...
This thesis examines the motivations of ecological restoration volunteers with the Oregon chapter of The Nature Conservancy. This study helps fill in voids left by a lack of research on the motivations of ecological restoration volunteers. Studies that have explored restoration volunteer motivation relied largely on surveys that revealed altruistic...
The purpose of this study was to determine differences in the way a designer designs because of his or her cultural background. For example, would a designer from the US design with the same components of design in mind as someone from another country? The objective was not to explore...
Numerous water supply systems and community based water boards have been created with the aid of international organizations and NGOs in developing countries. These water systems have great potential to improve people’s social life and health in these countries. However, in reality, these water systems are often not effectively managed;...
This ethnography looks at the processes a rural Oregon community is undergoing as some members attempt to re-animate the community by creating a community center after the loss of its school and market, two vital services that provided venues for social interaction and engagement.
The methodology for this research includes...
Shifting climate patterns in the Columbia River basin are affecting snow pack, and, as a result, stream flow throughout the region. In the Oregon Cascades, ever growing populations, and their associated activities, place increasing stress on an already over allocated hydrologic system. Political pressures, including the possibility of renegotiation or...
In an era of human-induced climate change, there is increasing interest in encouraging people to reduce their carbon dioxide (carbon) emissions by adopting low-carbon behaviors, or behaviors that reduce a person’s use of fossil fuels. I designed the Campus Carbon Challenge as a research and outreach project to gain a...
In Prek Toal, a poor subsistence fishing village on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake, the conservation organization Osmose is using ecotourism revenues to finance poverty intervention programs and promote conservation in a threatened ecosystem. This thesis examines local perceptions of tourism as a measure of Osmose’s success. Limited awareness of tourism...
In this era of free trade and globalization, food is traveling greater and greater distances to its consumers. This is causing small farms and small farmers all over the world to protest as their livelihood is being undercut by cheap agricultural commodities from outside their communities. In the Ecuadorian Andes,...
Hunter-gatherers depend on naturally occurring resources and, in order to survive, must overcome resource procurement challenges inherent in their environment. One challenge relates to the temporal and spatial availability of resources, which hunter-gatherers address, in part, through the strategic use of space to position themselves for optimal access to necessary...
Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a global issue with national and local implications. Chronic exposure to arsenic in drinking water has been linked to both carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic health outcomes. The primary exposure route of inorganic arsenic is ingestion from drinking water due to natural contamination in groundwater from dissolution...
Remote areas are frequently homes to regional subpopulations of endangered green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) and their essential habitat. Local communities are often the users and primary stewards of this valuable and charismatic resource. Recognizing this, a Hatohobeian community group in Palau has engaged in longterm monitoring and conservation management...
Work-related hazards and exposures affect human health and well-being. Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) surveillance is fundamental to the public health approach. OSH surveillance provides important data on the occurrence and magnitude of the problem and risk/protective factors. A wide variety of OSH surveillance programs and systems have been established...
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...
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...
Despite some successful conservation stories, biodiversity continues to be lost around the world. Climate change accentuates the ecological crisis and demands not only coordinated action by individuals and collectives, but also a re-examination (and re-imagination) of our relationship with nature. As part of the basis for such a re-examination, further...
Native America tribes and community members throughout Oregon have asserted a strong opposition to the fossil fuel industry’s attempt to expand railways, build pipelines, and construct refineries, holding facilities, and export terminals. Despite the limited presence of fossil fuel infrastructure in the state, however, the industry is actively pursuing permits...
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 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...
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...
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)...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
This thesis seeks to better understand the most pressing cultural barriers to progress in the sustainability movement, and to offer suggestions for overcoming barriers. This research includes a two-year long case study of the sustainability movement at OSU, where the researcher coordinated projects encouraging behavior change. Despite increasing severity and...
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...
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...
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...
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...
My research is looking at the cultural and kinship ties of African and Native peoples and how our worlds were forged together by colonization, bonded during the institutionalize state of shackles and slavery and how the legacy of these tools of genocide are now tearing us apart.
Being of mixed...
Crater Lake National Park presents an excellent opportunity for ecological research due to its relatively pristine landscape, the protection of its natural features, its infrastructure, and a Park administration supportive of scientific inquiry and restoration ecology. The research presented here examines the responses of fungi to various forms of perturbation....
We live on an Urban Planet. The current unprecedented urbanization is accompanied by intensive land cover transition and demographic shifts from rural to urban livelihoods. Cities serve as cultural, economic, political centers that facilitate wealth creation and innovation of the society, sustaining human from multi-dimensions with large ecological footprints far...
The written history of Oregon spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries lacks evidence of the contributions made by the Overseas Chinese communities who existed in Oregon during this period. The purpose of this examination is to study the Overseas Chinese communities which resided in the cities of The...
A number of researchers view farmers’ markets as an appropriate vehicle for
re-embedding food markets into communities (O’Hara & Stagl, 2001, Feenstra, 2002,
Lyson, 2005). Amidst astounding growth in the number of farmers’ markets in the
United States in recent decades, many markets struggle and fail. Recent research
suggests that...